Ignorance and understanding things.

[Globalti]

I was thinking earlier about how beginners take up new sports or activities and how difficult it can be until they begin to learn and understand. Some people never learn and they struggle on in ignorance for years.

Example: when I got my first mountain bike in 1988 I was a bachelor but I had a company car, a hatchback, which was almost always empty. Yet I went out and bought a roof rack and drove around with the bike on the roof like a trophy, wasting fuel and exposing my precious bike to theft, road salt, rain and car park barriers. It never even occurred to me to fold the seats and pop the bike safely inside my empty car.

Going back to my life before 1988, I lived in Paris about 2 km from my office yet EVERY DAY for two years I got in my car and sat in traffic jams for sometimes 45 minutes to drive a complex route to the office... it never even occurred to me to buy a bike and enjoy a refreshing 5 minute spin along flat leafy boulevards!

I'm not talking about simple ignorance, it's more than that - it's concepts that are light years away from one's current mindset and take hours of thought and analysis to embrace if somebody doesn't do the job of convincing you.

Anybody know what I mean? How much do you think our rigid, dogmatic mindsets are inhibiting us?

 

[swee'pea99]

An awful lot. As Confucius say: 'A fish knows nothing of water'. Which is to say, we never question the things we 'take as read', precisely because we take them as read.

It's not just individuals either. This stuff is absolutely rife in organisations. "...when it comes to military procurement, Israel spends £9 billion a year and administers its purchases with 400 people. Britain spends £10 billion annually on procurement and has a staff of 23,700 to do it." (Source.)

Why is it like that? Because that's the way it is...

 

[ColinJ]

Going back to my life before 1988, I lived in Paris about 2 km from my office yet EVERY DAY for two years I got in my car and sat in traffic jams for sometimes 45 minutes to drive a complex route to the office... it never even occurred to me to buy a bike and enjoy a refreshing 5 minute spin along flat leafy boulevards!

Or even an easy 20 minute stroll?

A neighbour in Coventry used to go out to his car every evening, drive 200 m up the road to turn round in a junction, drive 200 m back past his house, do another 200 m up to a big roundabout, go round that, then pull over at the newsagent to pick up his newspaper, get back in his car and drive another 200 m home. It took him longer to drive than it would have done to walk it, and I'm sure that starting his car from cold for such a short drive cost him more in wear and tear on his engine plus fuel than it would have cost to have the paper delivered - madness!

 

[Globalti]

In two years I actually walked once, when there was heavy snow, having taken about two hours to drive the 2 kms the day before! What a different mindset I had in those days!

 

[srw]

Why is it like that?

Because the other 23,300 are employed by the Americans...

 

[Archie_tect]

An awful lot. As Confucius say: 'A fish knows nothing of water'. Which is to say, we never question the things we 'take as read', precisely because we take them as read.

It's not just individuals either. This stuff is absolutely rife in organisations. "...when it comes to military procurement, Israel spends £9 billion a year and administers its purchases with 400 people. Britain spends £10 billion annually on procurement and has a staff of 23,700 to do it." (Source.)

Why is it like that? Because that's the way it is...

That's so 23,300 can be occupied reducing the unemployment figures rather than spending on military hardware. A bit like so many of the government's initiatives where millions are given to organisations to invest in industry and training but ends up just paying salaries.

 

[ColinJ]

In two years I actually walked once, when there was heavy snow, having taken about two hours to drive the 2 kms the day before! What a different mindset I had in those days!

I had about 5 minutes from when I finished school to when my bus home left from a stop just down the road. Sometimes I caught it and sometimes I just missed it.

If I missed the bus, I often waited for the next one. There was a bus after 30 minutes which would have taken me halfway home, but usually I'd wait a further 30 minutes for the one that dropped me off at the end of my road. The full journey was only about 2.3 km (1.5 miles)!

It never occurred to me that I could easily walk home in 25 minutes!

Years later, I was walking home from a night out in the city centre during which I'd drunk at least 5 or 6 pints of beer. I was walking past my old school when I decided that I was bored of walking and decided to jog home. It only took me 14 minutes, and that was when I was tired and half-drunk!

 

[Archie_tect]

I used to walk the 4.5 miles home from school when the school buses failed to turn up, through the rhubarb fields. Strangely I always had stomach ache by the time I got home... [1969!]

 

[Globalti]

Rhubarb without sugar?

*Gulp*

 

[perplexed]

Never mind sugar, what about Custard?


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zedq1VhaS90

 

[ASC1951]

It's not just individuals either. This stuff is absolutely rife in organisations. "...when it comes to military procurement, Israel spends £9 billion a year and administers its purchases with 400 people. Britain spends £10 billion annually on procurement and has a staff of 23,700 to do it."

What on earth are the Israelis doing spending nine times as much per citizen on weaponry as even our own bloated delusional armed forces?

 

[Sandra6]

I was chatting to a friend the other day, after cycling 12 miles, and she was all "ooh have you cycled all the way here?" and I was "pah, sure, it's nothing"
And she said - quite rightly "If I'd said to you last year that you'd be cycling that distance and thinking nothing of it you'd have laughed at me" A year ago I wouldn't have cycled round the block!
Sometimes things just don't enter your head.

 

[palinurus]

I had about 5 minutes from when I finished school to when my bus home left from a stop just down the road. Sometimes I caught it and sometimes I just missed it.

If I missed the bus, I often waited for the next one. There was a bus after 30 minutes which would have taken me halfway home, but usually I'd wait a further 30 minutes for the one that dropped me off at the end of my road. The full journey was only about 2.3 km (1.5 miles)!

It never occurred to me that I could easily walk home in 25 minutes!

Years later, I was walking home from a night out in the city centre during which I'd drunk at least 5 or 6 pints of beer. I was walking past my old school when I decided that I was bored of walking and decided to jog home. It only took me 14 minutes, and that was when I was tired and half-drunk!

I learned a lot about walking due to drinking.

 

[ColinJ]

I learned a lot about walking due to drinking.

So did I. For instance - a sober mile is 1 mile in length, whereas a drunken mile can be anywhere from 2 to 5 miles in length! (Depends on the degree of staggering involved ...)

I once set off home on a Saturday night in the wrong direction and walked 2 miles before I realised my mistake. I then had to walk those 2 miles back again, and then the original 3 miles home. The trouble is, they were drunken miles so each one of them was about 2 miles in length. I meandered about 14 miles in total, taking me about 7 hours, getting home just before dawn and about 30 minutes before my family got up!

 

[Globalti]

Hilarious story!

Bravo Colin, you've just given me an idea for a new form of exercise!