.
• Ecc 9:13-16 . .This thing too I observed under the sun about wisdom, and
it affected me profoundly. There was a little city, with few men in it; and to
it came a great king, who surrounded it and built mighty siege works against
it. Residing in the city was a poor wise man who might have saved it with his
wisdom, but nobody thought of that poor man. So I observed: Wisdom is
better than valor; but a poor man's wisdom is scorned, and his words are
not heeded.
A pity that the truly wise are not always famous nor widely respected;
whereas the boastful, the narcissistic, the achievers, and the ambitious
always seem to find ample public opportunity to express their opinions, and
ways to get them implemented.
But unless you have access to millions of dollars, you can forget running for
either the US President, the US Senate, or State Governor. The poor stand
little chance running for office no matter how wise and capable they might
be because wisdom and ability alone are not enough. Political office is
typically won by the powerful, the influential, and/or those who have very
rich friends and the support of very large special interests.
• Ecc 9:17 . .The words of the wise heard in quietness are better than the
shouting of a ruler among fools.
Unfortunately, the words of the wise are all too often heard in private. They
seldom have a large public audience because the wise are neither popular,
nor charismatic. The masses want to be entertained by a silver-tongued
speaker of grand verbiage and a promoter of impossible social agendas.
Bombastic plans for the future seem to be the tried and true method of
every successful politician. They offer hope you can believe in; but in reality,
all they actually have to offer are impossible ideals.
• Ecc 9:18 . .Wisdom is more valuable than weapons of war, but a single
error destroys much of value.
Although wisdom may have more value than a cruise missile, it isn't nearly
as effective as that weapon in its purpose. It should be noted that a cruise
missile isn't launched indiscriminately; but usually launched only after the
wisdom of diplomacy has run its course and left the wisdom of warfare no
choice but to do its thing; and its thing these days can be the destruction of
an entire city by just one bomb.
Equipment and munitions, no matter how sophisticated nor how destructive,
are wasted in the hands of those untrained and unskilled in their use. So
wisdom and weapons of war work together for a victory. But obviously
wisdom is the more valuable of the two because it is through wisdom that
war materiel is employed to its best effect.
Former US President John F. Kennedy once commented in a speech: Every
man woman and child is under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the
slenderest thread, capable of being cut at any moment by accident,
miscalculation, or by madness.
In other words, geniuses figured out how to harness fission, but its
application is sometimes subject to the arbitrary discretion of fools and
Murphy's law.
A really good example of a single error destroying much of value was a 1998
NASA Mars robotic probe that failed to achieve its intended orbit around
Mars due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non
SI units of pound (force)-seconds (lbf•s) instead of the SI units of newton
seconds (N•s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed.
As a result of that one software boo-boo; the spacecraft encountered Mars
on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, causing it to pass
through the upper atmosphere and disintegrate. All the ingenious designing
and engineering that went into constructing a perfectly good orbiter, and
getting it out to Mars, went for naught.
Another good example was the Hubble Space Telescope flub. Nobody
physically tested the Hubble's optics before sending the machine into near
earth orbit because a computer model convinced the telescope's makers that
everything was okay as-is and needed no testing. As a result, Hubble's initial
data produced images little better than those seen by an elderly person with
cataracts. Ouch!
_
• Ecc 9:13-16 . .This thing too I observed under the sun about wisdom, and
it affected me profoundly. There was a little city, with few men in it; and to
it came a great king, who surrounded it and built mighty siege works against
it. Residing in the city was a poor wise man who might have saved it with his
wisdom, but nobody thought of that poor man. So I observed: Wisdom is
better than valor; but a poor man's wisdom is scorned, and his words are
not heeded.
A pity that the truly wise are not always famous nor widely respected;
whereas the boastful, the narcissistic, the achievers, and the ambitious
always seem to find ample public opportunity to express their opinions, and
ways to get them implemented.
But unless you have access to millions of dollars, you can forget running for
either the US President, the US Senate, or State Governor. The poor stand
little chance running for office no matter how wise and capable they might
be because wisdom and ability alone are not enough. Political office is
typically won by the powerful, the influential, and/or those who have very
rich friends and the support of very large special interests.
• Ecc 9:17 . .The words of the wise heard in quietness are better than the
shouting of a ruler among fools.
Unfortunately, the words of the wise are all too often heard in private. They
seldom have a large public audience because the wise are neither popular,
nor charismatic. The masses want to be entertained by a silver-tongued
speaker of grand verbiage and a promoter of impossible social agendas.
Bombastic plans for the future seem to be the tried and true method of
every successful politician. They offer hope you can believe in; but in reality,
all they actually have to offer are impossible ideals.
• Ecc 9:18 . .Wisdom is more valuable than weapons of war, but a single
error destroys much of value.
Although wisdom may have more value than a cruise missile, it isn't nearly
as effective as that weapon in its purpose. It should be noted that a cruise
missile isn't launched indiscriminately; but usually launched only after the
wisdom of diplomacy has run its course and left the wisdom of warfare no
choice but to do its thing; and its thing these days can be the destruction of
an entire city by just one bomb.
Equipment and munitions, no matter how sophisticated nor how destructive,
are wasted in the hands of those untrained and unskilled in their use. So
wisdom and weapons of war work together for a victory. But obviously
wisdom is the more valuable of the two because it is through wisdom that
war materiel is employed to its best effect.
Former US President John F. Kennedy once commented in a speech: Every
man woman and child is under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the
slenderest thread, capable of being cut at any moment by accident,
miscalculation, or by madness.
In other words, geniuses figured out how to harness fission, but its
application is sometimes subject to the arbitrary discretion of fools and
Murphy's law.
A really good example of a single error destroying much of value was a 1998
NASA Mars robotic probe that failed to achieve its intended orbit around
Mars due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non
SI units of pound (force)-seconds (lbf•s) instead of the SI units of newton
seconds (N•s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed.
As a result of that one software boo-boo; the spacecraft encountered Mars
on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, causing it to pass
through the upper atmosphere and disintegrate. All the ingenious designing
and engineering that went into constructing a perfectly good orbiter, and
getting it out to Mars, went for naught.
Another good example was the Hubble Space Telescope flub. Nobody
physically tested the Hubble's optics before sending the machine into near
earth orbit because a computer model convinced the telescope's makers that
everything was okay as-is and needed no testing. As a result, Hubble's initial
data produced images little better than those seen by an elderly person with
cataracts. Ouch!
_
