Talk:A&E/Intro
Out-takes
Draft matrial removed from this section that may have things in it worth keeping somewhere.
Readers will take most kindly to long memoirs when the authors of them can start out with a large supply of good will, celebrity, gravitas, or fame. Frankly, despite my affection, I'd judge the objective Robbie to have so far written modestly interesting work and influenced a few students constructively, but he's not even made it into Wikipedia! Few will attend to his story with the requisite curiosity, even if we cast it well as a cautionary academic tale. I've said, however, that this story primarily concerns the subjective Robbie, not the objective one. By probing the difference, we may recognize potential value in Robbie's subjective story. Let's start with a simplified illustration of the difference, a sketchy construction that helps us grasp what sets an objective and a subjective story apart from each other. Consider objectively, a stew made by a cook and subjectively a cook making a stew. To create the objective story, we observe what the cook does to create the stew, noting what ingredients she chooses and how she prepares them for the pot, the temperature of the stove, how long she leaves the pot with the ingredients on the burner, how she stirs it, what seasonings she adds, and so on. By listing all that and describing her various operations we can codify a recipe and a set of instructions for a cookbook, which if the cook has an appropriate reputation may sell as a normative guide like The Joy of Cooking. Subjectively, the story concentrates, not on the stew, but on the cook, illuminating how she developed the skill to choose among possible ingredients, to judge between too much, enough, or too little of each, and to acquire the facility to choreograph and perform the operations needed to actually cook such dishes, and beyond that, as in Julia Child's My Life in France, her story may explore more extensively and deeply how the cook encountered the culture and life of the cuisine she masters.
What might people learn from Robbie's subjective story that would give it compelling importance? It must rest on the factual experience of the objective Robbie. He has had a long career working with considerable talents and skills addressing an important question from a variety of perspectives, trying to better understand how a sense of meaningful agency emerges for living persons as they repeatedly find themselves having to act, deciding what to do, how to do it, why, with whom, when and where.
I want to observe further, as the reflective Robbie, how the three of us may together presume that we have a story that others may find worth attending to. We have our doubts whether the objective Robbie has a claim on substantial attention from the reading public. He has been an imaginative and dedicated scholar, but his achievement has not lived up to the expectations projected onto him. *** The importance of distinguishing how the subjective Robbie differs from the objective. The subjective Robbie lives in a world pervaded by his ignorance.....*** The subjective Robbie may more reasonably attract significant attention, but only if that attention is well directed. In telling my story, Robbie (talk) 12:27, 19 January 2026 (MST)