Ben Stein's last column

Rodeo · 03-14-2006, 18:35

Ben Stein's Last Column.

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

================================================== =====

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets.! Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will. By Ben Stein

RamboV2 · 03-15-2006, 19:12

I liked it and thought that he was going somewhere else up until this part....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rodeo

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way.....

......I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

I do the things I do for a different reason--for myself. Not because I blindly dedicate my life to boundless self-sacrifice.

There's a quote I've heard before that I like: "All that is required for evil to triumph in this world is for the good men to do nothing."

I want a better world to live in for myself, and many times, that involves helping others. It means fighting the fights you deem worth fighting and holding your ground when it needs to be held.

After all, when the day is over and passed, there's only one person to look at in the mirror.

Danila · 03-15-2006, 20:05

RamboV2,

Perhaps you're missing the point. Only wanting to improve the world for yourself limits your potential to really improve it. The truly happy man succeeds in his goals of always improving himself, of being the best person he can be. When he dies as we all do eventually, he can be proud of his achievements and of himself as the achiever. The truly happy and good man realizes that the only meaningful way to improve oneself is to improve the world, to be an asset and not a liability. To be ready to give up everything for his fellow man so that he can know that others will do the same for him.

For example, the man with the raw materials to be a great warrior is the one who is strong, fast, and unafraid. He improves his body through physical conditioning, his soldiering by learning how to use the technology available to him to its full potential. The great warrior is the one who never neglects those things but realizes that his worth is measured in his ability to put his individual abilities to use for his compatriots -- whether pushing the guy with the jerrycan on his back in a march or jumping on a hand grenade so his fellow soldiers don't get killed -- and in putting his own life second to the accomplishment of a mission which may save many more lives at home. Thankfully, many great warriors never have to give up their lives to serve their unit, their country, and the world. But if they were not ready to do so when the time came, they would be exposed as selfish people appearing to be "great" in order to reap rewards from others for their false facade of greatness. Others would die for their selfishness. And that is the very triumph of evil -- selfishness -- that your quotation warns against.

The "good men" in your quotation may never be called upon to show the Good within them. But each individual's "test" of goodness comes rarely in life, if at all. And when that time comes it rarely allows for trepidation, for hesitation. Unless a person is dedicated to the world and to the people around him, he will not be prepared to make the hard choice necessary to help preserve the world and its people. And with God's guidance -- whether the good man follows Judaism or Christianity or any other religion that teaches Good and Justice -- we learn how to be Good and how to help this world and its people.

I'd bet (and hope) you would do the right thing if the time comes even if you don't see life in the same terms as Ben Stein. Otherwise you probably wouldn't be a Soldier and wouldn't be willing to make the great sacrifices that must be required to be a Special Forces Soldier.

Thanks for your service and good luck in SFQC.

Dan

**The Reaper** · 03-15-2006, 20:43

RamboV2:

IMHO, that is a very selfish perspective and it makes me wonder how you will get by in a selfless organization like SF.

People don't fight for money, or material things like flags, they fight for their brothers.

If that is truly your perspective, I feel sorry for you and your teammates in the SFQC and beyond, if you make it that far.

BTW, not too many SF guys thought much of Rambo, why did you choose that user name?

TR

RamboV2 · 03-15-2006, 20:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danila

.....the great sacrifices that must be required to be a Special Forces Soldier.
Dan

What sacrifices are you refering to here Danila? I don't consider any efforts or actions in the name of my goals to be a sacrifice.

That aside....

I will argue to the the death that selfishness in itself is not evil. Selfishness is wanting to have the best in your life, and it's the means that you go about achieving these things that determine the nature--whether good or evil--of your character.

I don't think that there is anyone that would give everything to save the life of just any fellow man. Unless this person is hell-bent on suicide...

Soldiers have a duty to their comrades. You, risking your life for them, trickles all the way down to your own your own work ethic and performing your best at whatever it is that you do. Dying is sometimes a soldiers job.

**The Reaper** · 03-15-2006, 21:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by RamboV2

I will argue to the the death that selfishness in itself is not evil. Selfishness is wanting to have the best in your life, and it's the means that you go about achieving these things that determine the nature--whether good or evil--of your character.

I don't think that there is anyone that would give everything to save the life of just any fellow man. Unless this person is hell-bent on suicide...

Soldiers have a duty to their comrades. You, risking your life for them, trickles all the way down to your own your own work ethic and performing your best at whatever it is that you do. Dying is sometimes a soldiers job.

