COLLECTED WISDOM (?)
Wisdom is in the eye of the beholder. The following are some thoughts that have had an impact on my way of viewing the world. If they also have meaning for you, I am glad to have made a contribution. If not, I have renewed their meaning for me by writing them here.
“To teach is to touch a life forever.” (Anonymous)
We are teaching every minute of every day. We teach love, or we teach indifference. We teach tolerance, or we teach hate. We teach respect, or we teach contempt. We teach who we are. We teach others. We teach ourselves. What can we learn from recognizing the lessons we teach?
Things happen in life. The one thing you can always control (however hard it may be exercise this control) is how you view the things that happen. Said another way: Whether you see your cup as half full or half empty is your choice. We fall into habits of seeing the world and the things in it (especially people) in certain ways. You have the freedom to change your habitual ways of seeing the world. Exercise that freedom. Consciously choose how you view people and circumstances.
Living is about problem solving. If you learn to be a good problem solver, you will prosper--however you choose to define prospering. College is one source of training for solving the problems you will face in life.
"Education is what is left when you have forgotten all the facts you learned in the classroom." (James Bryant Conant, former President of Harvard.)
The most valuable lessons you will learn in college will not come from books.
By induction, the human mind uses life experience (including formal education) to generate models of how the world works. "All models are flawed, some are useful." (George A. Box, a well-known American statistician.) We need to be humble about the verity of our models.
When arguing a point:
1. State your adversary's position so well they say: "Yes, those are my assumptions and that is my position."
2. State your own assumptions and position.
Even if you agree to disagree, you will have gained a fair hearing for your own views by showing enough respect for your opponent to be able to accurately articulate their position. If you do Step 1 well, you will frequently find that you must modify your own position. You have gained from integrating a fresh perspective. I.e., you have improved your "model" of reality.
Consider the Far Side cartoons. We typically look at life in one way. Gary Larson in his cartoons looked at life from a different perspective. Different perspectives enrich our ways of viewing the world. This is a value of diversity. Friedrich Nietzsche believed that the closest we can come to understanding something is by seeing it from many different perspectives.
You create the interpersonal environment in which you live. Said another way: The way you are treated is a reflection of how you treat others.
I have a sketch of a pry-bar on my wall to remind me I grow most when I pry yourself out of my comfort zone.
God, by definition, is beyond the ability of any human mind to fully apprehend. Is it any wonder that different peoples (and different people) apprehend God differently?
It is a wonder to me that people can, with their finite human intellects, be so certain of the wishes of God that they will kill their fellow humans out of these certainties. A friend is a very committed Christian. He once said: "God is a big boy." (Keith Anthony, WPAFB, ~1995). His point was that if God wants to punish individuals or groups, He does not need humans to do it for Him.
A person grows most when enabling others to grow.
"There is a randomness in the universe that makes us all gamblers." (J. Donald Graham)
"The major problem is that our brain can absorb only 50 bits per second. Technology won't change that." (Solomon Buchsburan, VP Customer Relations, AT&T, Scientific American, March 3, 1990) Comment: This assumes linear processing. It neglects the ability of the mind to grasp things as a gestalt.
When I was in high school and college, I was committed to make all decisions based purely on reason. Looking back, I now say: "Show me a man who believes he makes all decisions based purely on reason, and I will show you a man who will delude himself about other things." (It's always a man. Women are more balanced in their approach to life. As my wife says: "Men are brain-damaged. They do not have as many connections between the two sides of their brains as women do.") Recent brain research indicates that virtually all decisions, by both men and women, involve both the logical and emotional areas of the brain. Live with it guys!
Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. (Josh Heyne 1/20/04)
"Follow your bliss." (Joseph Campbell) This was my advice to my daughter. Find something that really turns you on and go do it. "If you work at a job you hate for forty years just to make a living, what kind of life is that?" (Joseph Campbell)
Life is like eating an elephant.
- You have to eat it one bite at a time;
- Some bites are harder to chew than others;
- If you have the right attitude, all bites are nourishing.
"...let's not look backward in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness." (James Thurber)
Life is good. Awareness is the most precious of gifts. Even when we talk ourselves into believing life is bad, it is still very good. If we did not have it, we could not even complain about it.
