By Joseph Kellard
When I was editor of the Oceanside-Island Park Herald, I gave talks to students from fourth grade up to the high school level on Career Day. I eagerly agreed to talk to students about my career and to offer them advice that would have served me well when I was their age.
While I spoke briefly about my work as a journalist, I spent most of my talk emphasizing to students that they should choose a profession that they can enjoy and love. I believe a long-range, productive career is the cornerstone of self-confidence, pride and happiness, and that an individual can't fully achieve these values stuck in a job they don't like.
To get them to understand this fact, I asked them to imagine being stuck each day, every week, in a class they disliked, whether it's math or English or science. With my analogy, some students gave a knowing groan.
I told each class my own story to give them an example of someone finding a career they loved. When I was in grade school, I was a poor student with a mild form of dyslexia, so my biggest problems were with reading, writing and spelling. Knowing I loved sports, however, my parents bought me a subscription to Sports Illustrated, believing, correctly, that this would motivate me to read. Immersing myself in stories of my sports heroes, my reading proficiency soared.
Through my teen years, I expanded my reading to include encyclopedias and works by writers ranging from Shakespeare, Dickens and Tolstoy to Hemingway, Capote and Joyce Carol Oates. I made lists of unfamiliar words and historical and mythological figures that had me reaching for my dictionaries and Britannica. During those years, I had become so fascinated with the many ways to use the English language that I began to write short stories and poems. I had decided I wanted to be a fiction writer.
My deeper purpose in telling students all of this was to get them to take my experiences as a guide for how to start thinking about their own potential careers and career choices. Specifically, I wanted them to consider some activities they enjoy, and to think about applying these to the seemingly countless career choices they have in this land of opportunity.
"Maybe you love animals and have always been intrigued by doctors," I explained to them, "so why not think of becoming a vet? Perhaps you like to talk a lot and enjoy athletics, so being a sports announcer might be your bag. Are you a numbers person? If so, maybe your calling is to teach math, be an accountant or work with statistics."
I made sure to tell them that I had left college to work at a well-paying, full-time "job" with a medical company. But within a few years I realized that this was not my field. I was bored and felt stuck, as if I were in a dreaded algebra class each day. But I noted that I never gave up on my writing and self-education, reading writers on subjects ranging from philosophy, history and art to politics, American culture and sports. I began to write some opinion columns that were published in a few semi-prominent newspapers, and this led me to try my hand at freelance reporting and, eventually, a career in journalism.
I also stressed to students that it's not enough to just dream about a particular career, but that they must take the necessary steps to attain their ideal. It's one thing to for someone to say "I want to write a novel," and another to have the motivation and commitment to invest the countless hours and enormous effort — researching information, striving to find the precise words and write perfect sentences, re-editing one draft after another — to become a published fiction writer.
When one fourth-grader told me that he would like to be the next Derek Jeter, I asked him if he played Little League and practiced baseball even during the winter. One girl told me she wanted to be a lawyer. I told her that, in part, she'll have to learn how to speak well to present her cases, and that she should take some public speaking classes when she gets to high school.
The last time I talked on Career Day, at Hegarty Elementary School in Island Park, when I left the classroom that day to head back to my office, I had hoped that at least a few students had learned a lesson that I didn't fully understand in my youth: Making a career choice is one of the most important decisions an individual will ever make — and is crucial to his or her happiness. If the students followed this advice, then they likely won't have to struggle unnecessarily for several years and through a string of dead-end jobs before finally finding a profession to be passionate about.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Are You Certain You’re an Atheist?
By Joseph Kellard
When conversation about God comes up in good (or even bad) company, I, of course, tell people that I’m an atheist. Because religionists mistakenly believe that God created the universe and is the absolute moral authority, they tend to lump atheists together, recognizing no fundamental distinction between them. To them, atheism is a philosophy, a comprehensive way of viewing life and the word, if, that is, they think on that level at all. They’re blind to what atheism fundamentally is, a minor aspect of one branch of philosophy: metaphysics.
