LeaV

I've been doing a lot of reading lately, mostly biographical stuff.  Anyway, I learned some things about this particular person whose autobiography I am reading at the moment, and the curiousity bug bit me hard.  I went searching on Google for random things about infamous and famous people and found these little bits about their lives/personalities most interesting.  Can you figure out who these people are?  The answers will be below...

1.  This young man was a romantic-minded boy who developed “a profound admiration, envy and emulation of his father’s masculine power and a contempt for his mother’s feminine submissiveness and weakness.”  Thus, both parents were ambivalent to him: his father was hated and respected; his mother was loved and depreciated.  He was always imagining insults and injuries against himself, had no tolerance for criticism, and an excessive demand for attention and a tendency to belittle, bully or blame others and seek revenge.  However, his personality also showed persistence in the face of defeat, along with strong self-will and self-trust.

2.  He was a child of incest.  His mother and he shared the same father. He was raised by grandparents and thought they were his parents.  The person he thought for most of his life was just his older sister was actually his mother.  His dad was also his grandfather.

3. Despite a less-than-average academic record, he was accepted into Harvard University, from where his father and sister graduated.  He failed the New York bar exam twice before passing on the third try.  

4.  He became the organization’s dominant personality and its primary intellectual influence. He was responsible for much of the organization’s fund-raising, which he frequently conducted in conjunction with preaching engagements in Northern churches.

 5.  If he had not believed that he had permission from God to engage in sex with young girls, he never would have done it, because he could not have handled the guilt.

6.  "Mom was in a cafe one afternoon with me on her lap. The waitress, a would-be mother without a child of her own, jokingly told my Mom she'd buy me from her. Mom replied, 'A pitcher of beer and he's yours.' The waitress set up the beer; Mom stuck around long enough to finish it off and left the place without me. Several days later, my uncle had to search the town for the waitress and take me home."  

7.  College dropout and entrepreneur.

So, able to figure these out?  Here are the answers:  (1) Is a description of Adolph Hitler from the "Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler," by Dr. Henry A. Murray; (2)  From the life of serial killer Ted Bundy; (3) John F. Kennedy, Jr.; (4) Martin Luther King, Jr.; (5) David Koresh infamous leader of the Branch Davidians who were a cult originating from the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists and they former of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  Eighty-three church members including Koresh died in an FBI/ATF siege of the compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993; (6) Charles Manson recounting early childhood; (7) Bill Gates. 

So, my point?  Never judge a book by its cover.  There are so many things that define who we are that it's difficult to judge a person wholly on the basis of one interaction.  No, that can't be the point; because there are so many exceptions.  If someone holds a gun to my head, I'm judging that they are probably a violent person using violent means to achieve an id-driven end.  Could the point be that there are moments in our lives that color our perception of the world and how we will interact in the future?  No, that can't be it either; or else, every time someone did something to us or something happened to us either good or bad, it would completely rule how we behaved every day of our lives. 

I guess there is no point to this.  Maybe, the point is read more...you'll never know what you'll discover.  I'm reading these two books right now...

This one is somewhat of an arduous read.  Basically, I know the basic concepts, and the book is heavily sprinkled with oodles of love and philosophy...not what I was looking for; and, I thought actually it was a book about Cesar Milan, duh.

I like this one.  I got it for free when I went to see his comedy show up in Minneapolis.  It's a fun read. 

Reading anything good lately?  Any suggestions?