“Saint Augustine declared that “the world is a book, and those who have not traveled have read only one page.” Only firsthand experience can validate or challenge our intuitions, giving us confidence about risky political decisions in a complex world of instant feedback loops and unintended consequences. During travel, perception and thought merge; a contradiction can emerge as a truth to be revealed, not some exception to be disproved. Such ambiguity is the corollary of complexity, after all. Reality is famously resistant to theories that measure the world according to what it should be rather than how it really is. Instead, exploring the patterns of the second world aesthetically, honoring the value of purely sensory judgments — this exposes characteristics that are common to the entire second world; differences are revealed to be more relative than absolute.”
–Parag Khanna, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008)
June 29th, 2009 at 7:20 am
I couldn’t agree more!
June 29th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Yes. If you try to reduce your experience of others or the world to your own theoretical projections, you miss out on the wild, evolving, pulsing, living, and often beautifully complex truth of “what is.”
June 29th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
In terms of travel, I believe we would all do well to “[honor] the value of purely sensory judgments…” in all three worlds, and not just in Khanna’s second world. For me, at least, that has offered a different and insightful perspective into his first world.
June 29th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
I’d definitely recommend “The Second World” as well — it’s about how the US, China, and Europe are competing for influence in the rest of the world, but the author brilliantly weaves his thesis into a travel narrative as he travels through the nations of the ’second world.’
June 30th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Great quote. I’ll look out for the book.
I think the world is now too fast-paced for us to continue to place so much emphasis on theory and knowing before we start living and doing.
The most successful in this era are those who prioritise action and real-world feedback over perfect plans and research on paper.
Cath
July 1st, 2009 at 3:37 am
One of those indelible wisdoms, shared by a professor who mentored me in college, was: “There is more than one path to the same end.” Now, if I could only stay mindfully consistent in knowing, trusting, and living the truth that “there are no perfect plans.” Life often happens more beautifully than we could have imagined when we, on some level, just “show up” and participate with “what is.”