Mike Farmer’s post on philosophy got me thinking. I knew I had written fairly extensively, fairly recently, on some of the same ideas, but I couldn’t remember where. I write a lot, and I don’t always remember what gets posted where.
What I was thinking of was Todd Carpenter’s “Blogger Spotlight” interview with me. That post was much longer. In the extract below, I’m clipping out the Big Issues philosophy. The confluence of recent events — webloggers-at-war and the death of William F. Buckley — seems to have left us a little more open than we might otherwise be to new ideas. This is an exposition of the ideas that move me, in particular, my personal manifesto.
Todd Carpenter: One of my mottoes in life is that everyone has an ax to grind. I blog for money. Most RE agents blog for money in the form of clients. On the other hand, you don’t even have Amazon affiliate links attached to the books you recommend. What’s your ax to grind? Why are you doing this?
Greg Swann: In order that it might be done, and done properly. I don’t think I fit your theory about having an axe to grind. I may be as close as one can come in the modern world to being an actual Attic Greek, a doer for the sake of having done, a thinker for the sake of having thought, a poet for poetry’s own sake. People often accuse me of having ugly motives — which says a lot more about them than it does about me. But there is a sense in which you could say that I don’t have any motive for the things I do, none other than the doing itself. I like for things to be done. I like for them to be whole and complete and perfect and esthetically beautiful and mathematically elegant and philosophically sound. I work very hard on everything I do, and I can concentrate very intently on what I am doing, and I don’t like to do anything except what I am doing right now — but I love to do that completely.
One of the standards that I have set for BloodhoundBlog — not by precept but by example — is that we expect our visitors to rise to our level. I detest the whole idea of dumbing things down — simplifying, stupefying, catering to human beings as if they were infants — or imbeciles. I’ve lived my entire life in the avid pursuit of the highest intellectual values my mind can absorb, and I reject the idea that I should spit on and spurn those values in my social concourse with my fellow men. To the contrary, if I respect who they are and love what they can become, I owe it to them to give them the best of my mind, not some dumbed-down moronic masquerade.
If there is any extent to which I have an overarching motive, it is at a very abstract, philosophical level. If you read my posts in BloodhoundBlog stored under the category “Egoism in Action,” you can catch a hint of it by acclimation. I believe in the good as an abstract moral goal, but on a more concrete, practical level, I believe in doing better — better work, better thinking, better behavior — a consistent resolution and a persistent effort to do better every day at everything I do. I want this for myself — this more than anything — but I want it as a meta-goal for all of humanity, now and forever. We are rational animals, and we are best capable of splendor — untainted, fully-conscious jubilation — when we act as rational human beings. And we are most crippled by pain and doubt and guilt and fear and misery when we indulge our vestigial animality. At a certain level, everything I do is both an expression of and an argument for my idea of splendor.
You asked — and part of being who I am is a conscious refusal to hide things like this just because many people don’t want to hear them. I don’t believe that I owe anything to other people, but the best gift I can offer my fellow men is not to hide who I am. I am very far from being perfect, but I know from introspective experience and extrospective observation that my way of living is a move in the right direction. We’ve spent the entire course of human history cursing rationality and enshrining animality. This has not had happy consequences. I am not a missionary, but the fundamental nature of integrity is that every seemingly disparate thing is in fact a facet of the same one thing. The one thing I am is an Egoist, and every thing I do ends up expressing a very strident Egoist ideal as an inescapable secondary consequence. And, being who I am, I do love the symmetry and elegance of that expression.
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Kevin Warmath - Alpharetta Real Estate says:
CANI: Constant And Never-ending Improvement. It is a term I heard created by Tony Robbins. The belief is that the only way you/we/I can ever feel fulfilled is by continued improvement (in all sorts of aspects of our lives). All the time, you are either coasting downhill (declinine) or climbing uphill (improving). There is not sitting still on a flat surface. This is why some of us just can’t sit still: we are blogging at midnight, reading at every meal, always talking on the phone in the car, checking our email on pda’s a children’s school events…CANI…always trying to learn more. Otherwise I feel dead.
March 1, 2008 — 7:48 am
Greg Swann says:
Excellent. Entrepreneurs in general are independent, active people. I love my brothermen best when they’re completely entrhalled by their own goals.
March 1, 2008 — 8:31 am
Mike Farmer says:
I definitely fall into the category of people who write too much. Thanks for the inspiration, it keeps my mind young and alive.
March 1, 2008 — 9:48 am
Greg Swann says:
> Thanks for the inspiration, it keeps my mind young and alive.
Same to you.
My all-time favorite New Yorker cartoon.
March 1, 2008 — 10:01 am
Louis Cammarosano says:
Hi Greg
I am fascinated by the thought that many smart people have that things that are intellectual and rational are universally deemed to be better than things and people that are not. I had this discourse from my uncle who asked/challenged me that was not being a lawyer more intellectual than running a company.
