looking back on past experience, a human strategy, aphorism 420

420


A thought can race on ahead of the act, but it can do nothing in that future.  As we all know, action lies only in the here and now, and it is near that fixed point where thought is needed the most but where it has too little influence.  Thought, to be truly effective, must serve as trainer, must drill, if it is to have the totality of the man react at the opportune moment toward a desired effect.  And here, in knowing what to do, one can argue that it is not a leaping ahead, but a looking back on past experience, recognizing that an experience will repeat in a similar way, and that the task is to manipulate some key element in that repetition.  Our thoughts of the future, of prophecy, are divined from the entrails of our past repetitions.

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