Hindsight

Recently, someone reminded me of that old saying, "Hindsight is always 20/20." I've thought about that saying before, and I must say that it isn't true.

Hindsight has the advantage of traversing familiar territory, but if it were always 20/20 — that is, if it always saw things as they were — then we'd have no need for historians. But the point is that we do indeed need historians, because the long look back, even at the immediate past (of say, twenty seconds ago) is always cluttered by the debris of emotion, of irrelevance, of hope and of fear.

In other words, looking back at the past is only slightly less confusing and difficult than looking forward into the future. The only difference is that as we look back into the past, we have some idea that some things actually happened. The problem is that we ornament and interpret, we report and hedge, we simplify and exemplify — we make the past what we think it ought to be.

The past, on the other hand, seldom cooperates. It is more fluid than we would like it to be. It is especially vulnerable to those who have the will and capacity to take advantage of that fluidity in order to impose their ideas on the rest of us.

Just over the last few years, I've been reviewing statements made by many of my ex-colleagues. I have managed to capture a lot of what they said, what they claimed and believed. The surprising thing is how sincerely they were wrong. For example, when someone implied that the old place was ranked in a certain way in a certain year, he had completely forgotten that there were no rankings that year in the first place. When someone else said that we had done very well in a certain year but not so well in another year, the data assembled proved that this was completely wrong.

We all see things that aren't there, because we thought they were there or we believed they should have been there, or sometimes because we hoped that we had seen them there. The only advantage that the historian has over the futurist is that the cumulative evidence can provide support for a particular belief; the only advantage the futurist has over the prophet is that he won't be stoned for missing the mark.

After the Results

I've been an aficionado of Atlantean educational programmes for a while; that is to say, I have an affection for them that is born of close and lengthy acquaintance, and that familiarity which does not necessarily lead to contempt. Today, the results of one of those programmes were released, as is usual, on the 12th day of Christmas at 12 noon.

There is nothing unexpected here. The excellence follows the trend outlined in my thesis; effective strategies, efficient consolidation of strengths, clever compensation for weaknesses, no long-term vision apart from that which can be pragmatically handled without the use of philosophy. There is much to be learnt here about the effective use of resources; one point that stands out is the fact that if you have a large excess of certain resources, the market will forgive inefficiencies.

To me, however, the crucial point is this: such an event is a terminus and not an ending. It is at this point, if they haven't already done so, that students should launch an incisive appraisal of all their possibilities and try to make good choices about 'all their after life', as the great and dauntless hero once said.

Yes, they should ask their seniors. But more important, they should synthesize and reconcile the views of as many people as possible. The world out there is incredibly complex and subject to lunatic vagaries. They should get the opinions of freshmen and sophomores, graduate students and postdocs, industry players and employers, professionals and managers. Be curious. Be bold. Be inquisitive where mere curiosity does not suffice.

It will save a lot of uncertainty, even if it doesn't entirely remove it. It will be a Good Thing.

Equinox

At equinox the dark and light fall into balance. I sleep the sleep of life, which nobody perturbs. Pain and deceit, silliness and mortal fury, they are all shadows of little consequence now. The Spirit moves upon the face of the waters, the Wyvern cares nothing for its temporary nests of stone. In the end, that we were true to our calling is all there is. Much has been lost, and there is yet much to lose.

But for those who pray, hope and work, the best is yet to be. We shall not forsake one another; the true children know their siblings.