4/12/04 How to Plan Ahead Ive been thinking a lot about the future lately, and more specifically, foresight. It is not a skill particularly strong in the human species - although weve put some aspects of it to good use in order to keep ourselves alive throughout the millennia. Watching this past week as the current administration has striven to revise history in order to make their terrorism planning seem diligent, I came to realize, we are all about looking at the past, arguing about it, revising it, rewriting it, etc, but rarely do we actually strive to learn from it. It is far too important that we place blame for the last big mistake than we look ahead to make sure we wont have to hate someone for their incompetence in the future. Looking around the corner is an exercise in leadership, and that disease leads to responsibility. And who wants to dwell in the realm of responsibility? One would think and hope our Government would. Its one of the reasons I find certain people in politics so loathsome, and others like Richard Clarke, and Howard Dean, so absolutely refreshing. Anyone who makes political operatives smack their forehead and cringe by telling the truth - deserves their face carved into something. The corner ahead, I contend, is always a dangerous place filled with intrigue and unknowns. But, to paraphrase the poetry of Donald Rumsfeld (which I highly recommend you read), many of those unknown knowns can be known, if we only work on knowing our currently unknown knowables in advance. And who knows how many of of our unknown unknowables might in fact wind up being known knowables if we simply apply ourselves. And yet, roadblocks. There are many roadblocks, not just fear of responsibility, which prevent foresight from reaching optimal foresightitude. Most of them have to do with ideology, entrenched belief systems, greed, and the driving OCD problem human beings as a whole seem to suffer from. Foresight often means thinking about those things we dont much want to think about. For example, planes crashing into buildings, killing thousands of people, or the chances of a meteorite shooting like a bullet deep into the gut of our planet. It means coming to conclusions that weigh the short term benefit with the long term impact of an action. For example: the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so lets give him a lot of cash and teach him how to blow things up phenomenon... has that really worked out for us? Ever? Maybe there is a third way that involves less cash, and less explosives. All Im saying is maybe we should look into it. Well never know if we dont apply ourselves, and that would be a shame, as Id rather not die because someone decided it was more important to be on the ranch, so to speak.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 20:24:09 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015