Captain of His Soul

From the Keirsey.com Website

In Memoriam, Nelson Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013)

Champion Idealist Portrait of Nelson Mandela

The Captain of his Soul.

He had been in jail for 27 years, where some of that involved hard manual labor. Dust, sweat, and blood: the breaking of rocks into gravel or working in a limestone quarry. As he details in his autobiography, it was a Long Walk to Freedom.

“What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Passion requires Temperament

Success requires Circumstance

When interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, he was asked, “How could you forgive the people who imprisoned you for 27 years?” Mandela answered, essentially, that he didn’t have the time to waste on revenge or hating. He had a divided nation to forge into a united nation, for he had a passion, his country: The Union of South Africa. When he was released from prison, he had a job to do, and a job to finish, and if he didn’t do the right thing the country would have torn itself apart.

“I am fundamentally an optimist.” – Nelson Mandela

The prison system is designed to try to take away the dignity of the prisoner. It is designed to take out the enthusiasm for life. It is designed to break a man down. But there are some men, based on who they are: their Temperament and their unique journey in life, that instead become equipped to succeed in their goals, for it is enduring of trials and tribulations and becoming better for it, that forges the ability to cope and succeed with near impossible tasks. Case in point; unite a country divided by race.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. — Theodore Roosevelt

The continent of Africa is littered with countries that have been, or are in, ethnic chaos or that are ethnic cleansing basket cases: Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia). Mandela had to find a cause that all South Africans could cheer for, to unite in. He garnered the hosting of the 1995 Rugby World Cup — and it was a simple rugby team, the Springboks, whose captain, François Pienaar, Mandela inspired with the Roosevelt quote. Said Pienaar ,”He talked to me and encouraged me in our efforts on the field, to win the World Cup.” The Springboks had now one black player, but still in the eyes of blacks South Africans was considered a symbol of the all white, apartheid South Africa. The Springboks had been the target of international controversy and protest since 1960, banned from international play because of the Union of South Africa’s whites only policies, until the breakup of apartheid. Mandela championed the team whenever and wherever he could, despite the team’s initial unpopularity. As the 9th seed in the tournament, the team defeated higher ranked teams to get to the finals. After the underdog Springboks had narrowly won, in extra-time, the epic Final 15 – 12, President Mandela, wearing a Springbok shirt, presented the World Cup trophy to captain Pienaar, a white Afrikaner. The gesture was widely seen as a major step towards the reconciliation of white and black South Africans.

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

MM2K

How low could he go?

He lived in his car for months, “on Interstate 5, slept in the back seat, with my Jack Daniels.”

Pretty low.

How high can it go — more than 2K, most definitely!

With No Direction Home

The Troubadour of the 60’s is one year short to his diamond jubilee today exactly — May 24, 1941 — 74 years to be a exact.  No, he isn’t under 30 anymore, far from it, and with no direction home.

To celebrate this classic free-wheelin example of a Different Drummer, I copied his Keirsey Temperament Portrait from Keirsey.com

Watch and Observe a Composer in Action

A Modern Greek Tragedy of Temperament .. and Gender, revisited.

It is a modern Greek Tragedy of Temperament

… and Gender.

The Fates can be cruel or kind, or both. 

It seems so in this story.  This story is about discovery.  This story is about life and death.

She had worked hard all her life.  She had overcome her circumstance. Latin: Circum– to encircle, stance to take a position, to contend. Yes, it had been a man’s world, she was surrounded by her society and her family who discouraged her from her passion: science. Of course, other women had suffered discrimination before her: Marie Curie and Emmy Noether to name two, but they had their families to teach them, encourage and help them. Nobody had encouraged her, certainly not her family, and still was a man’s world in science in 1952.  She had to rely on herself, so she thought and acted.

He, of course, was hopelessly arrogant and smart.  He had been a precocious child; he even appear on Quiz Kids. And he had hooked up with an equally curious and brilliantly arrogant man, a man with a thousand ideas a minute.  They had formed an informal team: a Mastermind Rational, James Watson and a Inventor Rational, Frances Crick at the Cavendish Labs in Cambridge. Real Idea Men.

She was reluctant to show her x-ray pictures and data to Watson, in fact she refused.  He had to get them indirectly.  She was dismissive of Crick and Watson’s work – they were wrong – she had convinced them that their initial models couldn’t be right.  Rosalind Franklin, a Mastermind Rational, a Strategic Contender, knew her stuff.  She was a meticulous scientist, she did not speculate wildly beyond the scientific evidence on hand.  She had taught herself to be disciplined in science – rigorous deduction was the way not to get lost.  That way you don’t make mistakes, yourself.

Making mistakes is bad.  It is good to avoid them.  But on the otherhand, if you try to eliminate mistakes, you unfortunately, probably won’t make brilliant mistakes, either.

“Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.”  — Vilfredo Pareto

Watson had Crick, Crick had Watson. They used wire models of the molecular radicals, and their imagination. Together they figured out the key to life: the Structure of DNA.  They had use their own unique talents, Temperament, and knowledge, but they worked as an Idea team. And they also had Rosy and her work, however reluctant, critical, and knowledgeable she was.

They published their findings in 1953, not acknowledging Rosalind Franklin as being key in the discovery.  For she was and wasn’t.  Without Franklin’s work it probably would have been others, not Watson and Crick who made the discovery, possibly years later by an iconoclast like Linus Pauling, or who knows.  The correct interpretation of Franklin’s x-ray diffraction data of crystaline DeoxyriboNucleic Acid, was Crick and Watson’s solely.  This interpretation has been described by some other biologists and Nobel laureates as the most important scientific discovery of the 20th century. They were rewarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962, five years after Franklin had died of ovarian cancer.

She did have her Science.  She knew herself — what she did.

A tragedy?  A comedy?  Or a Modern Greek Tale of Temperament and Gender.

It is 60 years exactly when Watson and Crick article was published.

 

Other Mastermind Rationals include:  Sheryl Wudunn, Salman Khan,  Susan B Anthony, Issac Newton, Sharon Presley, Bill Gates, Masha Gessen,  Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ulysses S. Grant

It’s been a long time coming

It looks like there isn’t going to be any change. It is still going to be a long time gone. Kim Jong Un is going for another 60 years of misery for his subjects. Nothing to envy. It will be a continuing disaster, hundreds of thousand malnourish for whole lives and generations to come. Far worse than 1984.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/05/kim-jong-un-rattles-us

Good Time Chavez Died Today

He was bigger in life.

Some gotta win, some gotta lose.
Good time Charlie got the blues
Good time Chavez got the blues

No, He didn’t lose the election.  He rigged that. He didn’t lose his power, or his macho — well, until he died.

Hugo Chavez died March 5, 2013 of cancer.  He was 58 years old.

Good time Chavez gotta lose.

So what about Hugo Chavez.

The Captain of his Soul

Nelson Mandela is fighting for his life.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

He is the Captain of his Soul.  Champion Idealist Portrait of Nelson Mandela

Invictus Film Trailer

Standing one’s ground

A few days ago, Dr. Mukwege survived an attempt on his life. A group of armed men burst into his home, held his two young daughters and their friend at gunpoint, and killed a man who worked for him. It is fair to conclude that he was targeted because of his extraordinary work.

Diplomatic Doings

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Iron Butterfly, is in the US at the moment.

New York Times article.