17 February 2008

Bhiksha naivacha naivacha

My father taught me this when I was a kid: never ever beg.

I was watching Feynman's interview on youtube.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

The video is here: a must watch.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=0XgmrMZ0h54

He says his father new the difference between knowing something and knowing the name of it. When asked about a rolling ball in a truck his father said, nobody knows why, things that are not moving tend not to move and moving things keep moving. They call it inertia. But nobody knows why? The last sentence is the key. We have a word for the phenomenon but we do not know why that happens. We often confuse between the name and the reason (or meaning). This needs to be tought.

The point is , the dgree of maturity of foundations of social transaction and thinking, we have developed is determintal to understanding and our capability. Family, ethnicity, and other similar factors influence our ability. My father had taught me many things. In retrospection, it is important to notice what I did not learn.

I want to mention a thing that my father taught me. There are a few words from some wise individuals:
If you have lot of money do business
If you have little money go farm
If you do not have any money labour or work for others.
But never ever beg.

Now to make sure I know the difference between begging and borrowing he would ask me to go to our neighbours and borrow money for him.

We confuse between seriousness and maturity, information junkie and a scholar, truth and halftruth. One such thing is knowing the name (never ever beg) and knowing its meaning.
Feynman also says he once got to know that his father's ability was also limited upon discussing calculus. He says "I realised that I had learnt more in some sense than he". How many of us get to say that?
I can say that I know more about many things than my father does. Do I really? What I am sure is, cleverness that lets my father succeed in everything he tries is based on his ability to generalise lessons to an unimaginable level. He learns more everytime he learns because he can generealise lessons beyond the context of the lesson. He can derive rules for actions that can be applied elsewhere and he quickly comes up with other related rules. More than everything else he is conscious about these rules and practices them perfectly.
I can not do that. It is said leaders forsee risks and get ready to manage them; they succed. Shouldn't we beg for this ability if someone or somethng can give it to us?

3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. i completely agree with your attitude vis-à-vis the b'lore airport. let's grumble heartily about it and let someone deal with the mess. cleaning shit up is painful - grumbling is fun and cathartic.
    on another point - it's really eerie that i was thinking about the same horizon episode not 2 weeks ago (i saw it way back - when they would broadcast horizon on bbc - circa 1995) - and i remember being struck by the same observation - that it is "called" inertia - but we don't know why it happens.

    to me - that is the crux of science (and what differentiates it fundamentally from religion) - do not do teleology - it is a bogus activity

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  3. Sounds like your Dad did a good job teaching you solid values....I hope my kids remember the things I try to teach them...

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