On the Ask E.T. Forum there is a topic entitled Grand truths about human behavior that I adore. Listed within are conclusions and observations from a host of intelligent and thoughtful people. Here are a few of my favorites:
“It’s more complicated than that.” (Edward Tufte)
I’ve always blamed my Southern Baptist upbringing for the daily struggle I experience blending the black and white of my perceptions and judgments into a hexadecimally-friendly shade of gray. Tufte suggests otherwise by blaming my humanity (and I buy it). This universal truth, along with the others quoted below, especially resonate.
“All grand theories, other than perhaps the scientific method, ultimately err (and some collapse) by overreaching.” (Edward Tufte)
“The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded.” (Gustave Flaubert)
“Oversimplification of learning: ‘I learned everything I need to know in Kindergarten’ - it seems that only Management Gurus feel this way. The rest of us feel that the more we learn the less we know, or is it the less we know to be true, or is it a ‘capital T’ True.” (Tchad)
“If we take everything into account, not only what the ancients knew, but all of what we know today that they didn’t know, then I think that we must frankly admit that we do not know. But in admitting this, we have probably found the open channel. This is not a new idea. This is the idea of the age of reason.” (Richard Feynman)
Anecdotally, I discovered the open channel to which Feynman refers nearly six years ago during a two hour lunch at Chik-fil-a.
“Bad can be taught as efficiently as good.” (Richard Feynman)
I picture the log lady clutching her log as she quotes Feynman (below in his ellipsis’d “entirety”) in her importunate sort of way.
“Education is a strong force, but for either evil or good. Bad can be taught as efficiently as good. … Communication is a strong force also, but for either good or bad. … Medicine controls diseases. Yet there are men patiently working to create great plagues and poisons. … Our dream today is peace. Clearly, peace is a great force, but maybe future men will find that peace, too, can be good and bad.”
But he’s spot on, isn’t he? Good and evil balance our world in such a way that a compromise on either part would seem an impossibility.
“So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature…” (Benjamin Franklin)
Aside from originating the “Where’s the E?” phenomenon of late, Franklin touches beautifully on the instinctively comparative nature of human beings. My brain is perpetually weighing one thing and then the next and bubbling up a conclusion, which becomes the basis of a decision, which becomes the catalyst for an action, which is to tell the bag boy “paper” instead of “plastic.”