Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
-- Thomas Carlyle
I like that one, I hadn't heard it before.
I *think* I know what he meant, but I’d like to know what he really meant (and what was the context), for it’s an interesting subject, what is “good”? Does it really exist, or merely in the human mind and social agreements?
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If we accept Goodness as-is for now, I might add that I would even say that cleverness is probably irrelevant to goodness, or value. Hitler, for example must have been damn clever in some areas to get a whole people to do his murdering for him. But few would call him Good. Though interestingly, some do, including some clever men, I know a very clever man who does.
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If we accept Goodness as-is for now, I might add that I would even say that cleverness is probably irrelevant to goodness, or value. Hitler, for example must have been damn clever in some areas to get a whole people to do his murdering for him. But few would call him Good. Though interestingly, some do, including some clever men, I know a very clever man who does.
10 comments:
Happy Hitler's Birthday! The toothbrush-moustached one would be 124 today if he were still alive.
Better to celebrate his death death date, April 30th.
It doesn't look like he died on that day [source: FBI file no 105-410]. He is believed to have died in 1965 in an Argentine hotel, but the exact date is unknown.
Regardless, I wouldn't celebrate anyone's death. That's just macabre.
Well I surely wouldn't celebrate his birthday.
You rather celebrate Cannabis Day then?
Thanks for reminding me! Now I have an excuse to celebrate :)
Happy Lenin's Birthday! The great teacher would have been 143 today.
Better to celebrate his death death date, April 30th.
Maybe ttl is a Neo Nazi. That wouldn't please his grandfather's generation who fought against the Soviets.
It doesn't look like he died on that day [source: FBI file no 105-410]. He is believed to have died in 1965 in an Argentine hotel, but the exact date is unknown.
Riiiiight....
Happy Lenin's Birthday! The great teacher would have been 143 today.
Great teacher? Of what?
Oh, hey, Josie, where have you been? We almost missed you and your untiring flow of regurgitated hydrochloric acid.
Almost. ;-p
According to convincing historians, Hitler was very un-clever militarily. Especially in the end. But maybe it was just the advancement of his schizoid paranoia (paranoid schizophrenia?) that made him plain delirious and clinically irrational.
At any rate, good for the world.
Last thing we need is a smart Evil Overlord.
Then again, my own conclusion is that by definition, Evil is stupid. Because it takes a very special brand of idiocy to be truly evil, aside from those who are just extremely misguided suffering souls.
Take the "tradition" of chiding in colleges: you receive the humiliation (and maybe worse as well) from those who were there first and are "above" you, then you pass it on to those poor bastards who follow and never did anything to you. Where the Hades is the logic in THAT?
Countless serial killers just had a very serious disagreement to settle with their mother but would never admit it...
As for Lenin, I wouldn't know, but Mao was the self-appointed Great Helmsman. ;-)
What I don't get is how the hell did one country, twice within 30 years, invade all the countries around them, and keep it going for years on end? On the face of it, it just seems very odd.
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