The value of experience

A few months ago at a local conference a talk was introduced with the quote

"Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment."
~ Jim Horning

In the meantime I noticed a lot of cases where the importance of experience was simply ignored - e.g. with hire and fire or outsourcing strategies of companies.

And today I stumbled again over this quote at 3 secrets to Financial Success.

Along with the ignorance of experience often comes the ignorance of how important knowhow in general is.

The importance of experience comes from the fact that in most cases experience is something gained over a long time with a lot of effort involved!

You can learn only to some extent from the experience of somebody else.

Related posts: People's history, Transferable knowhow, Fool me once..., Know better and act on it, Information and experience, The golden rule.

The resource problem

I got a lot of my moral education from Star Trek. I often thought that they give a good example on how people in the real world should treat each other. - And I wondered why it is so hard to implement and evolve similar constructions in the real world. In (at least) one episode it was mentioned that people like to work for self esteem and other higher interests than "just" money or only because they are forced to work.

While being on the way to implement some core ideas there is an important thing that the whole trilogy and series are leaving out: The resource problem.

I thought of the resource problem several times and always it came down to be a population problem. If there would only be 100 humans on this earth environmental pollution would not be a problem. 100 humans could hardly produce a critical amount of pollution even if they do take a hot bath for 5 hours each day and drop metal cans wherever they stand. They could move on to another place and not return for the next thousand years and then everything of the waste will be gone anyway.

But this is a non-realistic situation from current point of view. The resource problem is getting more and more critical as we are not only exhausting our planet - no, we are destroying at the same time to make sure that while consuming one resource others are ruined too.

While the resource problem is a major problem that causes war and litigation it also can help avoiding wars or bring them to a faster or "better" end. This, because global playing companies are interested in making money from the resources which usually means that the country where the resources are need to have a government and population that is stable and in peace. That said, the war is then not fighted out with weapons but with money.

Economic (money) war is still war somehow and poverty is the slow death of those who got shot out of the game.

The fear of personal or economic death let people focus on their personal revenue to ensure their survival. There must be a really big change in a lot of realms to get an overall common peaceful and cooperative attitude! - Solving the resource problem is one of them!

That also implies, that if you want to have long term peace and people really working together (in the way that they really help out each other), you have to ensure that all the members (of the world, your team, your company, ...) have the chance to get enough resources to make their living.

What applies to the world also applies in the small - for your family, your team, employees etc! So think big, start small and be humble!

Related posts: Finding the proper priorities, Ethic economy, An eye for an eye, The power of intention, Scotty - beam me up..., Inequity, Hunger and poverty, Television.

Root of responsibility

A while ago I have seen the video of Eckhart Tolle about responsibility. He says that responsibility is not what we do, it is who we are.

I am not sure if he is 100% right, I would rather say: The basic disposition of responsibility is founded in the who we are. We could also be urged by others to take responsibility. If somebody breaks a Window he could be forced to repair it (or pay somebody who repairs it) - so there can be an action of taking responsibility without the appropriate state in mind that wants to proactive contribute good stuff to this world.

But there is no doubt that the most effective way of positive contribution to our world is the appropriate change in our core being. It is always better to solve problems at their root and not trying to close thirty leaks that all spring from the same source.

These thoughts do apply not only to responsibility and it goes further. For example if we want to be loved by others we should love the others and the best way to achieve this is BE a loving person. And meant is having the positive wish for others in mind. This may include a force to hold somebody back doing harmful things...

Nowadays many people fear about saying their opinions officially (on the web) or stand up against obvious wrong decisions (by government for example). Falling into fear and avoiding action is clearly not a way to turn the world into good and not a way to develop responsibility.

Related post: Guarantees and responsibility.