Broad based experience is a foundation for legitimate observation, more often than not, imo. Those that can, do. Those that cannot, teach.
Its been my experience that being only book smart is a very dangerous position to pontificate from. Education does not mean that you know all the answers. To me it more means that you know where to find the answers. Experience allows for a much better application of those answers.
I have found over a long period of time and through highly varied experiences and observations that all the training, education forethought and cooperation in the world will not always prepare you to act properly when confronted with a new 'challenge' the first time around. The human part of the equation while many times predictable, is infinitely variable.
I find the Ivory Tower approach even more limiting, carrying less weight than hands on experience and expertise based upon that experience. If one is only book smart, they might not never know when they are just plain wrong due to lack of real world experience. Communications 101, message sent is not always message received. There is usually always more than one way to accomplish an end.
An uneducated, yet experienced person can accomplish quite a bit with knowing only righty, tighty and lefty, loosey.
But then I wasn't claiming that it's a better way of learning, merely that it's another way of learning. People might (or might not) reach the same conclusion from different perspectives (using different paths).
Did you learn maths while working as a mathematician?
There are of course other modes of learning besides (job) experience. For one, there are books and articles. Some written by very experienced people (who may have had more exposure to a variety of organizational levels or different organizations altogether) and some by people who have studied a particular subject in great detail (e.g. military training).
Also, experience itself might be a limiting factor (since one could get exposed to a very small part, for a relatively short time, of a much greater whole) and as a result can have one end up with little more than anecdotes. As such "in my experience" doesn't always carry a lot of weight, mainly because it is usually and necessarily filtered through a specific lens in a specific setting.
Broad based experience is a foundation for legitimate observation, more often than not, imo. Those that can, do. Those that cannot, teach.
Its been my experience that being only book smart is a very dangerous position to pontificate from. Education does not mean that you know all the answers. To me it more means that you know where to find the answers. Experience allows for a much better application of those answers.
I have found over a long period of time and through highly varied experiences and observations that all the training, education forethought and cooperation in the world will not always prepare you to act properly when confronted with a new 'challenge' the first time around. The human part of the equation while many times predictable, is infinitely variable.
I find the Ivory Tower approach even more limiting, carrying less weight than hands on experience and expertise based upon that experience. If one is only book smart, they might not never know when they are just plain wrong due to lack of real world experience. Communications 101, message sent is not always message received. There is usually always more than one way to accomplish an end.
An uneducated, yet experienced person can accomplish quite a bit with knowing only righty, tighty and lefty, loosey.
(...) Curious tho, about your placement of it in this thread... sarcasm that Hedges qualifies in the minds of many?
Co-optation. But, I could've put it elsewhere too.
oldviolin wrote:
Yes, a very interesting opinion. However, unless Mr. Hedges has actually been a soldier, his opinion of a soldiers individuality and mindset is an uninformed opinion...in my opinion.
There are of course other modes of learning besides (job) experience. For one, there are books and articles. Some written by very experienced people (who may have had more exposure to a variety of organizational levels or different organizations altogether) and some by people who have studied a particular subject in great detail (e.g. military training).
Also, experience itself might be a limiting factor (since one could get exposed to a very small part, for a relatively short time, of a much greater whole) and as a result can have one end up with little more than anecdotes. As such "in my experience" doesn't always carry a lot of weight, mainly because it is usually and necessarily filtered through a specific lens in a specific setting.
Good article from Mr. Hedges - as usual. Curious tho, about your placement of it in this thread... sarcasm that Hedges qualifies in the minds of many?
Yes, a very interesting opinion. However, unless Mr. Hedges has actually been a soldier, his opinion of a soldiers individuality and mindset is an uninformed opinion...in my opinion.
