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From: snodgras@cts.com (John E. Snodgrass)
Subject: Re: What is failure, and what is success?
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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 21:58:26 GMT
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In article <3k6stc$r7i@news.primenet.com> brody@primenet.com (Bob Brody) writes:


>John Yates (jwyates@io.org) wrote:

>: I agree that striving and attaining are not the same. But, in my mind,
>: the difference between the wise and the foolish is the wise know they
>: will never attain what they seek and the foolish believe they will. In
>: the end it is the hunting that makes you wise.

>Which only means to me you've attained what you sought.  I reckon it's 
>more a matter of knowing you're engaged (alive, involved) at the time 
>rather than have to rely on a family photo album to tell you what you 
>were doing at the moment some nn years ago.

>I'm inclined to feel your second sentence quoted above is defeatism.

      This is probably a subject for personal realization only, one way
or the other, but IMO goals are often little more than symbols by which
we store planned behaviors. Our actual goals are spiritual and ineffable.
However, society inflicts on its new generations -- this is what makes it a
society -- controlling notions of behavior and success and to a large
extent guiding and channeling its citizens toward supposedly productive
behavior to maintain the total, as the McLuhanish supersystem self-organizes.
The conflict over concepts of success may be merely the conflict of
social versus personal concepts. I think the crude goal-oriented concept
is social, while the recognition that profound striving is its
own reward is a personal realization, i.e. between oneself and god, so
to speak.

      JES