To take the conversation to the epistemological level, I make sure to tell people that an atheist is not merely someone who denies the existence of God, but is certain that he does not exist — that his believers have never presented any rational evidence for his existence.
Uttering that word, certain (or certainty), tends to jolt people, both religionists and atheists alike. Some of the faithful have told me that I can’t be certain of this. Who am I to be so brazen as to say that God certainly doesn’t exist? No non-believer can hold so absolute a position, when all absolutes derive from the word of God.
On the other side of the philosophical aisle are the subjectivist “atheists.” If there is something they don’t believe in at all, it’s not necessarily God, but rather absolutes and certainty. However, anything less than certainty on their part, in my philosophical view, is agnosticism, an epistemological position that leaves the door open for God’s possible existence. Not surprisingly, and with even a little probing, you’ll find that many self-professed atheists are just agnostics at heart — because with that organ they just feel that possibility. Anything’s possible, right?
So while I certainly don’t fundamentally define myself as an atheist – there’s much, much more to life and philosophy than God – when I do mention that I am a non-believer, I try to bring up this issue of certainty, which distinguishes my position. This gives religionists the sense that others can and do uphold absolutes — outside of God’s commandments. And the atheists wannabes sense that maybe they’re just mere skeptics, doubters of all things a truly confident person can claim to know for certain, including that God absolutely does not exist.
* I made a minor spelling correction to the original post.
When conversation about God comes up in good (or even bad) company, I, of course, tell people that I’m an atheist. Because religionists mistakenly believe that God created the universe and is the absolute moral authority, they tend to lump atheists together, recognizing no fundamental distinction between them. To them, atheism is a philosophy, a comprehensive way of viewing life and the word, if, that is, they think on that level at all. They’re blind to what atheism fundamentally is, a minor aspect of one branch of philosophy: metaphysics.
To take the conversation to the epistemological level, I make sure to tell people that an atheist is not merely someone who denies the existence of God, but is certain that he does not exist — that his believers have never presented any rational evidence for his existence.
Uttering that word, certain (or certainty), tends to jolt people, both religionists and atheists alike. Some of the faithful have told me that I can’t be certain of this. Who am I to be so brazen as to say that God certainly doesn’t exist? No non-believer can hold so absolute a position, when all absolutes derive from the word of God.
On the other side of the philosophical aisle are the subjectivist “atheists.” If there is something they don’t believe in at all, it’s not necessarily God, but rather absolutes and certainty. However, anything less than certainty on their part, in my philosophical view, is agnosticism, an epistemological position that leaves the door open for God’s possible existence. Not surprisingly, and with even a little probing, you’ll find that many self-professed atheists are just agnostics at heart — because with that organ they just feel that possibility. Anything’s possible, right?
So while I certainly don’t fundamentally define myself as an atheist – there’s much, much more to life and philosophy than God – when I do mention that I am a non-believer, I try to bring up this issue of certainty, which distinguishes my position. This gives religionists the sense that others can and do uphold absolutes — outside of God’s commandments. And the atheists wannabes sense that maybe they’re just mere skeptics, doubters of all things a truly confident person can claim to know for certain, including that God absolutely does not exist.
* I made a minor spelling correction to the original post.
Friday, March 5, 2010
The Virtue of … Objectivist “Proselytizing”
By Joseph Kellard
All the recent talk on the Harry Binswanger List about the sales and recommendations of “The Virtue of Selfishness” reminds me of the only time I recall giving that book to a perfect stranger.
Several years ago, a Jehovah's Witness family in their Sunday best was making the rounds proselytizing door-to-door on my block. They, or some other indistinguishable family, would come around occasionally, maybe once a year, and on this particular day they sent a young girl, say 10-years-old, to knock on my door.
When I opened it and said hello, she handed me a small, thin black book of excerpted Scripture. When I accepted it, the proverbial light bulb went off in my head.
