I don't quite subscribe to that philosophy.

I've learned to value the implicit knowledge of some of the people I've met that would not make a good impression in writing or in the board room. One of the most cogent statements on situational aesthetics I ever heard was made by an old Arkansas farmer. I will always listen until a person proves themselves a dullard or a fool.

The only thing I truly can't stand is willful ignorance.


Yours in many ways to know the world.

 

It's not what you know. It's what you know you don't know. You know?

 

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool - shun him

He who knows not, and knows that he knows not is a child - teach him

He who knows, and knows not that he knows is asleep - wake him

He who knows, and knows that he knows is wise - follow him

--Persian proverb

 

Dear Ron:

What did/does Confucius mean when he said....

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."

Signed,
Studying the Old Ways in Cincy

 

If you want to teach me, help me to do instead of showing me or, worse, just telling me.

 

Dear Ron:

As Confucius said....

The best men are born wise. Next come those who grow wise by learning: then, learned, narrow minds. Narrow minds, without learning, are the lowest of the people.

Is it true that most of the S2000 owners from northern Ohio fall into the last group?

Signed,
Leading the way in Cincy

 

I have a question pertaining to a debate that airgate and I have over the aesthetics of the Rolls Royce Ghost and the Bentley Flying Spur.

The aesthetic sensibilities of the Ghost are lost in a desert of vast immensity, trapped in a waste land of atrophied discontent.

There is a reason that a Rolls now appeals to rappers. Both are entirely and utterly artistically self-conscious. Both are inevitable extensions of a longer historical aesthetic canon. Both have not yet figured out their place in that canon. Both have let their past shine through to the present without ordering their past, putting it, as it were, in perspective or priority.

For the difference between the past and the present--aesthetically speaking--is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to a degree which the past's awareness of itself cannot show. Any great design, or artisitic work worthy of merit (be it a work of architecture, visual arts, poetry or a car), is part of a tradition. We rank one artistic activity higher than another--the poetry of Pope more than the poetry of Frost for instance--not so much because one is more technically meritorious than another (although mechanically proficiency cannot be gainsaid as a factor of artistic meritocracy), but because the more highly appreciated work of art is unique, alone, eccentric while simultaneously a part of an existing order.

The existing monuments form an ideal order which is modified by the addition of the new work. The existing ideal order is complete before the supervention of the new, but the novelty of the new works itself on the ideal order: the relationship between the existing monuments and the new monument is resurveyed, adjusted, reprioritized. Is not this the hallmark of the relationship between the aesthetic past and the aesthetic present?

Within the grand vista of Rolls Royce design the current designs have lost their way in an artistic wilderness--a featureless, dry, parched landscape barren and desolute. Rolls Royce is lost in that desert, unable to navigate because it is unable to order those signposts from its past, incapable of comprehending that ideal order.

Signed...

A critic of cars he can't afford anyway.

 

Dear Ron:

Is life the test, a crossing?

Is existence the cross we bear, living with the knowledge of our certain death?

Are we complete other than by the brutality of our common fate whose finality is meaningless?

 

Pull a Ghost and a Flying Spurr up to the entrance of the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino here in Biloxi (sister casino to the better known Bellagio). See which car the valet guys pull into the garage. The Ghost will be the one left out front.

The problem with the Flying Spurr is two-fold. First, it doesn't look as impressive as a big bad ultra-lux sedan should. And second, it doesn't know what it is. The ride is too harsh for a full-bore lux-o-barge while the handling is not up to ultra-GT standards. The Ghost, on the other hand, knows EXACTLY what it is and presents itself as it should, with all the pomp and circumstance of a British coronation.

Of course neither would generate a second glance on Rodeo Drive.

It truely pains me to admit it but I must agree with Raul on this one. I look forward to a post from Ron confirming the fact that Raul (for once) and I are on the side of the angels.

 

Re the other thing you asked...thus is just mho...

To say that my existance is meaningless because it must ultimately end in death without any hope of an afterlife is to deny the magnificence of my very being. I am made of star stuff. Every atom in my body was forged in the fires of the stars. I am a portal through which the universe observes itself. If my existance is meaningless then the existance of the universe itself is meaningless. My personal philosophy will not allow any universe that includes objects like the gas pillars of Nebula M16 or the Ferrari 599 GTO to be considered meaningless.