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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (31403)	2/21/1999 9:47:00 AM
From: Rick Julian	Respond to of 108807

Finally, please don't take anything I say seriously. I'm just a 14 year old boy deep over her head. You said it. I swear just yesterday I was twelve years old, running through the woods on the way home from school, dreaming I could fly. Just now I was again.

To: nihil who wrote (31403)	2/21/1999 10:57:00 AM
From: Sidney Reilly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

I think you made that all up. I cannot accept that an American college student cannot recommend one good book that they had read completely through. I don't believe it. I had read possibly hundreds of books before I got to college and could recommend a fist full. Just the sci-fi I read for enjoyment filled many boxes. Come on!

To: nihil who wrote (31403)	2/21/1999 12:05:00 PM
From: Rambi	Respond to of 108807

nihil, Thank you for your reasonable and polite response to my post. I very seldom (well-I try not to anyway) make nasty personal remarks and I did last night. I had no right to say that and as I lay in bed, I wondered what it was in your last few posts that caused that reaction. (I'm in the midst of that steroid pack dose and one of the side effects is tons of energy and a lot of pingpongy thoughts.) My personal belief is that when someone is aroused negatively over another's remarks, it's because those comments are hitting something close to home. FOr too many years, I, as a good little Catholic girl of the 50s from a strongly domineering matriarchal family, was trained for obedience to authority figures without much discriminatory guidance. My father, a very bright but unambitious smartass was no match for my mother, who made sure we saw his inability to respect authority as self defeating and unacceptable. It took me years before I realized what the pastalike substance in my head was supposed to be used for, so for a long time I accepted whatever beliefs and teachings were presented to me by my professors or friends or lovers. Even now, although I trust myself and my instincts enough to know when I hear bullshit, I usually allow that what is bullshit for me may be absolute truth and beauty for another. For instance, you and I are diametrically opposed in our approaches to childrearing, but both may have achieved whatever we intended. SO what bugged me so much that it provoked a potshot? THis year as we prepare to send CW off to college, I wonder who and what will influence his development. You are a professor with some unusual ideas and beliefs, ideas which you after your many years have come to believe as truth. ANd when you expressed those with such absolute conviction, it must have triggered my trepidation about what my children are about to encounter as they leave us. Have we taught them to question authority, to look through beautifully prosed ideas, examine cleverly presented facts and arrive at their own truths? Will they realize that the world is full of teachers and authority figures who are just as capable of error and faulty thinking as any in spite of an impressive grasp of facts? That they have the ability to reach valid conclusions for themselves that may differ from those in control? I must question the admission requirements of your university!! Both my boys have been exposed to excellent literature, both at home, and through the Honors program at their high school. CW scored an 800 on the writing portion of his PSAT and has just been named a national merit finalist. He spends a great deal of time thinking and discussing beliefs and morality with us. He has rejected religion, but is fascinated by what he perceives as the universal need for and arrival at similar answers. I wouldn't see your job as teaching specific ethics, so much as presenting the various great schools of thought through the ages. I don't want anyone teaching my children his own idea of the perfect truth---I want a teacher to present the knowledge gained through the centuries, the thoughts of great minds, so that they may sift and examine and test for their own truths. Anyway, in all this rambling, is an apology of sorts and an explanation of what I was reacting to-- I am fearful of people who are in positions of power and who believe they have arrived at a destination others haven't yet managed to achieve. It was my own visceral "DOn't tell me what's true for me!" anger that I still have because of my long personal battle for autonomy, coupled with nervousness about my children's imminent flight from the nest. Judging from your response, I get the feeling that you would rather see people taking the journey, not necessarily ending up at your exact destination.