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Friday, May 6, 2016

The definition of stupidity: Stupidity is spending your present to fight the past.





If Einstein's insanity was "repeating the same thing and expecting different outcomes" then


From Wiktionary

stupid ‎(comparative stupider or more stupid, superlative stupidest or most stupid)
Lacking in intelligence or exhibiting the quality of having been done by someone lacking in intelligence. 

If you want to waste your time, your resources,  your relationships, and even your future by investing your time into plans for yesterdays' problems then that's stupid.

People that spend their present arguing how to fix what just happened are increasing the damage done by past events. They can't reverse time, they can't make things like they were.

It's a fantasy notion brought about by Western idealism.  Everything is in constant change, and will always be that way.  Buddhism argues acceptance of constant change.

To believe you can turn back the clock, or right ancient wrongs, is to believe you can turn the present into the past.  That belief breaks causality.  Not accepting causality is stupid.

They are making themselves vulnerable for the next threat. They are wasting time they might not have to prepare for the #futurethreat. There are lots of examples of people fighting yesterday's battles, yesterday's ideas, yesterday's conditions. To what end?

Yesterday's problems disappear when you stop fixating on them.



People that think you need to rewind a DVD are thinking about DVD's like they are cassette tapes, or floppy disks. New ideas are not repackaged old ones.  Refusal comes from not embracing the current reality, making today seem like a fresher version of yesterday. It means trying to salvage what was understood and placing it into everything that comes next. 

To me, this is the exemplar of stupidity.  So a corollary to Einstein's insanity is:

Stupidity is spending your present to fight the past. 

To fixate on but not learn from the past, to try to resurrect the past, to not accept that life exists in continual tension, to make plans for yesterday's conditions is to demonstrate lacking intelligence.

Instead of thinking today's ideas are yesterday's with some changes, consider them in totality.

Instead of planning to solve yesterday's problems, forecast for what is coming and invest your effort and resources into getting ready for what comes next. You might then have enough time to save yourself from the #futurethreat.

IF you want to help your people tomorrow, consider anew and make them ready.

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