Monday, December 29, 2008

Too Far Down the line?

What if you were to discover that everything you ever thought was true wasn't? Is there any one thing that could completely shatter your world view? If there is, and you actually found this out... Would you just pretend it wasn't true, and carry on living out your life?

A fair amount of our lives is spent creating more and more vested interests. If you spend years and years becoming an oil specialist and then just as you finish your training, someone discovers a way to make energy from water, and all your training becomes obsolete... what do you do?

If you spend your entire life basing everything you do on predictive models based on ridiculously complicated hard core stochastic mathematics, and then after reading 'the black swan', and doing some thinking, decide that you have wasted your time... what do you do?

If you are a minister in the church, and you stop believing in God... what do you do?

It is one thing to say that you would like the curtain to be pulled away, and discover the truth... but what happens if that truth is not something you REALLY want to know.

Being prepared to accept that you may be wrong about something is one thing. Being prepared to change is another.

And even another is being prepared to forgive yourself regularly for having been wrong in the past, even grossly wrong.

But...

I think we should be less forgiving about our future selves.

Do something about it.

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