Deep thought
It’s been a month of deep thoughts so far.
Even as my role changes and I push forward in my career, I have toyed with the idea as to what I should be writing about on this blog. Should I bring work into the focus more? Should I write more about perspective? There is a large intersection between the two, somewhere comfortable, yet I have been unsure if that’s where I want to dig deeper.
A conversation with my fiancée the other night convinced me as to what I want to write about: perspective. We were discussing right and wrong, and I pointed out that while her and I will never agree with certain things people can do, there is a perspective which disagrees with us. Even if allowing such a thing is detrimental to society, there is a way to justify it as right.
I’m returning here with this in mind, as my fuel and guiding light. I’m looking forward to hearing all your thoughts on what I have coming up.
What if I told you the best way to handle drug addiction in America is to legalize all drugs? You may think I'm crazy and in fact this line of thought is all but forbidden in our dialogue, but its been done in Portugal and Switzerland with huge success.
Ideology and principles are a double-edged sword. You need to have some conviction to operate and function decisively, we all need to make a snap judgment at some point or jump without full information -- a calculated or even uncalculated risk, based on our "perspective." It may be a great decision and you will get to write a self-congratulatory retrospective on your own awesomeness like many business leaders (Jack Welsh?), when in reality it maybe didnt have much to do with you at all. Or you may be burned and might have to be prepared to write a mea culpa like McNamara did -- reflecting on the horrible mistake that Vietnam was and the failure of his strategic decisions. Or you could refuse to reflect and reevaluate your past decisions and live in denial like Bush Jr.
But, without principles, you would have analysis paralysis and most likely you'd have that things are too complex to make a fully informed decision - and by the time you're ready to act, things have changed and maybe what you were trying to do is no longer possible. I'm thinking particularly here about Obama and healthcare reform -- he tried to make it "comprehensive" and bring everyone on board, by the time it was "done", its become politically impossible -- would have been better to act on conviction and face the consequences.
So yes, perspective is a interesting topic ;]
Post new comment