Rousseau
Life is a series of ricochets.
That’s one way of looking at it.
Jonathan Haidt is getting some buzz because his current book, “The Righteous Mind”, made the NYT Bestseller list.
Haidt is a social psychologist at U of Va.
His prior book, “The Happiness Hypothesis” is on my short list.
Haidt’s theory is that we are all elephant riders.
The elephant represents the emotional mind; the rider is the cognitive mind.
Sometimes the rider can guide and steer the elephant, but if the elephant really, really, really wants something, forget it.
The rider’s challenge is the hallowed middle ground: where the elephant is a bit rowdy.
That’s where, and only where, a skilled rider has some influence.
Recognizing those opportunities is one of the skills that a wise rider acquires.
Flow through your challenges.
We tend to tense up during challenges, don’t we?
When the elephant is out of control?
When the environment is threatening and unpredictable?
If we could just learn to get into a nice, smooth, calm state of mind, and stay there. . .
Kevin Fuller says, “Don’t let them steal your cool.”
Ride the rapids!
Easy for me to say.
How about John Edwards?
George Zimmerman?
Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau put on his sailing shoes, as the band Little Feat would say, living in the 18th Century.
I confess.
Before writing this, I thought it was “Little Feet”.
Damn!
Joni Mitchell wrote a song about Rousseau.
Brilliant 18th Century intellectual, articulator of ideas that revolutionized the political structure of the world: France’s answer to Thomas Paine.
Crazy as Bobby Fischer in his later years (yes, both crazy in their later years – Bobby and J-J.), and just as paranoid, David Hume had to offer J-J asylum in the UK.
As Fischer eventually offended his hosts, the Icelanders, who rescued him from a Japanese prison, Rousseau offended Hume and the Brits.
Both men, brilliant as they were, bounced, careened, and ricocheted through life.
But, did Rousseau, the Prometheus of democracy, really have little feet?
Boing!