The assumption being whatever is intellectual is better. Ergo being a lawyer is better than being a General Manager of a company. Which perhaps in my uncle’s logic construct is true, but in reality decidedly is not.
If we deem ourselves intellectual and love something that doesn’t fall into the category of the intellect, in order to allow ourselves to like it and speak of it we intellectualize it. The brutal sport of boxing becomes art in Raging Bull and a ball player who shows no interest in any intellectual activity and marries the generational symbol of the “dumb blonde” becomes a poetic athlete and near mythic literary figure in The Old Man and the Sea. Thus transformed the intellectuals can share and enjoy a common (no pun intended) experience with those who are not deemed to be intellectuals.
Is there not value sometimes in the non intellectual “as is” ? Can things be “better” with out being overtly intellectual or intellectual at all?
March 1, 2008 — 11:59 am
Greg Swann says:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Socrates
I would go further to say that the unexamined life is not a human life. Fish swim. Birds fly. Humans think. Genetic homo sapiens who would rather not think are attempting to achieve an impossible and pathetic emulation of an animal’s consciousness. This is their perfect moral and political right, and it’s none of my business — except insofar as everything that can be observed is food for my own thoughts.
Note that this has nothing to do with your unresolved issues with your relatives, which are properly understood as being personal problems. 😉
March 1, 2008 — 12:18 pm
Louis Cammarosano says:
Cogito ergo sum
So you would add that the absence of thought is the absence of being AND the absence of being human?
Is a taking a break from the examination and enjoying non intellectual pursuits taking a break from being human?
March 1, 2008 — 12:28 pm
Louis Cammarosano says:
Here is a contraction for you on a Saturday afternoon.
If perhaps the examination of life is human and the end result is “truth”, how does one make sense of Nietzsche claim in Human All Too Human – “All Human Life is sunk deep in untruth”
Is that because most humans do not think and therefore are untruthful?
Or because a lot of Nietzsche is just jibberish?
March 1, 2008 — 12:44 pm
Greg Swann says:
> So you would add that the absence of thought is the absence of being AND the absence of being human?
Biological processes will persist as long as they are maintained and are functioning properly. This is why it is needful to make the distinction between a genetic homo sapiens and a human being. It is possible as a matter of biology to be one without being the other.
Factually, a homo sapiens is a product of nature, of genetic recombination. A human being is an artifact — a man-made thing. A genetic homo sapiens reared without human upbringing (this is called a “wildman”) can never exhibit the secondary manifestations of human consciousness. If a child lacks human upbringing through the age of conceptual fluency, that child will never develop the ability to reason in abstractions. Wildmen can seem to be incredibly intelligent, compared to animals, but they can never develop volitional rationality, the uniquely human mode of consciousness.
> Is a taking a break from the examination and enjoying non intellectual pursuits taking a break from being human?
I wouldn’t know. I’ve never done it. I think it would have to be an act, a pose. One can be severely developmentally disabled, or one can be comatose, and I suppose a person can drink so much that he might seem, to himself or other people, to be one or the other. But no normal, healthy human being can be both awake and not-awake at the same time and in the same respect.
You are attempting to create a false dichotomy in defense of habituated patterns of volitional error. Bad behavior has unhappy consequences no matter what someone might think about it — or affect not to think about it. Human beings think. The egoist’s question would be: Am I thinking productively, in those ways that best advance my long-term goals?
And: Inasmuch as I am instructing you in arcane matters that I suspect you don’t want to understand, the answer for me in the instant matter is: No. I have work to do, and I’m going back to it.
March 1, 2008 — 12:51 pm
Louis Cammarosano says:
Having engaged you thus far, why would you suspect I have no desire to understand arcane matters as per your instructions?
Thanks for the discourse. Enjoy your work!
March 1, 2008 — 12:56 pm
Greg Swann says:
My apologies if I have misjudged you. Here’s a nice article on the dangers of complacency to make it up to you.
March 1, 2008 — 1:15 pm
Louis Cammarosano says:
An interesting read. Thanks Greg.
A dangerous complacency (which could come from a misjudgement or lack of thought) is up there with a foolish consistency for potential disastrous missteps in one’s business or life…
March 1, 2008 — 1:29 pm
Louis Cammarosano says:
Greg
What I was getting at is do not intellectuals focus too much on the portion of the soul that Plato in the Republic refers to as the “reason” portion, negating or downplaying the “spirit” and “appetite” aspects of the soul? The latter two are afterall as much “human” as the oft emphazed reason aspect of the soul.
Please if you have the time I would appreciate further instruction…
March 1, 2008 — 7:33 pm
Jay says:
I think this conversation is a bit “heavy” for me. On to the next post.
J
March 2, 2008 — 6:57 pm