I told her to wait a minute, as I climbed the stairs to my room and grabbed a copy of "The Virtue of Selfishness." I returned to the door and handed it to her, while her parents remained standing on the sidewalk at the front gate. The girl took it, thanked me and walked away. I watched out my window as she looked at the cover and showed it to her parents as they strolled to my neighbor’s house.
I never saw that girl again, and for all I know the book went in the garbage when she got home, or in the gutter on the drive there. On the other hand, perhaps she kept the book and, when old enough to understand its brilliant content, read it and went on to read Ayn Rand’s other books. Dare I speculate that she’s an Objectivist today? Who knows.
But what I do know is that I was satisfied giving that young girl something she’d never get at her church: the opportunity to face a lifetime with self-esteem and happiness.
* I made minor grammatical and spelling changes to the original post.
All the recent talk on the Harry Binswanger List about the sales and recommendations of “The Virtue of Selfishness” reminds me of the only time I recall giving that book to a perfect stranger.
Several years ago, a Jehovah's Witness family in their Sunday best was making the rounds proselytizing door-to-door on my block. They, or some other indistinguishable family, would come around occasionally, maybe once a year, and on this particular day they sent a young girl, say 10-years-old, to knock on my door.
When I opened it and said hello, she handed me a small, thin black book of excerpted Scripture. When I accepted it, the proverbial light bulb went off in my head.
I told her to wait a minute, as I climbed the stairs to my room and grabbed a copy of "The Virtue of Selfishness." I returned to the door and handed it to her, while her parents remained standing on the sidewalk at the front gate. The girl took it, thanked me and walked away. I watched out my window as she looked at the cover and showed it to her parents as they strolled to my neighbor’s house.
I never saw that girl again, and for all I know the book went in the garbage when she got home, or in the gutter on the drive there. On the other hand, perhaps she kept the book and, when old enough to understand its brilliant content, read it and went on to read Ayn Rand’s other books. Dare I speculate that she’s an Objectivist today? Who knows.
But what I do know is that I was satisfied giving that young girl something she’d never get at her church: the opportunity to face a lifetime with self-esteem and happiness.
* I made minor grammatical and spelling changes to the original post.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Selfish Figure Skater
By Joseph Kellard
Joannie Rochette is the Canadian figure skater who (I’m told) performed outstandingly in the Olympics last Tuesday, considering that two days before her mother, Therese -- whom she describes as her biggest fan, best friend and “the most critical person you could ever meet” -- died of a massive heart attack.
Occasionally, sports fans like me will hear a proud assertion of selfishness that is notable, and Rochette provided this when asked why she simply didn’t pack her bags and head home after he mother’s death. Rochette, who went on to skate in the women’s final and earned a bronze medal, said about her decision:
“‘I just went out there and did what my mother would have wanted me to do,’ a teary-eyed Rochette said after the woman’s final on Thursday, the first time she had spoken publicly since her mother died here [Vancouver] on Sunday. ‘I did this first of all for myself because my mother taught me to think of myself first. She always wanted me to be a strong person.’”
She thought of herself first!? How refreshingly selfish! Granted, an athlete in individualist sports such as figure skating, tennis or golf, as opposed to team sports like football, baseball or hockey, is more apt to get away with selfish statements -- especially when grieving. In team sports, however, athletes are routinely told “there’s no ‘I’ in team,” they’re praised for being a “selfless” teammates, and if they show signs of individualist behavior -- sometimes even if their actions help their team toward their common goal of winning -- they’re criticized for being “selfish.”
But winning is or should be any athlete’s primary goal, whether in individual or team sports, and his fans, whether they realize it or not, root for him to be as selfish as he can be in the pursuit of that goal. In sports, there’s no redistribution of points from the “haves” to the “have not.” As Michael Jordan replied when one of his coaches essentially accused him of selfishness because he singlehandedly took over and won a game: “There’s ‘I’ in win.”
I’m happy to hear that Rochette was strong enough to overcome her grief just enough to think of herself first, skate and win bronze. Three cheers for selfishness!
