Mankind has thrived by standing on the shoulders of giants.
- Humanity rules. What made humanity successful? Why have humans succeeded through the tough times, managed to build and develop technology to rule the land, and are now looking forward to eventually taming and colonizing the solar system? Why have we (homo sapiens) managed, where our relatives the great apes or other hominids failed? Chimpanzees share 99% of our DNA and are faster than us in math, quicker and better in memory and observation, and are also physically much tougher and more durable.
Yet they struggle to match a 5-year-old human child when it comes to learning. The reason is that our (human) brains are mapped to teach, and children’s’ brains are mapped to learn, so our brains evolved upon those principals and we now have supercomputers on our shoulders that crave to teach and love to learn. The other primates were a little more selfish with information and ended up with a less evolved brain. I won’t get into the science but that’s basically how it is.
- Knowledge saved. Therefore, we kept fire, kept tools, and kept building upon them. We stand on the shoulders of giants and improve upon their scientific discoveries until a new genius comes and discovers the next giant leap; and so on and so forth.
The Arab civilization was once at the forefront of this thrust towards the future but at some point, we fizzled out. Now, all we can do is buy the best from other cultures and show them off! ’I have a Bentley’ brags my friend. Ok great, did you build it? Do you even know how it works?
- Stuck behind. Why aren’t we advancing? Some would say because we aren’t teaching each other. Information remains stagnant, and nobody wants to know new stuff or even cares. It’s hard to know what’s going on no matter where you are (ministry, hospital, office, mall) People just do things without explaining; so no information gets shared, so we can’t advance as a race.
- Role model. In Germany every step is explained all the time everywhere, whether it’s needed or not. I notice people explaining things just to explain, and for no other reason. At the airport they explain a new system implemented, the taxi explains the benefits of a train, the nurse explains why the new needle she’s using is better, the doctor explains the medicine and what each chemical does and why they’re using it.
They actually go to the cellular level explaining why cells behave the way they do. Everyone is aware of WHY things are happening, not just that they’re happening.
- Explain, yalla! That thoroughness is what breeds their success. That meticulous attention to detail is what makes them great. Today in Bahrain, you can’t even ask for an explanation because nobody’s in the mood to give one. If we’re to catch up to the rest of the world, we’re gonna need to care. Explain a bit more, and complain a bit less.
