On Admiration of Great Men

Commentary, Truthiness Comments (2)

“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.” -Abraham Lincoln

I’m not a slave to objectivity. I’m never quite sure what is means. And it means different things to different people. -Peter Jennings.

I’m an odd bird: I read the speeches of Reagan, Kennedy, MLK, and Churchill for fun. I pour over the Wealth of Nations, marvel at the language of Shakespeare and dissect the language of the Harvard Business Review. It could be the Literature Major in me, but i am in love with language and how it moves people. I am also fascinated by the speaker and their time and place in history. Language is the music of the soul.

If you have not guessed, i’m a Lincoln man. There are not that many people I admire, infact, I’ve only just now come to admit that I do like lincoln; which is interesting because i know preciously little about him. Unlike many people, i do not consume everything i need to know about someone to admire them. The extended life of an individual is filled with their accomplishments and failures. How they are formed, forged into the sword they eventually become, can be fascinating, but it does not occupy my attention. I don’t have a fascination with celebrities either.

As a whole I fail at almost all games of “which celebrity do you admire, who do you think is beautiful, etc” because I don’t think of them like that. Yes celebrities are beautiful, yes they are strong, or well spoken, or dress well, but i don’t know them. I have to know something about them to make a judgement about them, and truely I care less about their martial problems and religious beliefs. Anyone under a microscope will eventually be a horrible person.

Still, every so often, something makes me take a bit of notice and that is what I admire about a person. One such person is Peter Jennings, former ABC news Anchor. Mr. Jennings is dead now, cancer, but i admired him for one simple reason: The last grade he finished was the 9th grade. Officially i think he did eventually get his GED and maybe some college, but inspirationally speaking, that meant to me that if I tried hard enough, if I was hungry enough or looked forward enough (and was confident of my own abilities) I can and would make something of my self.

One person who’s views i do dislike is Milton Friedman. to clarify, i think his view has been taken to the valley extreme. I don’t believe in shareholder value, at least not reported quarterly. [That requires a whole another post] Quarterly reports has allow the corporation to become a soulless beast, and mindlessly to boot. It lives for it’s shareholders, who are not a scattered lot of the working class, but investment houses and fund groups, who themselves are working for a corporation in a self generation frothy blood frenzy of generating money … for what? to make themselves more money!

I digress.

Back to Lincoln.

His vision, eloquence and forward looking speeches fascinate me. Hard to believe but i am a student of language, in that the words people use tell me alot about them. I have an ear for throw away phrase and common musings. Reading his speeches or his writings, reveals a character of a man and conviction, who, considering the shear number of times he failed to even become a senator, would become the President of the United States, and is considered one of the greatest presidents America has known.

Personally, the two quotes above define me well enough, by the two men who i believe i would have liked to have known personally.

OceansOfThought @ March 3, 2008