Joannie Rochette is the Canadian figure skater who (I’m told) performed outstandingly in the Olympics last Tuesday, considering that two days before her mother, Therese -- whom she describes as her biggest fan, best friend and “the most critical person you could ever meet” -- died of a massive heart attack.
Occasionally, sports fans like me will hear a proud assertion of selfishness that is notable, and Rochette provided this when asked why she simply didn’t pack her bags and head home after he mother’s death. Rochette, who went on to skate in the women’s final and earned a bronze medal, said about her decision:
“‘I just went out there and did what my mother would have wanted me to do,’ a teary-eyed Rochette said after the woman’s final on Thursday, the first time she had spoken publicly since her mother died here [Vancouver] on Sunday. ‘I did this first of all for myself because my mother taught me to think of myself first. She always wanted me to be a strong person.’”
She thought of herself first!? How refreshingly selfish! Granted, an athlete in individualist sports such as figure skating, tennis or golf, as opposed to team sports like football, baseball or hockey, is more apt to get away with selfish statements -- especially when grieving. In team sports, however, athletes are routinely told “there’s no ‘I’ in team,” they’re praised for being a “selfless” teammates, and if they show signs of individualist behavior -- sometimes even if their actions help their team toward their common goal of winning -- they’re criticized for being “selfish.”
But winning is or should be any athlete’s primary goal, whether in individual or team sports, and his fans, whether they realize it or not, root for him to be as selfish as he can be in the pursuit of that goal. In sports, there’s no redistribution of points from the “haves” to the “have not.” As Michael Jordan replied when one of his coaches essentially accused him of selfishness because he singlehandedly took over and won a game: “There’s ‘I’ in win.”
I’m happy to hear that Rochette was strong enough to overcome her grief just enough to think of herself first, skate and win bronze. Three cheers for selfishness!
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Letters on Tea Party and Founders & Religion
By Joseph Kellard
Below are two letters I wrote last night and revised and emailed this morning to the editors at The New York Times. One is a response to an article about the Tea Party movement, the other a reply to an article on the role religion played in the founding of America. I must thank OActivist editors Paul Hsieh and Amit Ghate, who made some valuable suggestions and edits that improved my letters. Here's hoping they both get published. Happy reading ...!
To the Editor:
(Re: “Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right,” 2/16) The Tea Party movement is not about militia, libertarian or Timothy McVeigh-type anarchists. True, Tea Partiers are a hodgepodge, the best of whom rally loosely around the concept of liberty. Thus, their problem is something most Americans share: they lack a fundamental understanding of freedom.
Above all, they need intellectual leadership. Given the alarming growth of statism under the Bush-Obama administrations, both Republicans and Democrats are finally awaking to a long-developing threat. Disappointingly, the Tea Partiers' reaction has largely been on an emotional level, a sense that their individual sovereignty and rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are in danger. Unfortunately, they can’t translate that sense into a much-needed coherent philosophical or political stance.
Americans must form a more intellectual platform that champions individual rights. Until then, the Tea Party will be impotent to effect any substantive or lasting change toward liberty. In short, it needs a philosophical revolution.
Joseph Kellard
East Meadow NY
To the Editor:
(Re: “How Christian Were The Founders?,” Sunday Magazine 2/14) Those who insist that America’s Founders established a nation based on Christianity drop historical context.
True, some Founders were Christians who made appeals to religion. But this was no different than their European predecessors throughout the religion-saturated Medieval and Middle ages who ruled over unfree Christian nations. What makes the Founders historically distinguishable is that they were products of the Enlightenment and Age of Reason, when religion and faith were seriously challenged, as encapsulated by Galileo’s life.
Many Founders, including Jefferson and Adams, were steeped in and heavily influenced by the works of Greek and Roman thinkers. The deists among them bravely questioned God and religion as the basis of a nation. Brooke Allen objectively lays out this intellectual revolution in her book “Moral Minority.”
