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FINGER_EXERCISES

                                           December 20, 2005
The notion was that I should               July     15, 2007
engage in some "finger
exercises", typing up some ways
of over-coming "tribalism"                      STONE_COLD
(my own, or someone else's).

                                  At the moment, all
                                  I can think of is
                                  traditional exchange
                                  between the cyclist
                                  tribe and the
                                  cab-driver tribe...



  ((Perhaps:
    a good spot to record my
    minor adventures with Endy
    out in alt.gothic land...?))


  A few fragments:


                    Party loyalty.
                    Over loyalty to
                    nation, to humanity?

                               (You will, of course, say
                               that your party loyalty
                               is *for* the good of the
                               nation, that what's good
                               for the party *is* good
                               for the nation.)


                          It begins with a dream
                          of reason and law, and
                          ends with "well, he's
                          an asshole, but he's
                          *our* asshole."


   Since I seem to be imagining a dialog
   with an idealized conservative opponent,
   I find myself wondering if this
   excercise should be fictionalized...

       Deal with the problem
       as a kind of               I like the *idea* of
       philosophic dialog?        philosophic dialog, but
                                  in practice it has a
                                  lot of problems.

                                     (Notably, the secondary
                                     characters in Plato
                                     seem very poorly devloped...)

 Take as a model
           inspiration
           starting point
           example

 The scene in "War and Peace"                       FAVORITE_SCENE
 where Nikolai Rostov goes off
 the rails of truth into an
 expected, standardized
 romanticism, and Prince Andrei
 walks in and instantly knows
 exactly what's going on.

 The point that sticking to
 the truth takes work, and
 that many people don't have
 the ability -- it's not just
 a matter of "character", not
 just will and/or morality.






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