Welcome to the "Great Dudes in History" Forum

[CamusDude]

2 to add to the list: Bono, the Fonz.

Bono might not seem chill enough to some dudes, but I submit that he is actually a pretty cool dude. He has a soulful voice, he's saved more lives in Africa from his humanitarian work than someone like Mother Theresa who is lauded the world over but only ever let people rot, she never saved a life! I consider Bono a great humanitarian.

The Fonz is the Fonz, man!

[MarMar]

Charles Bukowski, obviously. Always drinking, sleeping past noon, didn't like to work.. he's definitely a Great Dude in History. 

[cakebelly]

Graham Hancock, a great Dude of our time; here's a recent interview with him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkCnE8YdFP0. If you want to read "Supernatural" (in the interview he states that it will be his last non-fiction book) then contact me.

[Abideist]

I see a lot of dudes and dudettes on this list that arn't exactly "dudes", Bono for one is no dude. He might be famous and have slightly good if only douch-like  intentions, but I can't actually consider him for a greatest dudes of all time list.

Jesus may be one of the greatest dudes of all time, but what message are we sending as dudeists if we don't include Sidhartha and the rest of the gang? It would be easier to pick the list if we narrowed down the requirements.

I don't like the word requirements, but somehow deities and pop singers don't really strike me as appropriate for a dude award.

I would also say that fictional characters be scratched, but what kind of sense would that make under dudeism circumstances...

So are these great dudes in history, like the Dude, or are they simply great in the eyes of dudes?


My vote is with Bill Murray 

[Abideist]

With a runner up for Woody Harrelson

[cakebelly]

I guess one Dude's Dude is always going to be another Dude's fuckin' fascist. It does give us an opportunity to check out Dudes that other Dudes may not have heard of, though. Just a way of innerdudeing our likes and interests, I guess. 

[brother_erwin]

Hi,

I'd like to make a suggestion, well, not for the greatest dude in history, because, to be frank, the notion of a greatest dude in history does not make a whole lot of sense to me, but for a great dude indeed. His name is Paul K. Feyerabend (1924-1994), an Austrian-born philosopher, who never thought of himself as a philosopher.

Now, to start with, the name itself has got something dudeist about it. Feyerabend, which is basically German (although the spelling today would be Feierabend, but we don't want to split hairs, do we?) stands for the time of day when you stop working, "calling it a day"-time, in the parlance of our times perhaps.

One might hold against him that he did not give the impression to be dudeist exactly, at least not during his earlier years that is. First, he was in fact an officer, lieutenant,  in the Wehrmacht, the Nazi-army. However, in his autobiography "Killing Time" or "Zeitverschwendung" (which is also a rather dudeist title for a book, don't you think?), he stated that he entered the officers' academy hoping the war would be over before he would have graduated from it. Actually this plan, the strength of which lay in its simplicity, did not work out, he got badly wounded at the eastern front and stayed a crip.., uh, handi... , disabled would be the correct nomenclature, I suppose, for the rest of his life. Second, he was rather undude in his early years of a philosopher. A bit uptight in his positions one might say perhaps

Anyway, his dudeness lies in his major "teachings" which were mainly anti-teachings. Actually, he was called an anarchist (!) of scientific methods; he did not accept that there was or is something like scientific method as such. Instead, he maintained that what qualifies as scientific method keeps changing all the time and differs widely even within specific disciplines.
In a nutshell his message was "Anything goes!" Purportedly, he coined that phrase.

With is well-argued points he drove members of the scientific establishment quite potty.

He also warned about the unchecked aggression and dominance of "science" and formed something like a civil rights movement within science.

Ah yes, and he spent a lot of time in California, as a professor at UoC, Berkeley.

To wrap it all up, Feyerabend stands for a humanist, non-dogmatic, dissident way of looking at science and many other things who, particularly in his later years, stressed the importance of other things like helping and comforting each other over high-flying philosophising.

And yes, he never regarded himself as a philosopher but just as someone who did what he was interested in.

Here is a bit more about him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend.

I don't know, whether they ever met, but I think if they had met, he and Kurt Vonnegut would have got along nicely.

There are some videos with interviews in youtube but sofar all I have found are in German, which is a pity, because his dudeness becomes apparent when you see and hear him answering all these questions.

So, I suggest Paul K Feyerabend as a Great Dude.

Catch you later on down the trail!
faithfully yours
Bruder Erwin

[brother_erwin]

PS Here are two videos quoting from Feyerabend's works, and in English, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGa2xNpyFoY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_oRYJYCvMU&feature=related

[cckeiser]

PS Here are two videos quoting from Feyerabend's works, and in English, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGa2xNpyFoY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_oRYJYCvMU&feature=related

Hey brother_erwin, nice philosophies, but I prefer Skeptical Idealism 2.0 myself! 8^)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw-IATxGmis

[brother_erwin]

Hi cckeiser,
I dig that skeptical idealism thing very much, mark it eight! Very much straightforward.

In essence, it doesn't seem to be far from the Feyerabend thoughts, though, although I would agree that Feyerabend's thoughts were a bit more convoluted in comparison.

By the way, how about all the constructivist dudes, like Paul Watzlawick and the others from the Palo Alto group?

Let's abide
Yours faithfully
Bruder Erwin

[meekon5]

I see a lot of dudes and dudettes

Sorry Koog "dudettes" is not the correct nomenclature. I wont bore you with the long discussions in the forum on this but a Dude is a Dude, whatever the gender.

[W.Dude]

Tom Bombadil gets my vote. He's nature and evil doesn't affect him. He also speaks in rhyme.

[cckeiser]

Tom Bombadil gets my vote. He's nature and evil doesn't affect him. He also speaks in rhyme.

Welcome dude! Pull up a rug! 

[DigitalBuddha]

Tom Bombadil gets my vote. He's nature and evil doesn't affect him. He also speaks in rhyme.

Welcome to our little beach community, dude. Check out the bar.

[cckeiser]

Sorry dudes, it may just be like my opinion, but it seems to me several on this thread have a problem separating real dudes from play acting dudes, you know characters in movies or on tv that are not really real dudes but may be played by a real dude.
But then, what is a real dude? If he/she really was a real dude...would we have even heard of him/her?
BUt as long as we are going to nominate characters I would like to hold forth for your consideration the First dude of them all....The Righteous Rev. Jim from Taxi!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACF4XDznGEs

For all you young dudes who may never have seen The Rev. Jim in action in Taxi, there are a few clips from the tv series on YouTube (IF you can get them in your country!!).
You are in for a very dudely time!