BLOG #12, SERIES #6
WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE
50 TAKES ON WISDOM
March 25, 2015
What would you get if you asked fifty of the world’s most eminent people to share with you the most significant insights into wisdom they’d gleaned from this thing called “life”? That’s exactly what photographer and film-maker Andrew Zuckerman did in his wondrous volume titled Wisdom (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2008).
Interviewees included the likes of Richard Rogers, Chuck Close, Madeleine Albright, Burt Bacharach, Andrew Wyeth, Buzz Aldrin, Desmond Tutu, Judi Dench, Clint Eastwood, Michael Parkinson, Ted Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Robert Redford, Frank Gehry, Henry Kissinger, Rosamunde Pilcher, Jane Goodall, Alan Arkin, Dave Brubeck, and Vaclev Havel.
In his insightful “Afterword,” Zuckerman explores the evolution of his concept:
It is very hard to tell another human being that he or she is an icon, and that you’re there to extract the wisdom out of their iconic beings. It doesn’t sit well. People are people. We’re sitting down to have a conversation. I’m a young person conversing with an older person and there’s a certain human engagement. I thought: what no one has a problem with is being a human being. Everyone is human. I kept thinking about this idea of setting out on this amazing adventure to create a field guide for navigating one’s life. I wanted to explore what it is to be human, to hear from people who have lived for a long time and have an enormous amount of experience. . . .
I’m thirty years old and at this point in my life most of my generation, my peers, are creating work that is a mirror of youth culture. Our society is obsessed with youth. I have never understood that. My whole life, I’ve enjoyed meeting accomplished older people–it just seemed logical to me that these are the people who had done it. They have all the secrets. Why wouldn’t you ask them? ‘What secrets does youth hold? How did you do it? And how do you feel now about how you did it? And what did you learn?
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It took me most of a week to fully digest all this, and the several hundred 3 x 5 note cards on which I copied quotations. I’ll be sharing with our readers in our daily quotation tweets.
C O D A
I take very serious these daily quotations. Quite candidly, one of my biggest fears is that my reference field would be too narrow, reflect my own reading too much, my own academic fields of expertise too much, my own era too much. With these concerns ever in my mind, even though I already have millions of quotations to draw from, I’m constantly seeking new sources of fresh wisdom.
Consequently, I consider it providential that our son Greg already had this seminal book in his personal library so that I could immerse myself in it.
I’m hoping you’ll agree.
I’ll start out with a longer quote from the book – too long for a tweet. On being asked what sessions stood out to him most, Zuckerman responded with:
One was Chuck Close, who spoke of the enormous amount of information contained in the topography of a face. He said, ‘If you’ve laughed your whole life you have laugh lines, if you’ve frowned your whole life you have furrows in your brow. Sometimes you have both, and most people have a kind of duality of life experience, some tragedy and some great moments of extreme happiness, and I don’t want one of those to overwhelm the other.’ It’s true. There’s an enormous amount to communicate in a portrait that can’t be communicated in words. The face reveals the journey traveled. And one of the incredible things about photographing people at this stage in their lives is that they’ve had quite a long journey and the information in the face was really what I was there to capture with the utmost clarity.
Is Integrity an Absolute? — The Tom Brady Issue
BLOG #19, SERIES 6
WEDNESDAYS WITH DR. JOE
IS INTEGRITY AN ABSOLUTE?
THE TOM BRADY ISSUE
May 13, 2015
We’ve seen hubris before—think Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods. Both mistakenly assumed they were too big to fail. Their legions of devoted fans wouldn’t stand for it. Both were wrong.
Ever since the lop-sided playoff victories of Brady and the New England Patriots, people have been wondering whether or not the NFL high command would have the guts to do more than slap the wrist, give a conspiratorial wink, and say, “Naughty, Naughty – don’t do that again” to their favorite cash-cow and glory-boy.
This time (according to newspaper columnists and reporters from papers such as the Denver Post and the Wall Street Journal), it turns out, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was not amused–least of all by Brady’s arrogance and refusal to cooperate by releasing his phone and e-mail records so that the investigation for Deflategate could reach a fair verdict. Brady clearly felt he was above the law. He was, in short, untouchable. Instead, what few expected: he and the Patriots get more than a wrist-slapping—considerably more.
It is now obvious that Goodell and his team realized a truth that Brady and his win-at-any-cost coach Belichick did not: If once the public perceives that the National Football League can no longer provide a level playing field for all teams (in which all teams have an equal opportunity to win games and pennants) – well, once that perception becomes a reality, millions will turn elsewhere with their allegiances and money.
Machiavelli, half a millennium ago, summed the issue up best: A Prince does not necessarily have to be moral; however, if once the public perceives that he is not moral—all is lost, for it can never ever be fully regained. In this respect, perception trumps reality.
Tom Brady–like Armstrong and Woods before him–had everything: wealthy beyond the average person’s fondest dreams, a lovely wife and photogenic family, world-wide fame, and millions of adoring fans. They were on Mt. Olympus. And assumed they’d stay there. Tom Brady, all too clearly, has made the same false-assumption: Oh it will all blow over; nothing will change.
It already has. Brady’s lustre has already dimmed. In today’s public perception, there will always be an asterisk (a la Barry Bonds and A-Rod) after his name and sports achievements. When people think about him–and this will include sports commentators–, there will henceforth always be a noticeable diminution of their respect for him. A shadow, akin to an eclipse of the sun or moon, has already reduced the wattage of Brady’s once undimmed glory.
It will never return.
It can not return.
Reason being this: like it or not, admit it or not, integrity remains as much an absolute as virginity. Neither can be qualified: one cannot be partly a virgin–one either is a virgin or one is not. Just so, one cannot be partly honest–one is either completely honest or one is not really honest at all.
It is also akin to love: love may precede respect–but it cannot survive the loss of it.
The general perception: that Brady is a man of absolute integrity–is now gone forever.
A pity.
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