Places That You've Never, Ever Seen ...

Start Me Up...

Building on yesterday's theme,
here's an historical example of affluence -- tested -- measuring up:

A key aspect to hyperthymic personality is the trait of “openness to experience.” People with hyperthymic personality are curious, inventive, experimental souls. Roosevelt’s intellectual openness was evident in his invention of the concept of a “brain trust” during the 1932 campaign, a reliance on academic expertise that has since become common but at the time was quite unusual. Roosevelt always sought a wide range of ideas. He once said, “You sometimes find something pretty good in the lunatic fringe. In fact, we have got as part of our social and economic government today a whole lot of things which in my boyhood were considered lunatic fringe, and yet they are now part of everyday life.”

But hyperthymia by itself does not ensure greatness; one also needs to be tested by adversity, and emerge stronger. Before suffering polio at age 39, F.D.R. was a successful patrician: secretary of the Navy in Woodrow Wilson’s administration, vice presidential candidate in 1920. Then, suddenly, for about a decade, he had to put all his immense energies into the mere effort to walk. He could have been destroyed by his paralysis; instead, he was transformed. The magic of hyperthymia made him recover from his illness stronger, not physically but psychologically. Said Perkins: “Roosevelt underwent a spiritual transformation during the years of his illness. I noticed when he came back that the years of pain and suffering had purged the slightly arrogant attitude he had displayed on occasion before he was stricken. The man emerged completely warmhearted, with humility of spirit and with a deeper philosophy.”

Nowadays, we'd probably prescribe a pill for that...
Point is, what the liberals, and the elite, don't much understand about diversity is the reward isn't external, it's something internally rewarding and for its own sake.

More viewpoint, better viewpoint than what is served up to the elite offspring, who could never ever imagine their "struggles" could help shape them to participate in the world fully. That's the point of elitism though, isn't it? Sheltered schools, gated community, organized trips, "safe" travel experiences, etc. etc. They set themselves apart, trading originality and adventure for safety and conformity. Always have.

Trouble comes when they assume what works in their artificial constructs, works in the real world where the rest of us reside.

It's why the "next generation" Kennedy's don't much measure up to the brood that was set afire by their ambitious father... They had to mix and mingle with the regular folk; today, chances are better that they're essentially ... sheltered from knowing or understanding the lives of their less fortunate brothers and sisters. (Literally, in the case of the Kennedy-Schwartznegger offspring, it seems.)

Nothing wrong with that, of course. But those types generally miss out on the kernel of life experiences that permits them to lead wisely and without consequence. It's the inner strength that Roosevelt achieved, and which so many of our artificially constructed elite of today simply do not have. (And they can't just swipe it and present it as their own, either.)

No need to reward diversity then. Keep judging on merit, and we'll just see how things shake out, now that we're actually measuring results, eh?

In the end,
that was the mistake the libs made in selecting Obama. All the right looks, but with none of the inner lessons learned. Lead? Hardly. He'd a made a fine community organizer though, had he only stuck with it.