By Dr Charles Leyman Kachitsa
Why is it that the ones with most knowledge in a particular field are not necessarily the persons who benefit from such abundance of knowledge? World known inventors for instance Alexander Bell, the inventor of telephone, never accumulated any notable wealth from his invention before his death. Thomas Edison the inventor of the light bulb is another example of a person with vast knowledge enabling him to come up with an ingenuity system that we are still using today in wonderment without any significant benefit materially going to him.
The same can be said of academics who at the highest level of knowledge, often are not the epitome of grandeur personal wealth yet they would have moulded people who go on to become ‘the have more than enough’ of this world. Perhaps it could be expected that professors of business schools will be owners of multi-million dollar companies and that law professors would in addition to imparting their excessive knowledge to learners, be the highest paid supreme court judges with none in the trade equal to them. However, as you know, that’s far from reality in our living world, nature does not work like that.
In any case, people individually have a given vocation and purpose on earth as dictated by the creator. For some it is to acquire knowledge in a particular field and share it to others for use often with a certain number becoming the wealthiest of the land leaving their teachers way below.
If knowledge in abundance was the only gateway to all qualified life of richness, primary and nursery school teachers would wishfully have been the wealthiest, for they are the foundation of all who later become the people with names in life. The teachers mould finer versions from an otherwise shapeless form of human beings to be a somebody. We all need to be thankful to all in our foundation years who made us so to the present. Life itself is a big teacher more than anything else. Of course, one could argue, knowledge has to be combined with wisdom and love in order to be more effective.
The quotes this week are from a book that narrates the puzzlement that people exhibit often when the y encounter others that do things differently from their own understanding and what they consider important social values. I am sure the selected quotations below from this book will enlighten you to one or two life lessons. Read and enjoy:
CULTURES AND ORGANIZATIONS by Geert Hofstede
“Different minds but common problems – The world is full of confrontations between people, groups, and nations who think, feel, and act differently. At the same time these people, groups, and nations, just like our twelve angry men are exposed to common problems which demand cooperation for their solution. ……..”
“Culture is learned, not inherited. It derives from one’s social environment, not from ones genes. Culture should be distinguished from human nature on one side, and from individual’s personality on the other …….., although exactly where the borders lie between human nature and culture, and between culture and personality, is a matter of discussion among social scientists.”
“What distinguishes the desirable from the desired is the nature of the norms involved. Norms are the standards for values that exist within a group or category of people. In the case of the desirable, the norm is absolute, pertaining to what is ethically right. In the case of the desired, the norm is statistical: it indicates the choices actually made by the majority. The desirable relates more to ideology, the desired to practical matters.”
“Social classes carry different class cultures. Social class is associated with educational opportunities and with a person’s occupation or profession; this even applies in countries which their governments call socialist, preaching a classless society. Education and occupation are in themselves powerful sources of cultural learning. There is no standard definition of social class which applies across all countries, and people in different countries distinguish different types and numbers of class. The criteria for allocating a person to a class are often cultural: symbols play an important role, such as accents in speaking the national language, the use and nonuse of certain words, and manners. The confrontation between the two jurors in Twelve Angry Men also contains a class component.”