{"id":10170,"date":"2011-11-17T04:48:37","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T04:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/11\/17\/different-people-to-different-people\/"},"modified":"2011-11-17T04:48:37","modified_gmt":"2011-11-17T04:48:37","slug":"different-people-to-different-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/11\/17\/different-people-to-different-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Different People to Different People"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">We are different people to different people, and different people are different people to us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;..<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">No aphorism can comment on itself, or justify itself, on pain of ceasing to be an aphorism.&#0160; But what I am now writing is not part of the above aphorism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">What makes a good aphorism?&#0160; A good aphorism is pithy, one or two sentences.&#0160; Three at most.&#0160; It must lay bare an important truth. A saying clever but false is not a good aphorism. And the same goes for clever but unintelligible.&#0160; A good aphorism should have &#39;literary merit&#39; whatever exactly that is.&#0160; I suggest mine does have some, though you are free to disagree.&#0160; Note the play on &#39;different.&#39;&#0160; The formulation exploits the ambiguity of &#39;different&#39; as between numerical and qualitative senses.&#0160; We are qualitatively different people to numerically different people, and numerically different people are qualitatively different to us.&#0160; Had I written the thing just like that it would have been clear but clunky and devoid of whatever literary value it has.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">The thought expressed is not only true but important in the sense that bearing it in mind can help one negotiate the social world with equanimity.&#0160; We meet people who like us, people who dislike us, and people who are indifferent.&#0160; Some can&#39;t see our faults for our virtues; other are virtues for our faults.&#0160; One can be discouraged and even depressed at the hostility one arouses in others.&#0160; One better takes this all in stride if one never forgets that we are:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Different people to different people.<\/span>&#0160;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are different people to different people, and different people are different people to us. &#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.. No aphorism can comment on itself, or justify itself, on pain of ceasing to be an aphorism.&#0160; But what I am now writing is not part of the above aphorism. What makes a good aphorism?&#0160; A good aphorism is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/11\/17\/different-people-to-different-people\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Different People to Different People&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aphorisms-and-observations","category-human-predicament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}