Make The Most Of It (Waterford)
Waterford, ie
Make the most of Waterford …there is always something nice to do and enjoy in the city….
Group's Motto: **I Hope Nothing, I Fear Nothing. I Am Free**. (By Nikos Kazantzakis)
***______________________________________________________***
***IMPORTANT (Please Read Carefully):***
The following text (by the French thinker La Rochefoucauld) represents the general ideals of this group:
***On Social Contact (By La Rochefoucauld)***
"
In speaking of social contact, my plan is not to speak of friendship, although they are related, they are very different: the latter has more eminence and dignity, and the greatest merit of the former is to resemble it.
At present, therefore, I shall speak only of the particular way in which people of honor ought to deal with each other. It would be idle to state how much men need social contact. All of them desire it and seek it; but few use methods to make it attractive and make it last.
Everyone is seeking his own pleasure and advantage, at the expense of other people. We always prefer ourselves to those with whom we intend to live, and we almost always make them conscious of this preference; that is what disturbs and destroys social intercourse.
We should at least learn to hide this desire to put our own preferences first-because they are too innate for us to override.
We should find our pleasure in that of other people, showing consideration for their self-love and never wounding it. The mind plays a great part in so great a work, but it alone is not enough to guide us in the various paths we should follow.
Social intercourse would not long be maintained by the understanding that exists between minds, unless this was regulated and supported by good sense, temperament, and the tact that ought to exist between people who wish to live together.
If people who are opposite in temperament and mind sometimes seem united, no doubt they are held together by alien links, which do not last for long.
We may also have social contact with people to whom we are superior, either by birth or in personal qualities; but those who possess such an advantage should not abuse it. Rarely should they let it be felt; they should use it only to teach other people, showing them that they need to be led, and guiding them by reason, while adapting themselves as far as possible to the others' feelings and interests.
For a social group to be comfortable, everyone must retain his personal freedom. We must be allowed to see each other or not to see each other, without any constraint; to entertain each other or even to bore each other. We must be able to part without changing the situation. We must be able to do without each other sometimes, if we do not want to put others in an awkward position; and we must remember that we often annoy people when we think we could not possibly annoy them.
We should contribute, as far as we can, to the entertainment of the people with whom we wish to live but we should not be burdened with the task of contributing to it all the time.
Politeness is necessary in any social group, but there should be limits to it; when it goes too far, it becomes a form of slavery. It should at least seem to be free so that when we follow our friends' feelings, they feel convinced that we are also following our own.
We should readily excuse our friends when their faults are inborn and less significant than their good qualities. We should seldom let them see that we have noticed any such thing or are offended by it; we should try to act so that they may become aware of it themselves, leaving the merit of correcting it to them.
In dealings between honorable people, a kind of civility is needed. This makes them understand how to be jocular; it prevents them from being offended themselves, and offending other people, by the use of excessively dry or harsh expressions, which often slip out thoughtlessly when people are heatedly expounding their own opinions.
Honorable people cannot deal with each other unless there is a certain feeling of confidence, which needs to be mutual; each person should have an air of reassurance and tact, so that there is never any reason to fear that anything imprudent could possibly be said.
There needs to be some variety of thought; those whose minds work in only one way cannot please for long. We can travel along different paths, we need not have the same views or the same talents, as long as we are contributing to the pleasure of the social group, preserving in it the same harmony that different voices and instruments should preserve in music.
It is difficult for different people to have the same interests; to make social contact more agreeable, at least their interests should not be in opposition. We should anticipate what would please our fiends, look for ways to be useful to them, spare them from trouble, show them that we are sharing it when it cannot be averted, shroud it imperceptibly without claiming to destroy it all at once, and replace it with something attractive, or at least something that will keep them busy.
We should talk about things that concern them but only as far as they themselves will let us; in such matters we need to avoid going too fan. It is an act of civility, sometimes even of humanity, not to penetrate too deeply into the recesses of their hearts.
Often it would be painful for them to reveal everything that they themselves know about their own hearts, and still more painful if we were to perceive what they do not know. Though dealings between honorable people make them familiar with each other, and provide them with innumerable subjects that they can discuss sincerely, hardly anyone has enough flexibility and good sense to accept fully the variety of opinion that is necessary for the maintenance of the social group. We want to be informed up to a certain point, but not in every respect; there are all kinds of truths we are afraid of knowing.
Just as we must keep at a distance to see objects clearly, so we must do in a social group; each person has a specific point of view from which he wants to be considered.
We are usually right when we do not want to be too brightly illuminated, and there is hardly any man who would want to be seen as he really is in every respect.
"
