Title: OccamsBarber

Gender: Male

Age: 48

Location: Portland, OR

Writer with the good fortune to live where I want, in the Pacific Northwest (see my photos and you'll understand why!).

Happily married with one four-year-old son and a newborn (March 13, 2007; 7 lbs, 12 oz., 20 inches.).

People pay me to write and speak about technology and financial services, but I’m interested in many other things, as the lists below attest.

I studied philosophy as an undergraduate. My favorite branches of the discipline are ethics and aesthetics. I’m particularly interested in the nature of beauty and its role in art, and indeed in health, happiness and even morality.

One of the challenges in understanding aesthetics is the role of ugliness in beauty itself. Beauty may begin in light, comfort and sweetness, but the mature aesthetic experience involves a reconciliation with the harsh, the repugnant and the terrifying. Sweetness alone cloys. There is a place for trifles, of course, but art that is truly insightful, let alone profound, will have some leavening of the bitter and the hard.

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Here are some maxims, observations and quotations to communicate something of my point of view.

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First a quote from Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) from What is Philosophy?:

Imagine for a moment that each one of us takes only a little more care for each hour of his days, that he demands in it a little more of elegance and intensity; then, multiplying all these minute pressures toward the perfecting and deepening of each life by all the others, calculate for yourselves the gigantic enrichment, the fabulous ennobling which this process would create for human society.

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Love is the greatest thing in the universe, at least to us humans. However, when it comes living life from day to day (with apologies to John Lennon), love is not all you need.

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Plato was onto something when he identified dialogue as one of the highest ways of being as a human. When reading his “Dialogues” one must be aware that he felt them to be a pale imitation of the real thing. It’s no accident that one of his greatest dialogues is about love and is staged at a convivial gathering.

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Speaking of dialogue, it’s worth bearing in mind that “Symposium” is Greek for “drinking party.” Samuel Johnson once said that, “there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good tavern or inn.” Amen. Ben Franklin said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” I would say the same about bacon.

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One of the most persistent emotions I have felt throughout my life is gratitude at the incomprehensibly vast legacy bequeathed by those who came before me. One struggles to appreciate the enormous range of benefits—material, intellectual and spiritual—that we enjoy from the efforts of others, the vast majority of whom are long gone.

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It’s great to be at peace with oneself as long as it’s not the peace of oblivion. The Spanish language captures a great truth in its adoption of the word inquietud to describe a curious disposition and intellectual engagement with life. Most of us could benefit from having our mellow harshed, our buzz killed, from time to time.

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Life is a struggle against many internal sources of friction, self-indulgence and cowardice being among the most tenacious.

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Error has no rights. (People do.)

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On life's true character:

The very essence of life is uncertainty, indeterminacy. As Jose Ortega y Gasset argues, it is neither an existential process of a soul, nor a succession of chemical reactions. Rather, he says, “life, individual or collective, personal or historical, is the only entity in the universe whose substance is danger. It is composed of vicissitudes. It is, rigorously speaking, drama.”

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On Tolerance:

Tolerance only really counts when it hurts. That said, there are things that should not be tolerated. Tolerance as an indiscriminate acceptance of everything is laziness, stupidity or an effort to preempt criticism of one’s own behavior.

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On primitivism:

The West has made a cult of primitivism since as early as Montaigne. The primitive can sometimes provide a view into more authentic ways of being, especially as an antidote for exhausted habits that suffocate and corrupt. But humanity expresses itself by its ingenuity and artistry, and thus to be more developed is to be more, not less, human in some important sense.

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On political rationalism:

Beware of rationalist movements supported by irrational people (which is all people, to some extent).

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On tradition:

Tradition shouldn’t be fetishized but it should be respected. We should be open-minded about the insights of the past as well as the present, and if changes are suggested, the burden of proof is on the reformer. Many arrogantly assume that they easily arrive at insights superior to the accumulated wisdom of many generations before them. They overestimate their own wisdom and they forget that it’s much easier to tear down than to build up.

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Some quotes from the magnificent Samuel Johnson on writing:

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

Allegories drawn to great length will always break.

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.

In lapidary inscriptions, a man is not upon oath.

What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure.

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Finally, a lament from Ovid that is close to my heart:


By a guttering lamp I go over these pitiful pages
looking for any solecisms or Pontine lapses
The guards at the gates are supposed to fend off the raids
of the Getic brutes on our outpost. I’m on guard as well,
alert to their subtle incursions, but weary, weary…
It’s not just a conceit: out here I am Rome.
—Tristia III, 14

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