SAILING / LIFE #8 - The Big Questions
I have been asked, on occasion, “what are the principal similarities or isomorphisms between sailing and living?” In this posting I’m attempting to answer that question. Looked at on the detail level the points of congruence are too numerous to recount; but on a slightly more abstract level the similarity boils down to how one answers just two questions – one of which has 5 important sub-questions. The chart below shows how I conceive of these questions.
SAILING LIVING
1 What is my destination What is my life’s purpose?
2 What do I need to know? What is my education plan?
a) How to keep from sinking Knowledge, understanding and wisdom
b) How to equip and provision How do I “make a living”
c) How to manage the boat Ethics and governance
d) How to navigate Principled decisions
e) How to have a "happy" crew The pathway to peace/prosperity/freedom
A few explanations are in order.
- The sailor’s first question is, “What is my destination?” or “What locales do I want to experience aboard my boat?” For the non-sailor this question becomes, “What is my purpose?” or “What do I want to do with my life?” The destination question is ultimately about sensory pleasure-seeking; whereas the purpose question represents the desire to find meaning in life. Once the purpose question is answered, the individual can set sensory-based goals (destinations).
As an entrepreneurial friend asked me many years ago, in a discussion of goals, “If you don’t know where you are going, why would you expect to like it when you get there?”
- The second point of congruence, as I see it, is “What do I need to know?” or “What education do I need?” For the sailor, the specifics are:
- How to keep from sinking
- How to equip and provision the boat
- How to manage the boat at dockside and at sea
- How to navigate to the destination
- How to have a “happy” crew
To the non-sailor voyaging through life, these questions correspond to:
- What knowledge, understanding and wisdom do I need to cultivate (e.g. grammar, logic, and rhetoric)?
- How shall I make a living?
- How shall I incorporate ethics into my life?
- How can I make principled decisions?
- How can I find my way to a life of peace, prosperity and freedom?
The sailing curriculum is pretty much self-explanatory. But the non-sailing list requires some additional comment.
- Knowledge is information that you believe to be true. That belief may or may not be rational. If it is rational, that means you understand the information and have evidence that your belief in the truth of the knowledge has increased your intelligence – which is to say your ability to predict or control events in the real world. Wisdom, on the other hand, is the means by which you grasp the meaning or the significance of your knowledge.
- The choice of a livelihood leads to just 6 possible modalities:
- Forage – i.e. hunt, trap, fish, gather
- Farm – work the land; raise crops and livestock
- Trade – voluntary exchange of value
- Rob – Take by force (e.g. soldiers, bandits and pirates)
- Extort – Take by threat of force (e.g. Cops, traffic courts, legislators)
- Defraud – Take through trickery or deceit. (e.g. cartels, banks, and the corporations that depend on them)
- The best way I have found to make this livelihood choice is by applying a valid ethic...specifically: An act is ethical if it increases truth, awareness, love or creativity for at least one person (including the person acting) without limiting or diminishing any of these resources for anyone.
Starting with this definition, one can logically deduce a set of operational principles that allow one to apply the ethic on a consistent basis moment-to-moment. Here the reasoning: https://www.titanians.org/ethics-law-government .
- In the foregoing reasoning we have already provided the answer to the creation of peace, prosperity and freedom, because these and many other benefits flow freely and automatically from the maximization of truth, awareness, love and creativity.
You are welcome to “steal” the above formula. It is my prescription for having a “happy crew” aboard spaceship earth.
Bob Podolsky