The Founders knew enough to establish a nation that gave no religion any political authority, and aimed to keep it separate from the state.
Joseph Kellard
East Meadow NY
* I made some grammatical changes to the original post.
Below are two letters I wrote last night and revised and emailed this morning to the editors at The New York Times. One is a response to an article about the Tea Party movement, the other a reply to an article on the role religion played in the founding of America. I must thank OActivist editors Paul Hsieh and Amit Ghate, who made some valuable suggestions and edits that improved my letters. Here's hoping they both get published. Happy reading ...!
To the Editor:
(Re: “Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right,” 2/16) The Tea Party movement is not about militia, libertarian or Timothy McVeigh-type anarchists. True, Tea Partiers are a hodgepodge, the best of whom rally loosely around the concept of liberty. Thus, their problem is something most Americans share: they lack a fundamental understanding of freedom.
Above all, they need intellectual leadership. Given the alarming growth of statism under the Bush-Obama administrations, both Republicans and Democrats are finally awaking to a long-developing threat. Disappointingly, the Tea Partiers' reaction has largely been on an emotional level, a sense that their individual sovereignty and rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are in danger. Unfortunately, they can’t translate that sense into a much-needed coherent philosophical or political stance.
Americans must form a more intellectual platform that champions individual rights. Until then, the Tea Party will be impotent to effect any substantive or lasting change toward liberty. In short, it needs a philosophical revolution.
Joseph Kellard
East Meadow NY
To the Editor:
(Re: “How Christian Were The Founders?,” Sunday Magazine 2/14) Those who insist that America’s Founders established a nation based on Christianity drop historical context.
True, some Founders were Christians who made appeals to religion. But this was no different than their European predecessors throughout the religion-saturated Medieval and Middle ages who ruled over unfree Christian nations. What makes the Founders historically distinguishable is that they were products of the Enlightenment and Age of Reason, when religion and faith were seriously challenged, as encapsulated by Galileo’s life.
Many Founders, including Jefferson and Adams, were steeped in and heavily influenced by the works of Greek and Roman thinkers. The deists among them bravely questioned God and religion as the basis of a nation. Brooke Allen objectively lays out this intellectual revolution in her book “Moral Minority.”
The Founders knew enough to establish a nation that gave no religion any political authority, and aimed to keep it separate from the state.
Joseph Kellard
East Meadow NY
* I made some grammatical changes to the original post.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Channeling Ted Kaczynski
By Joseph Kellard
If you’re motivated to read, firsthand, what passes for intellectual leadership in America today, then I have a telling essay for you.
Before I first discovered Ayn Rand in the early 1990s, I used to read regularly “The Best American Essays,” an annual anthology of magazine essays. Once I started to read Miss Rand heavily, I lost interest in this publication — and now I know why. Recently I decided to buy the 2009 anthology, curious to see what it was that I once enjoyed about this series several years ago. Well, I’m six essays in (out of 22) and while none are enlightening, some are downright dreadful. The topper, so far, is an essay titled “Faustian Economics,” by Wendell Berry, a novelist, poet and essayist, which was originally published in Harper’s.
The essay perfectly exemplifies the “ideas” motivating the environmental movement. It centers on man’s alleged blindness to “limits,” both his and Earth’s. Rather than provide excerpts from this essay, I’d rather share some of the notes I took while reading it, which I’ve fleshed out here for clarity:
* The author makes no attempt to ground many of his claims. A rationalist?
* He primarily uses “limits” as a packaged deal to decry all that he hates about Technological/Industrial Man.
* He pushes environmentalism’s limited-resources orthodoxy: we’re all just rapacious consumers who, when we do produce, are just using up more and more of Earth’s resources that will inevitably run out…someday.
* He appeals to religion to give his environmentalist claims moral weight — primarily to condemn selfishness and greed.
* He essentially takes the position that too much knowledge is bad — we should know that there are limits and mistakenly believe we can be omniscient.
