Maverick Philosopher

How Many Friends Have You Lost Over Politics?

I have lost about a half dozen. How about you? I am interested in your stories, but even more in your analysis.

Austin Ruse bemoans friendships lost. His piece ends:

Maybe my friend is right. Maybe we can’t be friends right now, maybe never. For me, though, that would be unspeakably sad. Message to my old pal: my door is always open. 

Unspeakably sad? I see things differently. People who lost their minds over Trump, people too stupid to see past the man's obnoxious style and credit his ideas and numerous positive accomplishments; people who refused to see Biden for what he is, a fraud, a phony, a brazen liar, an empty suit rooted in no principle, morally corrupt, physically feeble, and non compos mentis; people who donned useless masks out of ovine fear, people who went along, to get along, with wokery and trans-delusionality and the celebration of thugs and criminals and every manner of loser -- such people were never worthy of my friendship in the first place. They were false friends from the start and I am glad circumstances made them show their true colors.  Good riddance!

Some say Trump is the Great Divider. Nonsense. He is the Great Clarifier.

Friendships Superficially Satisfying

Top o' the Stack 

Best Friend, Worst Enemy

In your practical life, be your own best friend; in your spiritual and intellectual life, your own worst enemy.

Why We Get Along

I'm reasonable; she's sweet and agreeable.

Enemies Have Their Uses

You may do your level best to hide your faults and defects, but others will expose them. Even if they do so maliciously they perform a service to those who are open to correction. An enemy is sometimes to be preferred to a friend in tacit collusion with one's moral complacency.

Of Friendship and Expiry

Some friendships have expiration dates, typically in very fine print illegible to the eager eyes of the newly enamored.

Friendships

Some are of propinquity, others of affinity. The best are both.

Superficial Acquaintances

We need them, but we need to keep them superficial. Two reasons. First, if you try to go deep with the superficial, you will only frustrate yourself. Second, superficial relations hide faults and  allow for idealization.  Ignorance aids admiration.

I Introduce Two New Friends to the Superstition Mountains

One of the great boons of blogging is that the blogger attracts the like-minded.  Below are two medical doctors I had the great pleasure of spending the day with in a satisfying break from my Bradleyan reclusivity. Dave K. found me via this weblog and initiated correspondence, so I knew he would be simpatico. I didn't know about his wife, Barbara C. , but she turned out also to be a member of the Coalition of the Sane, a Trump supporter, and one charming lady of Italian extraction.

Born of Propinquity, Dead of Distance

Most friendships are born of propinquity and die the death of distance.

Why is Friendship So Fragile among Intellectuals?

A certain commie and I were friends for a time in graduate school, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary non-intellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas.  They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter.  He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas.  So the tendency is for one intellectual to view an ideologically divergent intellectual as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing.

Why?  Because ideas matter to the intellectual.  They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists.  If one's eternal  happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one 'gets it right' doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you'd better belong to the right church.   It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant 'for their own good.'  You will recall that Galileo Galilei was shown the instruments of torture by the functionaries of the Inquisition.

The typical intellectual nowadays is a secularist who believes in nothing that transcends the human horizon. But he takes into his secularism that old-time fervor, that old-time zeal to suppress dissent and punish apostates.  It is called political correctness.

And as you have heard me say more than once: P.C. comes from the C. P. 

...............

The above is excerpted from a longer entry, A Red-Diaper Baby I Once Knew: Anecdotes Illustrating Leftist Illusions.

A certain commie and I were friends for a time in graduate school, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary non-intellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas.  They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter.  He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas.  So the tendency is for one intellectual to view an ideologically divergent intellectual as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing.

Why?  Because ideas matter to the intellectual.  They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists.  If one's eternal  happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one 'gets it right' doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you'd better belong to the right church.   It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant 'for their own good.'  You will recall that Galileo Galilei was shown the instruments of torture by the functionaries of the Inquisition.

The typical intellectual nowadays is a secularist who believes in nothing that transcends the human horizon. But he takes into his secularism that old-time fervor, that old-time zeal to suppress dissent and punish apostates.  It is called political correctness.

And as you have heard me say more than once: P.C. comes from the C. P. 

...............

The above is excerpted from a longer entry, A Red-Diaper Baby I Once Knew: Anecdotes Illustrating Leftist Illusions.

Distance Permits Idealization

Propinquity diminishes what distance augments. Among friends, mutual respect is better served by distance than by close contact. Distance permits idealization. Is it an unalloyed good? No, inasmuch as idealization typically falsifies. But falsification in a world that runs on appearances can be life-enhancing. One skilled in the art of life knows how to apply 'cosmetics' to the ugly faces of people and things. One so skilled even knows how to play cosmetologist to the cosmos and put a pretty face on the the whole kit and kaboodle.

Prandial and Post-Prandial Pleasures

With Brian B. and Mike V. at Los Locos Gringos, my favorite local Mexican eatery. There is nothing better than a good meal and good conversation with like-minded friends. After Mike sped away on his iron horse, Brian and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing chess at Gecko Espresso. Mike, on the right, is one sharp-dressed man these days. Me? I am still of the '60s sartorially speaking. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Trump Friendship Criterion

If you are still friends with X after November 2016, X is a true friend. If not, not.

Trump has proven to be quite the catalyst of clarification. Preternatural is his power to cause people and parties to show their true colors.

Friendship and Enmity

One difference between the two is that friendship is mutual: A and B are not friends unless A is B's friend, and B is A's.  Not so with enmity. It suffices for A and B to be enemies that just one party be the enemy of the other.

Friendships Superficially Satisfying

I had known him for years. Our friendship was an acquaintanceship that remained on the surface. Never having gone deep, it never drifted toward the hazards the deep waters hide: the differences that most truly define and distinguish us, but also oppose us to others. And so when he died I could not bring to mind a false word, a sarcastic expression, a competitive tension, or a joke that hid a jab. Not one unpleasant memory sullied my recollection.

Such superficial friendships are perhaps perfect for an imperfect world in which there is more of seeming than of being. We do well to value the surfaces in a world of surfaces.  The surfaces are sure; the depths are dubious. On life's surface those who meant little but brighten memory count for more than those who meant more but haunt and disturb from a past their presence makes dark.