I think that you are mistaken. Selfishness is not wanting he best for yourself, it is wanting the best for yourself AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS. A student of philosophy should know that.

Selfish people, are by nature, Bravo Foxtrots. They tend to get hammered on peer reports. They ride, while their buddies carry them. Get it?

There are plenty of people here who risk their lives every day for people that they do not know, and for larger causes like service, self-sacrifice, patriotisim, loyalty, etc. Maybe things were different in your unit. They are not in SF.

Your comments are an anathema to them, and to me. If you really believe this tripe you are spewing, I would not want to serve on a team with you, especially in a combat zone. Everyone would constantly have to be watching their backs around you. That is not good for team cohesion.

TR

RamboV2 · 03-15-2006, 21:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper

BTW, not too many SF guys thought much of Rambo, why did you choose that user name?

I would say that they fight more for their ideals and they are willing to sacrifice for their brothers that share and fight for those same ideals. If you sacrifice your life for something, the greatness of that sacrifice is a reflection of to what extent you value your life. Dying in the name of freedom and to protect the brothers fighting at your side is a far cry from giving your life to save that of the nearest homeless man that does nothing with his life other than to beg for handouts.

heh... Rambo was a nickname that stuck with me since high school. I guess I tend to be a kind of "balls to the walls" kind of guy in most things I do, but then again, that is what's more visible and no one else notices how many of the details I notice. Next thing you know it's an internet alias and it starts following you around...

RamboV2 · 03-15-2006, 21:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper

I think that you are mistaken. Selfishness is not wanting he best for yourself, it is wanting the best for yourself AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS.

Then this is where we're not seeing eye to eye.

Mature people know that using, abusing, betraying, and lying to other people will only give them short term gain--if that. Before long, he'll be worse off than he was in the first place, and even more so if he looks at himself in any kind of retrospect.

What you are calling selfishness, I would call immaturity.

**The Reaper** · 03-15-2006, 21:44

Selfishness \Self'ish*ness\ n.

1. Meanly close and covetous; one who spends grudgingly; a stingy, parsimonous fellow; a miser.
2. The quality or state of being selfish; meanness in giving or spending; parsimony; stinginess.
3. The quality or state of being selfish; exclusive regard to one's own interest or happiness; that supreme self-love or self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding those of others. "Selfishness,- a vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbors it, and, as such, condemned by self-love." Sir J. Mackintosh.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Immaturity \Im`ma*tu"ri*ty\, n. [L. immaturitas: cf. F. immaturit['e].]
The state or quality of being immature or not fully developed; unripeness; incompleteness.

selfishness on the Web:

stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Selfishness is a primary or sole concern with one's own welfare.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfishness

is devotion to or concern with one’s own advantage or welfare to the exclusion of regard for others. miriams-well.org/Glossary/

Selfishness quotes:

The only thing necessary to change heaven into hell -- if God were to allow it -- is selfishness.

Selfishness is mankind's fundamental defect. Selfish means: self-centered, self-serving, self-important.

At the root of every problem is selfishness.

JAMES 3:16 TEV
16 Where there is jealousy and selfishness, there is also disorder and every kind of evil.

Every selfish person is potentially your enemy.

Giving is the opposite of acting selfishly. Divine love is the opposite of selfishness.

We are products of a corrupt culture that teaches selfishness. All sin is selfish. No one ever sins for someone else -- we do it for selfish reasons.

We must die to selfishness -- or self-destruct.

These seem to substantiate that selfishness is not perceived as a positive quality, that it comes at the expense of others, and I can tell you that after 21 years of SF service, selfishness has no place on a team.

Your SA is seriously lacking here, your argument flawed, and your skills seem weak to me. Are you using the Rand definition of selfishness? Do you really want to pursue this discussion?

Your comments also do not sound like those of a guy who is serious about subordinating himself to a cause and making being a contributing team member a significant part of his personality.

TR

CPTAUSRET · 03-15-2006, 22:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by RamboV2

I liked it and thought that he was going somewhere else up until this part....

I do the things I do for a different reason--for myself. Not because I blindly dedicate my life to boundless self-sacrifice.

There's a quote I've heard before that I like: "All that is required for evil to triumph in this world is for the good men to do nothing."

I want a better world to live in for myself, and many times, that involves helping others. It means fighting the fights you deem worth fighting and holding your ground when it needs to be held.

After all, when the day is over and passed, there's only one person to look at in the mirror.

