The Judgement of Time

Truth isn't unkind.  It's just the truth.

By Rich Kozlovich 

We need to abandon our penchant to accede all thinking, reasoning, and conclusions about life to the "experts", all of whom are highly educated.  Many of whom are seriously flawed human beings.  I'm an autodidact, and as I've often noted that I'm not formally educated in any of the subjects I pontificate about, and I think done with well sourced information and reasoned intelligence. Often in opposition to the "experts". Often with the theme - "if the bugman knows this, how can these "experts" not know it?"

I've always been insatiably curious, and that's proven to be good, and bad.  It's been my experience that being insatiably curious is its own reward, and its own punishment.  The reward is, "you know".  The punishment is, "you know". 

• The reward is the satisfaction of digging into a subject in order to see it farther, deeper and wider than others, and then end up "knowing" that which is true and right.
  
• The punishment is knowing that which is true and right, and finding yourself at odds with everyone else. 

Which brings me to traditional wisdom versus conventional wisdom.  What are they and which is right?  How do you "know"?  There's a difference between traditional wisdom and conventional wisdom. Traditional wisdom has stood the test of time. Conventional wisdom is merely what everyone believes at the moment, and may only last until the next philosophical flavor of the day appears.

We have the desire to “know” things, to have the right answers, but that requires an understanding of a great many things. It has also been my experience that most things aren’t as complicated as they appear on the surface.  We just fail to understand the root problem properly.  We fail in definition.   As a result, we increase the difficulty of problem solving. 

There has always been an amazingly intricate interplay between people that has been at the heart of it all.   It's a fact that everything in life is about paradigms (the values of a society) and demographics (the make up of that society) as a result, paradigms create demographics and demographics create paradigms.  That can make things complicated in a multicultural society such as ours. 

So many demand perfection, yet history has shown that the “best we can hope for us the most tolerable imperfection”. A man once said that if you ever find the perfect organization, join it! However, he said, remember the minute you've joined, it has now become somewhat less than perfect! Why?  Because people will be people, and people act in their own self interest.

It is also true that ignorance is the natural state because we all start our lives ignorant. And for all of our lives we will remain ignorant about a great many things, because there is so much to learn about so many subjects, therefore a varying degree of ignorance is part of our lives and completely understandable. Ignorance simply means we don’t know. That's fixable by learning about things, many things, then we reduce our level of ignorance continually, but "never" totally! 

However, if we choose to remain ignorant, that's stupidity.  It's the stupidity I hate.

Reading history is one way of avoiding being more ignorant than everyone else. Mostly because history is the fruitage of the work of millions of people over thousands of years.  History is the source of traditional wisdom.   Unfortunately it only matters when we read it. It only works if we understand it, remember it correctly, and then apply it positively.

History has all the answers. There is really nothing new under the sun.  Everything that exists today has its foundation in man’s history.  The technology may become more advanced, but the application of all things is still based on that intricate interplay between human beings.  The correct information and necessary understanding to make the right decisions are all there, if we read it.   

We have at our disposal more information from more sources, all at our finger tips, than any society in the history of the world. Yet we, as a society, don’t read, we don't understand, and we don't understand because we lack sufficient information to properly define things.  And it seems to me we don't care about our history as a society, or the history of those who present challenges to our society.  That's a sure fire way of getting lost in time.  

That makes us easily fooled by those who twist and manipulate history and reality for their own ends.  And so many times those ends are in direct violation of traditional wisdom. I find those who twist history seem to have one thing in common.  Their interpretation of events usually denigrates or diminishes traditional wisdom and the values those traditions created.

That doesn’t necessarily make what they're promoting wrong by the way.  But it should at least ring a warning bell in the back of our minds that should make us want to dig deeper into the subject to find out the truth for ourselves.

We need to understand that if we don’t bother to read, and develop the correct understanding of history, we will be like the waves being washed back and forth by every new wind that blows our way.  

Definition leads to clarity.  Clarity leads to understanding.  Wisdom is the application of knowledge and understanding.  Without correct knowledge we can't define things as they are, which leads to an lack o understanding.  From that point on we have no anchor for our thinking, no touchstone by which to gauge our values.  We are then incapable of any real direction, as a result we fail in our judgments.   Judgments that will have a negative impact on our lives and society over the long haul. That society is our children and our grandchildren.

Some things really are right and some things really are wrong.  There really is such a thing as good and evil in the world.

There, now, that is a good start for foundational thinking, but you first have to abandon ignorance and arrogance.  

De Omnibus Dubitandum.  Everything is to be questioned.