As a supervisor I learned I was moderately good at describing behavior. I learned I had virtually no ability to accurately attribute motive to observed behavior. I try to keep this in mind when dealing with people.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. (Paul Abdelnour, F' 04)
One hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much was in my bank account, or what my clothes looked like. But the world may be a little better because I was important in the life of a child. (Phil Vedda, F' 04)
The following is quoted from the Washington Post, e-mail edition for 7/25/05. "Cats' Sweet Tooth Long Gone.
Genetic Mutation Leaves Felines Unable to Taste Sugar" By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer
"After all, an organism's conception of reality is completely dependent on its senses, such as taste, vision and hearing, said Nick Ryba, a National Institutes of Health researcher who co-discovered the sweetness receptor with Zuker. Yet each kind of animal perceives but a small part of the overall sensory universe."
"People cannot see infrared light, for example, a part of the visual spectrum that colors some insects' worlds, and they cannot hear the high-frequency sounds to which dogs respond. Dogs, on the other hand, are red-green colorblind. And some animals, such as blue crabs, can taste nutrients called purines that other creatures have no way of sensing."
"Such differences go a long way toward explaining why various creatures behave and live as they do."
"If you think about it, what we actually perceive is not in fact reality at all," Ryba said. "It's really something that our brain constructs out of the information that it receives through our sense organs."
I would add the following to the last paragraph above: The brain begins in infancy to use sensory input to construct mental models. As the individual develops, the brain evaluates the sensory data it receives through comparison with mental models previously constructed. It compares data to models and (on occasion--we tend to do it less as we get older) models to data. It also compares models to each other. Ideally, the models themselves should be continually updated as additional sensory data is processed. In reality, our mental models tend to become filters so we accept only the incoming data that agrees with our models.
Looking back over my life, I see many times when I was incorrect in my assessment of what was motivating my own actions. This makes me very hesitant to attribute a specific purpose to actions I observe in others. Said another way: Show me a person who is absolutely certain what is in their own heart and I will show you an individual who will be equally deluded about other things.
It is always easier to see others' faults than one's own. Easier, but far less profitable.
He who knows not and knows he knows not is wise. Follow him. He who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool. Shun him.
Once you are certain something is true, you have limited your ability to learn.
I believe many things. Some of them might even be true.
Man is a rationalizing animal, not a rational animal. I have a friend who liked to ask: "Which do you like better, sex or rationalization?" (Dick Bray, WPAFB) When he got the expected answer, he would say: "Really! When was the last time you went a week without rationalization?"
Criticism is prejudice made plausible. - HL Mencken
If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon. - George Aiken
"Capitalism has always had two faces: An exercise in personal greed; and a collective effort in raising living standards," (Paul Samuelson, NewsWeek, 3/19/07, p49.)
"A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses, it an idea that possesses the mind." (Robert Oxton Bolt)
"Each of us is trapped in a place, a time, and a circumstance, and our attempts to use our minds to transcend those boundaries are, more often than not, ineffective." (Daniel Gilbert, in "Stumbling on Happiness.")
I agree with Nietzsche that the only way we can hope to understand something is to see it from many different perspectives. I would be delighted to read a dozen different perspectives on any given point in the hope that I could synthesize the lot into something that felt to me like a balanced understanding of the issue.
The older I get the less confidence I have in the things I "KNOW,"
but the more I trust my ability to question intelligently. I spent a lot
of years of my professional life evaluating skimpy and inconsistent
data. I got pretty good at it. The problem I have is in finding data I
can rely on from ANY perspective. Hence my emphasis on seeking as many
different viewpoints as possible. I regard pieces I agree with as less
valuable than ones I do not agree with--more comfortable, but less
valuable. I have forgotten his name, but back in the dim dark past when
I subscribed to the WSJ, I always read the editorials of the avowed
communist who regularly wrote a column, primarily on US foreign policy.
I frequently disagreed with him, but I liked the very different take
from the more conventional ones I got form the government and most
editorialists. In almost every case, I was able to appreciate, if not
agree with, his
viewpoint.
Socrates is my hero. I remarked a while ago to a member of the faculty that "I believe a lot of things. Some of them might even be true."
"There is no position higher than teacher of youth because there is nothing on earth as precious as the mind, soul, and character of the child." William Ellery Channing.
"What is behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies with us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
A person's memory shapes what is "right" and what the solutions should be. And as you get older it gets easier to focus since your memory has "better" selectivity. (Glenn Garrett, December 2011)