Past

Jean was inspired to post an interesting essay by a comment that Gail left on my post Belief and by my post Friendship. Caught up? I hope so, because now I'm going to post about what Jean wrote in her post Present.

Jean's thesis was that the present (meaning now) is a present (meaning a gift) to us. So, to take her metaphor further, how we unwrap (live) our present each day determines if our present (now) is good or bad.

A valid point. We, including me, have a terrible tendency to assume that the past will be the future. In fact, we work to make that so. We like routine. We like the same foods, the same job, the same drive to work. We might have a wild rebellion and change our lives, but then we quickly fall back into a routine. In some ways, this is good. Productivity requires a certain amount of routine; we can't be constantly reinventing the wheel when actually our purpose is to build a car. We can build on the past in many productive ways.

The problem lies in holding on to the past too long and assuming the past is better than the present or the future. Not that it isn't true at times. In a rational world, we would look at the past and at the future and make a decision based on the merits of whatever we were evaluating. For instance, let's say we have already build a Widget. We know widget well. We know its advantages and problems. Now a person comes up an idea for Whichwhat that will do the job of the Widget and might do it better, but will also have its problems since everything does. Do we change from Widgets to Whichwhats? We know the Widget. It's familiar. We don't have to change a thing to use it. We don't have to learn anything new. But the Whichwhat might be better. Might be a lot better.

In that mythical rational world, we'd test the Whichwhat, and if it was better, we'd switch to it. Many times we operate under the delusion that the Free Market will do, i.e. the best product will win. Doesn't work that way. What the Free Market actually does is allow the best SELLING product to win. Doesn't matter if the best product is a lot better than the best selling product. Eventually the best product will fall by the wayside to the best selling product.

Of course, sometimes the best product will find a niche. Like Apple computers, for instance. Sometimes it will simply disappear. Like Betamax video tapes.

My point is that marketing rules the world, not quality.

Actually that wasn't my point. I think I lost my point.

No, wait, here it is. The past doesn't necessarily dictate the future. We can change it. By using our present effectively, we don't have to repeat the past. We can choose better relationships, better jobs, better ideas, better ideals. It's possible. We can make our future into a better present.

We just have to have the courage.

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