* Capitalism is a zerosum economic system, consequently money is a fixed (limited) pie and so the haves leave nothing for the have-nots.
* Those who don’t want to accept limits are those who don’t want to sacrifice to “anything whatever.”
* Men aren’t worth anything and don’t amount to anything — even if each man had two lives.
You may reach different, more insightful conclusions than I did. But, nevertheless, this is as near a naked hatred of selfishness, capitalism and (industrial-technology) man as you’ll find in a mainstream (supposed) intellectual publication.
* I made some minor grammatical changes to the original post. ~ JK
If you’re motivated to read, firsthand, what passes for intellectual leadership in America today, then I have a telling essay for you.
Before I first discovered Ayn Rand in the early 1990s, I used to read regularly “The Best American Essays,” an annual anthology of magazine essays. Once I started to read Miss Rand heavily, I lost interest in this publication — and now I know why. Recently I decided to buy the 2009 anthology, curious to see what it was that I once enjoyed about this series several years ago. Well, I’m six essays in (out of 22) and while none are enlightening, some are downright dreadful. The topper, so far, is an essay titled “Faustian Economics,” by Wendell Berry, a novelist, poet and essayist, which was originally published in Harper’s.
The essay perfectly exemplifies the “ideas” motivating the environmental movement. It centers on man’s alleged blindness to “limits,” both his and Earth’s. Rather than provide excerpts from this essay, I’d rather share some of the notes I took while reading it, which I’ve fleshed out here for clarity:
* The author makes no attempt to ground many of his claims. A rationalist?
* He primarily uses “limits” as a packaged deal to decry all that he hates about Technological/Industrial Man.
* He pushes environmentalism’s limited-resources orthodoxy: we’re all just rapacious consumers who, when we do produce, are just using up more and more of Earth’s resources that will inevitably run out…someday.
* He appeals to religion to give his environmentalist claims moral weight — primarily to condemn selfishness and greed.
* He essentially takes the position that too much knowledge is bad — we should know that there are limits and mistakenly believe we can be omniscient.
* Capitalism is a zerosum economic system, consequently money is a fixed (limited) pie and so the haves leave nothing for the have-nots.
* Those who don’t want to accept limits are those who don’t want to sacrifice to “anything whatever.”
* Men aren’t worth anything and don’t amount to anything — even if each man had two lives.
You may reach different, more insightful conclusions than I did. But, nevertheless, this is as near a naked hatred of selfishness, capitalism and (industrial-technology) man as you’ll find in a mainstream (supposed) intellectual publication.
* I made some minor grammatical changes to the original post. ~ JK
Friday, February 12, 2010
Environmentalists’ Claims Continue to Melt
By Joseph Kellard
I learned from an Objectivist blogger that the Utah House of Representatives just passed a resolution that: "implies climate change science is a conspiracy, and urges the EPA to stop all carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs. Among other things, the resolution claims there is ‘a well organized and ongoing effort to manipulate global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome.’"
The Heartland Institute posted a brief report about the bill here, which leads to a link to a fuller report here.
You can also read the bill in full.
As the blogger pointed out, the government should have no involvement in scientific matters, including catastrophic global warming. But it's nevertheless a telling sign that a legislative body is actually coming out and voting against this scam that has become orthodoxy to many Americans and others. It's telling us that environmentalists' claims on this issue are continuing to melt.
I learned from an Objectivist blogger that the Utah House of Representatives just passed a resolution that: "implies climate change science is a conspiracy, and urges the EPA to stop all carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs. Among other things, the resolution claims there is ‘a well organized and ongoing effort to manipulate global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome.’"
The Heartland Institute posted a brief report about the bill here, which leads to a link to a fuller report here.
You can also read the bill in full.
As the blogger pointed out, the government should have no involvement in scientific matters, including catastrophic global warming. But it's nevertheless a telling sign that a legislative body is actually coming out and voting against this scam that has become orthodoxy to many Americans and others. It's telling us that environmentalists' claims on this issue are continuing to melt.
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