I had my first experience with the U.S. military when I was a young reporter covering the civil war in El Salvador. We journalists were briefed at the American Embassy each week by a U.S. Army colonel who at the time headed the military group of U.S. advisers to the Salvadoran army. The reality of the war, which lasted from 1979 to 1992, bore little resemblance to the description regurgitated each week for consumption by the press. But what was most evident was not the blatant misinformation—this particular colonel had apparently learned to dissemble to the public during his multiple tours in Vietnam—but the hatred of the press by this man and most other senior officers in the U.S. military. When first told that he would have to meet the press once a week, the colonel reportedly protested against having to waste his time with those “limp-dicked communists.” (...)
Good article from Mr. Hedges - as usual. Curious tho, about your placement of it in this thread... sarcasm that Hedges qualifies in the minds of many?
I had my first experience with the U.S. military when I was a young reporter covering the civil war in El Salvador. We journalists were briefed at the American Embassy each week by a U.S. Army colonel who at the time headed the military group of U.S. advisers to the Salvadoran army. The reality of the war, which lasted from 1979 to 1992, bore little resemblance to the description regurgitated each week for consumption by the press. But what was most evident was not the blatant misinformation—this particular colonel had apparently learned to dissemble to the public during his multiple tours in Vietnam—but the hatred of the press by this man and most other senior officers in the U.S. military. When first told that he would have to meet the press once a week, the colonel reportedly protested against having to waste his time with those “limp-dicked communists.” (...)
Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant ended her inauguration speech on January 6 with an exhortation to the voters who had just elected her as the country’s only socialist politician: “To all those prepared to resist the agenda of big business—in Seattle and nationwide—I appeal to you: get organized.” If her election is going to catalyze bold reforms in Seattle, she has said repeatedly, it will require a strong movement behind her. And yesterday, she put her money where her mouth is by announcing that she would accept only $40,000 of her $117,000 salary and donate the rest to a fund to build social justice movements. (...)
Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant ended her inauguration speech on January 6 with an exhortation to the voters who had just elected her as the country’s only socialist politician: “To all those prepared to resist the agenda of big business—in Seattle and nationwide—I appeal to you: get organized.” If her election is going to catalyze bold reforms in Seattle, she has said repeatedly, it will require a strong movement behind her. And yesterday, she put her money where her mouth is by announcing that she would accept only $40,000 of her $117,000 salary and donate the rest to a fund to build social justice movements. (...)
(...) It goes without saying that these are impressive results for a man who is continually alleged to be dead. Anyone who considers him or herself to be intellectually honest, forthright, and critical must examine the theories of scientific socialism on their own merit and determine how they confirm or disprove themselves against the experience of living reality.
As capitalism lurches along through its greatest crisis yet, we can rely on defenders of the status quo to remind us that this most “subversive” of scholars is outdated. Fortunately for the Marxists, capitalism itself is convincing more and more people that old Karl’s ideas are not only more relevant than ever, but urgently needed.
As Alan Woods pointed out in The Ideas Of Karl Marx: “Every social system believes that it represents the only possible form of existence for human beings, that its institutions, its religion, its morality are the last word that can be spoken. That is what the cannibals, the Egyptian priests, Marie Antoinette and Tsar Nicolas all fervently believed. And that is what the bourgeoisie and its apologists today wish to demonstrate when they assure us, without the slightest basis, that the so-called system of ‘free enterprise’ is the only possible system—just when it is beginning to sink.”
And in other "News" a man makes an erroneous statement and an entertainment company that markets itself as a "news" station, pretends it matters.
In actual news, the 6.6 billion dollars that was sent to Iraq is still missing, and Stuart Bowen, who was responsible for it, says it was "probably stolen". Republicans still continue to not care about that 6.6 billion, or the other 6 trillion we spent, or the lives lost and destroyed in Iraq, a country that had neither WMDs nor links to Al-Qaeda.
EDIT: That is a pot shot against Fox. I apologize to Fox News, but only with the caveat Fox itself does not claim to be a new station and has said that they are clearly an entertainment station, and that "news" is just a marketing term they use, and it's obvious to everyone. Still, I probably could have found a nicer way of pointing it out. My bad.
