[This side of paradise. The egotist becomes a parsonage] F. Scott Fitzgerald
“If you’d have gone to college you’d have been struck by the fact that the men there would work twice as hard for any one of a hundred petty honors as those other men did who were earning their way through.”
“The idea that to make a man work you’ve got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long we’ve forgotten there’s any other way. We’ve made a world where that’s necessary. Let me tell you” — “If there were ten men insured against either wealth or starvation, and offered a green ribbon for five hours’ work a day an a blue ribbon for ten hours’ work a day, nine out of ten of them would be trying for the blue ribbon.”
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January 19th, 2010
It might seem a bit cliché to begin this knowledge management blog with the story of the rich man who wanders into the forest. I would love to mention it but my good friend Samuel has beaten me to it and also saved me the trouble with posting it at his blog.
So let’s cut to the chase instead. Who am I? At this moment in time it might be easy to provide what Antoine de Saint Exupery might consider ‘metrics for grown-ups’ such as my age, my education and my life experience so far but I shan’t bore the reader with such trivialities. Rather, I wish to tell you, reader, that I am now in the cyclic process of discovering and re-discovering, every day, exactly who I am and would pose the philosophic question back to you too. Who are you? Are you your job? Do you do what you love or love what you do? Do you think therefore you are? What matters to you most deeply and where have you come from? Do you exercise true wisdom when you make your decisions by taking into consideration the thoughts of others? Maybe you are well on your way to true enlightenment or you might have forgotten where you’ve come from and need to just stop for a moment and do some realignment? I’d love to know. Just to highlight here, it was Bob Marley who explored this in both Exodus and Buffalo Solider; from which I quote “We know where were going, We know where we’re from.” It was also Sun Zi, or ‘Sun Tzu’ to us Westerners, who taught us that knowing yourself is half the battle won. He also said that knowing our enemy would be the other half of the battle. So who might our enemy be? Perhaps the greatest enemy of man is knowledge and more decisively the lack of it. Knowledge may bring us closer to God or whomever our chosen religion seeks refuge in.
My ‘who am I’ definition might call upon the knowledge I have gained from my little experience on this planet, but alas, I’ve finally re-rooted myself and settled back into my old way of thinking that that the more I know, the less I know. Not in a negative connotation at all, but in the most beautiful one that has opened up my thirst for knowledge even more. After all, a little education might be a dangerous thing, but it is a great start if one sees it as a solid foundation for building upon.
Where am I going then if I know where I’ve come from? Even though it is more powerful for others to ask me this, I do ask this myself every day. Where am I going? Well that is exactly what this blog is all about. Where I am going right now is on a quest for knowledge and a deeper understanding of the world. You my dear reader are invited to join my along this quest and be my faithful aid and companion. Afterall, my good professor tells me that in the 21st Century, knowledge is powerful, yes, but when knowledge is shared then that is where the real power starts to compound and flourish. Come, let us share knowledge and grow wiser together. I thank you for stumbling on this blog and stopping to read until this point. I hope it has been insightful and, naturally, your comments are more than welcome. Let the knowledge sharing begin!
Mark
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