no good deed goes unpunished
What me, bitter? I hope not.
When as a child I set out to find answers, I thought that any answers would be welcomed with open arms. I thought I would be a hero. I thought that, even if others did not understand or accept all the details, they would praise and respect someone who had set his sights so high. In hindsight, I was rather foolish.
If a person finds better answers, they will be different from what people are believing or doing already. If the answers are dramatically or radically different, they will be difficult to understand. If they were obvious, people would have accepted them long ago.
In other words, if you find radically better answers, you are in effect, saying to everyone else "you are wrong!" and if you try to explain why, they will not understand. Do you think this will make you popular?
But it gets worse. Answers are not easy to find. they require a great deal of time and effort. I sweated blood (metaphorically) over some of these issues. Progress on some ideas took years. I was thinking about these when my peers were thinking about - and investing in - money and sex. In other words, I took time away from my career and my relationships. So, from an outsider's point of view, I now have LESS to offer. Less money, fewer social skills, less fun, less of what everyone else thinks is desirable.
It is a strange irony. If you find much better answers, you become a disappointment - even an enemy - to the ones you are trying to help. If you sacrifice your time and effort to make big improvements, you are punished severely. Nobody does this deliberately. It is just a natural result of being different.
Please remember that this is a general principle that applies to ANYTHING new and very different. And it is often a good principle because most new ideas will tend to be wrong. But my point is that great good is punished as much as if it were great evil. Small improvements have a better chance of success, but large improvements? Be prepared for great opposition from those you want to help.
It's a funny old world.
posted by Chris Tolworthy at 10:22 AM
1 Comments:
I read an interesting essay several months ago about the time before the war in Iraq. There were people who were right about the war. Those people said, "There are no weapons of mass destruction. Let the UN do its job. America should not be the aggressor. This is a bad idea."
Then, there were the people who were wrong about the war. Many of those people are now willing to admit (eager to admit) that the war was a huge mistake, that they never should have approved the effort in Congress, etc.
But nobody wants to hear from the people who were right all along. It's OK to admit you were wrong. But it's not OK to have been right in the first place.
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