Archives for December 2011

Over the past couple of years, I’ve come to appreciate flaws and imperfections in a way that I never did before, especially in people. I confused someone a couple of nights ago by saying that, so it’s forced me to figure out how to explain this counterintuitive notion.

For years, I’ve had the intellectual belief that life is a series of tradeoffs. If you get something positive in one area, you give up something in another part of life. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on “Compensation” influenced me a lot about this subject about 15 years ago. He argued that there’s a natural process that balances everything. I don’t buy everything about Emerson’s philosophy, but I’ve found a lot of truth in this particular idea.

It seems to me that people with great talents and gifts will always have compensating weaknesses, although the positive things sometimes make it hard to notice the negatives. Those who have terrible flaws will almost always have compensating strengths or advantages, even if they’re sometimes hidden by the obvious flaws.

So I recognized — in theory — that great strengths are always going to come with great flaws as compensation. What I didn’t realize until fairly recently was that I had a different standard for certain others close to me. (And for myself.) With certain people, I was expecting incredible strengths and impressive attributes to come with no downsides. So when I found someone amazingly impressive, I put that person onto a pedestal — a place where no one can stay for long.

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A friend sent this story to me today. I wanted to share it with you because it helps explain why I tend to like dogs and cats better than most humans.

A man wrote a letter to a Chicago hotel where he planned to stay while on vacation.

“I would like to bring my dog with me,” he wrote. “He is well-behaved and well-groomed. Would you be willing to permit me to keep him in my room?”

The hotel owner replied, saying, “I’ve been operating hotels for 30 years. I’ve never had a dog steal bedclothes, towels, silverware or pictures off the walls. I’ve never had to kick a dog out in the middle of the night for being drunk and disorderly. And I’ve never had a dog skip out on a hotel bill. So, yes, your dog is welcome at my hotel. And if your dog will vouch for you, you’re welcome to stay, too.”

The concept of the movie, “Idiocracy,” is simple: We’re dumbing down our society so badly — intellectually, culturally and every other way — that people who are stupid today will be considered average (or better) in 500 years. Since everyone is dumb as a post, the entire society is falling apart. It’s a satirical extension of where we are today.

If you want some evidence that we really are moving down the road in that direction, consider that Donald Trump is being taken seriously on the national political stage. This lousy businessman — whose companies have filed for bankruptcy four times so far — believes he matters. Unfortunately, his narcissistic bluster has been enough to make him popular with a certain element of the population for whom the world of “Idiocracy” has already arrived.

Earlier this year, Trump teased us with whether he was going to run for president as a Republican or not. He says he’s still contemplating running next year as an independent. Most recently, though, Trump has been in the news because of his plans to moderate a Republican presidential debate in Iowa on Dec. 27. Doesn’t this make just as much sense as making Lindsey Lohan or Kim Kardashian a moderator?

To their credit, most of the GOP presidential candidates have bailed out of Trump’s show, but Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have accepted. In an interview with the UK’s Sunday Telegraph this week, Trump was characteristically immodest in claiming to be salvation for millions:

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