Essentials for Trifles

Things have their priority.

Closing the door is the essential and heightening the cage is the trifle. If we attend to trifles and neglect the essentials, we will get nowhere.- Essentials for Trifles

What is management? To manage is to grasp the essentials.

In fact, a clear definition of a problem is a problem half done. If we can define the problem well, and analyze its importance, then solving the problem is much easier.- Essentials for Trifles

However, most people can’t see the woods for the trees blocking their eyes. The keeper in the story couldn’t identify the key to the problem and finally wasted more and got less.

It can be seen that those who give up the essentials for trifles try their best indeed, but in the wrong way. They assume they know what to do, and they are confident in their own way of doing things. Perhaps a modest study will help them find out the right way.- Essentials for Trifles

Link: kangaroos at large

Learning to Give Up

Persistence is a kind of excellence. However, persistence does not mean clinging obstinately to one course. It requires the learning of when to stop.

There are so many choices in our lives; which should be given up and which shouldn’t be? How can we have our future under our control?

Giving something up for a new pursuit requires giving up wisely. Giving up without trying hard is cowardice; sticking to a hopeless course is obstinacy; holding steadfastly to something achievable with single-mindedness is persistence.

There are so many opportunities, challenges and temptations in our life. Sticking to or giving up is worth pondering.

Giving up what should be given up means having no choice;

Giving up what shouldn’t be given up is incompetence;

Not giving up what should be given up is ignorance;

Not giving up what shouldn’t be given up is persistence.

Link: hold on or give up

Butterfly Effect -Don’t Ignore Any Trivialities

In December 1979, Lorenz, an American scientist, made a speech to the AAAC (American Association for the Advance of Science) in Washington D.C., “A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil may cause a tornado in Texas.”-“Butterfly Effect”

The “Butterfly Effect” is so amazing and fascinating, for it has profound scientific meaning and philosophical enchantment in it.

From the scientific point of view, the “Butterfly Effect” manifests an important feature in chaos motion: the propensity of a system to be sensitive to initial conditions. “Newtonian Classical” holds that the system is not so sensitive to initial conditions, and a little change in initial conditions will not make a drastic difference to its future state. But the chaos theory challenges it by saying that in the chaos system, small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system can be magnified to produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system.

Whether the nail in the hoof will be lost or not in fact is such a little change of the initial conditions, but the “long-term effect” is the existence or the defeat of an empire. This is the “Butterfly Effect” in military affairs and politics. Even though it seems incredible, it indeed exists.

So some small mistakes may lead to serious failure. Something that seems trivial can make a system collapse.

We must at the outset preclude any minor mistakes from causing major consequence. Trivialities mustn’t be neglected. – Don’t Ignore Any Trivialities

LinK: A Nail and a Nation

Learning in Three Possible Ways

 Margaret Meed (1901-1978) , a reputed American Cultural anthropologist proposed three figurative cultures, namely Postfigurative Culture, Cofigurative Culture and Prefigurative Culture.

Postfigurative Culture, Cofigurative Culture & Prefigurative Culture

In a Postfigurative Culture, the young learn from their elders, and this is the traditional mode of a society.

In a Cofigurative Culture, peers learn from each other, and this is a kind of progress. Continue reading »