(Can't stop blogging yet).
It occurs to me that my "Blogfamily" shares a vague yet real constellation of values.
In no particular order or hierarchy:
Conservation/ "Green" values, but not the PC kind-- we tend to be hunters or at least carnivores.
Love for traditions, old things, learning-- meritocracy?
"Social libertarianism"-- small "l".
Respect for / adherence to evolutionary paradigms.
But also respect for/ adherence to various religious beliefs.
Oh and-- strong women, self defense, love of dogs, and good food.
What say you all?
7 comments:
Hear! Hear!
I would add something I've read by you in several iterations (and stolen from you, too): A view of animals (some individually, some collectively) as persons.
I don't mean as "people," and certainly not as "little people in fur coats" a'la PETA... Yet so much more than automatons or mere window dressing for the landscape.
To see animals like I think we here do is to admire and respect them, but without putting them at great distance. Somehow it doesn't preclude hunting and eating them. :-)
I say "Amen" to the list, brother. I would also add to the list: a longer range perspective of humans as a species - perhaps tying to your "respect for/adherence to evolutionary paradigms."
As I said in an e-mail to you guys a couple of days ago, "More than we want to admit, physically
and mentally we are still curious and manipulative Pleistocene apes and it shows in all we do and say."
AND strong women and good food - and strong drink!!
Excellent observations, Steve (as usual!) - and I'm humbled to be a junior part of your stimulating blogworld.
I think I would add tolerance to the list . . . for lack of better word. Or maybe it's more related to Reid's "curious apes" comment - the folks here are interested in most anything that tickles our brains or gullets (hence recent posts on bicycles, assault weapons, blue cheeses, 'intelligent' design . . .) but they will for the most part weigh and investigate and chew through new ideas or other people's views . . . and if they find them of interest/of value, will roundly applaud, and if they find them wanting, will roundly rip them apart, most intellectually of course. I feel I can put forth nearly any idea and it will be considered fairly. And if it's dumb I expect it to be trounced!
So I don't know if it's tolerance I'm describing but it's early and I need another cup of tea. . .
A side note: my mom's been intrigued of late about blogs (after being used - or an image of her used - as a sort of mascot for one) but she asked: how can you find the time to write so much about so many different things? I told her it doesn't amount to all that much time, and it's like a daily intellectual parcourse: many different things to think through, and hopefully parse, with a modicum of sense.
Good food...Guns...Kenjitsu...Hounds and falcons on a cold autumn morning...The company of those who understand... A-Men.
Roseann says, "So I don't know if it's tolerance I'm describing but it's early and I need another cup of tea..."
I think I get you. Your comment reminds me of Bodio's post here, regarding bigotry, specifically the Terry Teachout quote, "Bigotry does not mean believing that people who differ from you are wrong, it means assuming that they are either knaves or fools."
If I read you right, this is the sort of tolerance you mean, one that can claim a point is good or bad without making the same judgement of its originator.
Or as Adam Gopnik says of C.S. Lewis in a recent essay, "He was a partisan without being a bigot."
Well put, as always. Hawks and hounds, arms and love. Most of all, the people that touch our lives in one way or another several of whom I see on this page.
Steve- I heartily agree with your "quiver of comon values " but you have omitted the one which lights up our common love of good food - Good wine!
Remember the quote "a meal without wine ...."
I am afraid that have an ashamedly old fashioned , traditional view that wines should ( preferably !) be French , dry, if white, from the Loire , Burgundy , or Bordeaux , or if Red, from Burgundy , Bordeaux or the Loire, if from the noble grapes of Cab France or Pinot .
Other countries, of course, can excell, but the "old country" can still scales the heights, and deliver the goods!!
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