In the Arena

[glenatron]

So following on from my photo-report of a few days ago, which I posted a link to from the only horsey forum I'm a regular on ( until recently the most open-minded and interesting horse related discussion group I've been part of ) the "can only do things through positive reinforcement" bunny-huggers really laid into Tom's work and my pictures with the typical pompous rudeness, arrogance and religious zeal that makes people who mistake clicker training for horsemanship so irritating to me. I don't deny that clicker training can be a useful tool but you've got to have more than that.

Anyways, thinking about that gave me an excuse to post a quote I found earlier this week ( probably something that my overseas friends have had drummed into them from the cradle ) from a speech by an American politician:

"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. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are."

That's pretty much where I am in my thinking at the moment with regard to a whole selection of things.