Clarity Leads to Perspicacity!

By Rich Kozlovich

Perspicacity - per·spi·cac·i·ty ˌpərspiˈkasədē/ noun - The quality of having a ready insight into things; shrewdness.

 

Understanding reality means understanding a great many things, including the seemingly small things in life. So often we can anticipate the workings of others by having an understanding of history.  A study of history shouldn’t just be about dates and locations.  To get the true value of history is to work at understanding why people did the things they did.  The dates and locations are merely an anchor of your study, keeping your efforts focused.  Dates and locations are factors that play a role in their decision making, but why they made the decisions at those times and locations should be the thrust of your study.  Even if those actions weren’t even thought out or planned, but spontaneously forced upon them because of the uncontrollable actions of others.  

Study is not just reading it - which unfortunately the vast majority fail to do - but understanding it by thinking about it deeply.  The mind is such a unique instrument.  As we absorb information the mind, without any conscious effort on our part, will store, properly file and cross reference information allowing us to consciously comparing things other did, cross referencing events and views, and hopefully draw correct conclusions.  These are nothing more than reflections on reality. 

Did you ever have one of those SHAZAM moments?    All of a sudden you get this flash of insight and …. SHAZAM ….all of a sudden we understand something that we have been working on mentally for some time, maybe even years. As I grow older I find that this happens much more often than in years gone by. How does that happen? I can tell you that age makes up a part of it, because clearly the brain’s abilities change as we grow older. I read James A. Michener’s book “The Source” when I was 19 and enjoyed it. I read it again when I was 30 and understood it.

The ability to draw correct conclusions from incomplete data is a work of the brain that is a gift, but there still has to be a reason for it. Everyone has this ability in varying degrees, but are we capable of training our minds to do it better? I believe so! I believe that this is done by absorbing a great deal of information and thinking a great deal about a great many small things. All of this is being filed and correlated by the brain without any conscious effort on our part. Eventually we will have a brain full of seemingly disparate and useless information that will come together into some cohesive form. A bit here, a bit there and all of a sudden …..SHAZAM...  you have the whole story with the informational gaps filled in automatically. How large those gaps are depends on the individual.
 

No one really knows what triggers SHAZAM moments, but reflection, meditation, daydreaming, or whatever you may wish to call it, allows the mind to work unhindered by structure.  But the brain can’t work on anything if there isn’t anything there to work on.   This wandering mind is now the framework for new ideas and conclusions. 

Defining an issue is the first step to clarity, and we must understand that people do the things they do because in some way their actions benefit them.  Those benefits can be personal, or they can be for the general good, but in some way their actions fulfills some need.  How do we determine what those needs are?  How do we determine whether their actions are worthy or ignoble?  In order to do that means following the facts wherever they may lead. It's been my experience that far too many people are only prepared to follow only that information that meet their preconceived notions.

In 1910 the average life expectancy for men was 47 years.  This really didn’t change until the high levels of child mortality were dealt with.  People still lived to the proverbial 70 to 80 years, and a few lived to be over a hundred, but it you were to go to an old grave yard there would be two things that would stand out.  How many children and young women buried there versus people in the 60 to 100 range”?  Women died from complications from child birth at rates we would consider startlingly unacceptable today.  Is it any wonder since most births took place at home?  Average lifespan and typical lifespan are two different things.

Childhood diseases such as measles were considered so serious that homes were quarantined at one time, and the lack of doctor’s qualifications, and the medical institutions that trained them, would frighten us today.  Few people bathed more than once a week.  That’s where the old story about Friday night baths in the wash tub came from since most people didn't have a bathtub, and only two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school. 

It's easy to understand how the public could be fooled in that time.  We have no such an excuse for  ignorance, and failing to have the correct understanding of those forces that mold public opinion, public policy and our lives.  The green movement, with their lies of commission, lies of omission and logical fallacies they spew out – which is gobbled up by the press and society in general -  would have everyone believing were worse off than ever. 

Should we even believe we’re worse off than 100 years ago?