Jon Carroll has been a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle for a good many years. He seems to want to try to reveal the truth about the way the zoo works...not the one where the tiger jumped out and ate the visitor, recently, although there is that, but the bigger zoo, the one in which we inmates are also the keepers.
In order to do things effectively, we, of course, must observe what goes on around us so that we can yell, "Stop! You're about to trip over the same stone as Charlie did last week and fall into the hole."
Poor Charlie.
Poor Us.
For we never listen, do we?
Trip!
Plop!
Over we go, "ass over teakettle," as the old saying goes.
Not only don't we listen, but half the time we don't even look.
As the fellow in the column says,
"It is hard to understand something when your
compensation depends on your not understanding
it."
Or, as someone else said, "You can't see what you can't believe."
You can believe that.
Jon Carroll says, "People see what they want to see. How the world works is not a secret."
Observing correctly requires two difficult-to-come-by aspects of character: integrity and wisdom.
How often do you see these defined?
Integrity: The willingness to inquire further even when it appears against your immediate interest to do so. Perform the inquiry, with integrity, and chalk the unwanted result up to long-term gain. Richard Feynman, in "Cargo Cult Science," defines integrity in investigation as leaning over backwards to show how you might be wrong. Feynman is a secular saint for saying things like this.
Wisdom: Knowing what not to believe. By the time you learn what not to believe, you're old. That must be why the ancients had their wizards and sages, the ones with all the correct answers, wearing long beards and using a walking stick. Have you seen any long beards and walking sticks running things in Washington lately? Neither have I.
Work with these.
You could do a lot worse.