User:Bdell555
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My real name is Brian Dell. I was born and raised in Sunny Alberta. I have four university degrees (in philosophy, law, business administration, and European affairs) and a CFA Charter. Professionally I am an economist / financial markets guy. For more you can visit www.bdell.ca, which also links to my blog.
Since Wikipedia's "civility" policy refers to "an atmosphere of conflict and stress", I've sometimes been accused of being uncivil when the discussion related to my editing occurs under that atmosphere. A few points I'd make:
1) I'd rather be informed and "stressed" than uninformed (especially about myself). And I believe the reader wishes to have the choice to be informed and "stressed" as well if the alternative is being uninformed.
2) As a corollary to (1), I am opposed to Wikipedia's "biographies of living persons" (WP:BLP) policy and all other policies creating a preference for "non-distressing" material. IF WP:BLP is not over and above the reliable source (RS) and neutral point of view policies (NPOV), then a problem article can and should be changed in accordance with RS and NPOV. If conflict between BLP and RS or NPOV is impossible, than by a Venn diagram BLP must be entirely covered off by RS and NPOV already such that a BLP policy is redundant and unnecessary.
3) Just because I believe the minimization of distress does not serve encyclopedic purposes does not mean I don't believe it serves valuable purposes when conducting one's personal life. I'm not going to pass on to you any reliably sourced info about your favorite politician or about your religion on the restaurant patio if doing so would just distress either of us! But if you come to Wikpedia to read up on someone or something I believe you should be accurately informed because that's why you are here.
4) It is fair to ask what the motivations are of someone whoe ONLY goes around adding "distressing" material but, of course, I don't consider myself to be that sort of person.
WHAT DO I BELIEVE?
I believe I am a skeptic, which is to say, "not much". I am not convinced that reason can really prove anything. It can, however, disprove things, which means that winning an argument usually requires proving self-contradiction in the other's thinking. Two people can have 100% internally consistent belief structures yet fundamentally disagree if the primary premises upon which their belief structures are ultimately founded differ.
A lot of people seem to help the development of their belief structures along by using "if A then B" reasoning such that, for example, if (A) Hitler was evil then (B) he was not kind to animals. They then refuse to concede that (B) might be false out of concern that if "not (B)" then "not (A)". Another person beginning from assumption "not (A)" might believe in the same "if A then B" reasoning such that they get into an argument asserting "not B" in order to prove not A. I might often APPEAR to be that second person, beginning from some offensive assumption, when I assert something like "not B", when it fact I assert "not B" for its own sake and because A is so widely accepted there are few natural counters to those who draw the "if A then B" thinking. Where there is "consensus" there is often a high risk of inaccuracy, not with respect to the particular issue on which there is consensus but on imagined inferences from that consensus.
In terms of my "ideology" concerning the political or legal organization of a state, to a large extent you could slot me with Richard Posner.
I'll leave a number of quotes for you here to get an impression of what I often feel, but cannot express as eloquently as some of these authors...
- "To tell the truth, ideas are the most dangerous germs mankind has ever been interjected with. They are introduced into the brain by injection, in schools and by means of newspapers, and then we are done for.
- An idea which is merely introduced into the brain, and started spinning there like some outrageous insect, is the cause of all our misery today. Instead of living from the spontaneous centres, we live from the head. We chew, chew, chew at some theory, some idea. We grind, grind, grind in our mental consciousness, till we are beside ourselves."
- - DH Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, First Steps in Education
- "I think it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit - it is those who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience. ...
- Each blade of grass has its spot on the earth whence it draws its life, its strength, and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life. .... We exist only in so far as we hang together. ..."
- - Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
- "With the progress of science and technology, man has stopped believing in magic powers, in spirits and demons; he has lost his sense of prophecy and, above all, his sense of the sacred. Reality has become dreary, flat and utilitarian, leaving a great void in the souls of men which they seek to fill by furious activity and through various devices and substitutes."
- - Max Weber
- “When there are few rituals to mark the turns in the wheel of life, if all events become the same with no ceremony to mark the distinctions - when one marries in ordinary dress, or receives a degree without a robe, or buries one's dead without the tearing of cloth - then life becomes grey on grey, and none of the splashiness of the phosphorescent pop art can hide the greyness when the morning breaks"
- - Daniel Bell
- “What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul." Man wants his physical fulfilment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.
- So that my individualism is really an illusion. I am a part of the great whole, and I can never escape. But I can deny my connections, break them, and become a fragment. Then I am wretched.
- What we want is to destroy our false, inorganic connections, especially those related to money, and re-establish the living organic connections, with the cosmos, the sun and earth, with mankind and nation and family. Start with the sun, and the rest will slowly, slowly happen.”
- - DH Lawrence, “Apocalypse” XXIII