Rambo:

You might read this thread...I knew everytime I cranked up a gunship I had a fair chance of not making it home that day. I knew that, and continued to fly 3 1/2 years in VN.

The day we went in to rescue Nick Rowe I was fully prepared not to make it back. No death wish, I was willing to trade my life for one of ours who was being held in a cage!

http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/...=Rocky+Versace

Terry

RamboV2 · 03-15-2006, 22:45

Yes, I do hold more of a Randian definition of the word.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Your comments also do not sound like those of a guy who is serious about subordinating himself to a cause and making being a contributing team member a significant part of his personality.

Why do you say this?

Danila · 03-15-2006, 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by RamboV2

What sacrifices are you refering to here Danila? I don't consider any efforts or actions in the name of my goals to be a sacrifice.

I'm not a Special Forces Soldier myself but I should think it would be clear what at least some of the sacrifices are that they make. Like any Soldier in a Combat Arms MOS, an SF Soldier willingly puts his life at risk. Yet unlike conventional troops, SF Soldiers know that they can (and will) be deployed very frequently to dangerous places and will maintain an operational tempo (I hope that's the right term) incomparably higher than conventional troops. That means causing strain and worry among their friends and family at home, that means having to endure greater difficulties in their personal relationships. When Marblehead, MA's SF SSG Chris Piper died last summer from wounds received in OEF, our local newspaper printed loads of interviews with his friends and family. One of them said that when they were drinking at Maddie's (my favorite local bar too), someone asked Piper why he put his life on the line and left his comfortable life at home behind. He said that with the wars our country is fighting against those who would kill us and destroy our way of life, somebody needs to pick up the check. So the friend said "We always wondered why it was Chris that always needed to pick up the check." He paid for our freedom with his life. He left two children behind who I saw walking slowly behind his casket not even crying, just completely stunned and bewildered. They're going to live out the rest of their lives without their father. SSG Piper paid the ultimate sacrifice. And believe me, he wasn't thinking just about himself when, at 37, he decided to try out for the Special Forces and busted his ass to be one of the oldest ever to make it in.

It's the people like that that Ben Stein calls "heroes" and I don't know if anyone could ever convince me to disagree.

RamboV2 · 03-15-2006, 23:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by CPTAUSRET

Rambo:

You might read this thread...I knew everytime I cranked up a gunship I had a fair chance of not making it home that day. I knew that, and continued to fly 3 1/2 years in VN.

The day we went in to rescue Nick Rowe I was fully prepared not to make it back. No death wish, I was willing to trade my life for one of ours who was being held in a cage!

http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/...=Rocky+Versace

Terry

That's awesome stuff Terry. And it truly humbles me. There is great nobility in never comprimising yourself and submitting, but it's also a loss to always be remembered. Thanks for the link.

CPTAUSRET · 03-16-2006, 00:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by RamboV2

That's awesome stuff Terry. And it truly humbles me. There is great nobility in never comprimising yourself and submitting, but it's also a loss to always be remembered. Thanks for the link.

De nada.

It's also about integrity, and honor. This speach although given by a civilian (my best buddy) covers integrity pretty well.

http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/...ighlight=Nancy

Terry

CoLawman · 03-16-2006, 02:09

Stein's column and the accompanying postings by the QP's and Danila are all in lock step. An altruistic compass, as opposed to the narcisissistic or egotistic personna, creates the individual deserving of the adulation and honor. It guided the firemen and policemen who charged into the WTC towers. It drove Gordon and Shugart to place the life of another above their own in Mogadishu. It guided heroes like Cptausret to time and again fly missions that statistically were stacked against him. SOG vets, of which there are several on this board, saw more than half their numbers become casualties yet continued to perform their duties.

Quote:

I would say that they fight more for their ideals and they are willing to sacrifice for their brothers that share and fight for those same ideals. If you sacrifice your life for something, the greatness of that sacrifice is a reflection of to what extent you value your life. Dying in the name of freedom and to protect the brothers fighting at your side is a far cry from giving your life to save that of the nearest homeless man that does nothing with his life other than to beg for handouts.

So using your analogy Sister Teresa's life was not befitting of adulation, but more befitting of derision.

Quote:

I don't think that there is anyone that would give everything to save the life of just any fellow man. Unless this person is hell-bent on suicide...

Happens everyday. Google search Hero!

TR hit the nail on the head regarding selfishness............I would like to add that a person can be so blinded by self that reality is skewed or denied to insure one's image of self is not corrupted by social norms or reality. (see above re: hell-bent on suicide..)