I exchanged email the other day with some acquaintances and one of them was on vacation and had an out of office note that made me smile, and then made me think (in that order, in case you were wondering): "No more prizes for predicting rain. Prizes only for building arks."-- Dr. Shulamith Elster.
The pocket bio, which you can read by clicking on the link, doesn't really tell me what the quote suggests, Dr. Elster is a keen student of the human condition and I appreciated as I so often do, how even absent in the ether, but present in the spirit, someone could make me think without precipitating a headache.
We all know someone who, if they make hand-wringing or dire threat predicting an Olympic event, we'd see them on the medals podium. And we've all heard the phrase, '20/20 hindsight' but I, for one, can't have enough reminders that, at some point, the worrying about a problem has to end and the developing of a solution for it needs to begin and the sooner the better.
I think we humans find our comfort zone and stay there, no matter what. That island to which we swam when the Good Ship Lollipop sank went from being our rescue to being our prison once we realized no other ships passed this way and that we were saved but also marooned.
Being able to predict trouble is a gift. Developing strategies that get us out of trouble might be regarded as a skill and probably more valuable than the prediction ability. A highway sign that says "Look Out" is helpful, though perhaps of less value than if the sign told me what to look out for (potholes, rock slide, snowstorm, boll weevil infestations).
Of course, as the other half of the away message stated, "The world does not need more simplifiers. It needs more complexifiers." -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Hey! Don't look now, but my ride's here!
-bill kenny
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