August 22, 2012

• On Humanity

  I posted this previously with the byline, “I love humanity.”

  

  It wasn’t ironic or sarcastic. I do love humanity and this reminds me of its greatness.

  Sure, okay, the people there are horribly confused about how the calendar works. They are factually wrong. But within each of them is an engine, an engine that strives to incorporate information. An engine that flags that information as in discrepancy, and seeks to reconcile that.

  An engine that makes mistakes.

  There’s no problem with making mistakes, unless you make nothing but mistakes. Success is made of mistakes piled atop one another. And – though I’m probably going to get flak for saying this – there’s no problem with being slightly out of touch with reality.

  Sherlock is pretty big right now. What is Sherlock Holmes famous for? Among other things, for having the audacity to say it does not matter whether the moon goes round the earth or earth goes round the moon. It sounds absurd, yes, but really, when was the last time you did something where it mattered whether you knew that fact or not? If you’re a physicist, or a sailor, then you need to know this stuff. But if you are a member of the broad majority of humanity, it honestly does not matter whether or not you know that. It’s a harmless quirk, because none of your decisions affect the positioning of the moon or the earth.

  What you do need to know is how to close that deal, or how to get funded, or how to keep that job. That puts food on the table for you and your loved ones. That keeps you from being kicked out for not paying rent. That fulfills your baseline requirements. Once you have those down – and only once you have those down – you can learn about the sun and the moon and the stars.

  Walk before you run. Crawl before you walk. And fix the errors in the later processes later. You may be laughed at, but you’ll survive.

  • 7:42 pm
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