If you hear for the first time that, “98.8% of your genes are similar to monkeys genes”,
You will obvious be surprised, “Like really?! Is this even true?”
As you process this information you will try to seek for similarities of monkeys appearances and behaviors in comparison to human being, this will help you to grasp the idea presented to you. Whether, this fact is valid or not, you will initially try to relate how monkeys and human beings are similar to each other by pre-assuming that they might actually be very similar.
But let me spoil you a little more and tell buy telling you that you share 75% of genes with banana
Now this round you will totally feel different, which is kind of weird, whether this is true or false, you will instantly try to picture what is common between you and banana and all you will constantly end up with, will be nothing in common. But here is the catch, when you analyze the second fact you started by rejecting the possibility of banana and human been alike.
This kind of quick rationalization of facts before actual understanding of what the fact itself mean is very common to human beings. In fact, as human beings we tend to connect or relate to information before we absorb it as the fact, we always looks for links and patterns and if those connections are correct we properly understood the fact, but if those connections are corrupt we misunderstood the facts or dismiss it. Unfortunately facts have no motives or agendas but rather they are just empirical truths backed by observed data or phenomenon, saying this, when facts are presented we always intuitively tend to capture motives and implications, but not the fact itself. Again this is a typical human approach. This introduction might puzzle you but still you might ask me “Bro, does this really have any significance?”, my simple answer is “Yeah! Absolutely!”. If you imagine for a minute every statement you personally consider to be a solid fact or fallacy was not initially accepted by you because it’s a fact but rather was the initial condition which determine it to be regarded as a fact or fallacy statement when represent to you. To emphasis on this let us have a look on some of several misguided facts presented to the mass by media or government.
More than 95% of business go bankrupt within 5 years of operation.
Like how we mentioned in our introduction about the similarity between apes, bananas and human beings; the presented facts claimed for similarities but doesn’t explicitly explain what kind of similarities was examined. In addition to that all living organisms have particular kind of DNA molecules, in grand scale when it comes to DNA it’s not only about the building blocks of DNA but rather how those building blocks are arranged, it’s kind of absurd to conclude 3 houses are similar because both of them were built by 10,000 similar blocks. To make long strong short a person who believe in evolution can easily adopt the fact, not because it actually make sense but rather because it correlate with some of his/her previous beliefs.
Back to business, it’s true that most of business disappear within 5 years of their launch. But that just the fact,
For ordinary person who is not interested on business this fact may induce fear and paralyzed him/her to make any decision when business opportunity presented to him/her. However, if you are curious with business you will definitely try to dissect the fact much more deeper, you can ask your self the following questions,
How many in 95% have practical knowledge on that business before launch?
How many in 95% have financial management experience before starting business?
How many in 95% were affected by change in government policies?
How many in 95% were actually have sustainable demand of their products at their launch?
How many in 95% have conflict of interest with other business at their launch?
You can go on and on and realize that there are many several things to consider at early stages of business to lower that number and probably fall in 5%. Contrary to first round, we have arrived to different kind of conclusion that there are things to consider in order to reduce the probability of business we launch to go bankrupt. Regardless on how the fact presented to individuals, different individuals may arrive on different conclusion based on pre-conceived ideologies. In similar manner government can use this fact to justify any agenda or policies which may appeal to citizen even if those policies have nothing to do with the fact itself. Let us switch from business to education,
Increase in unemployment rate is due to failure in education system.
Before proceeding any further it’s very important to realize the following propositions,
1st, by default, regardless of how you define employment, the chances of uneducated individual to be employed are remarkably low compared to educated individuals.
2nd, education system was not designed to eradicated unemployment but rather to prepare candidates who might fit the demand of job market at particular time.
3rd, regardless of what field they are within, educated individual are easily to train and adopt to particular industry since they have been exposed to basic principles of that particular field.
Obviously there are many areas to be improved in our current education system but there is also a lot to learn from existing education system. The general misconception which frequently advocated by education activist is using available loopholes for improvements as reasons to dismiss the existing education system. In addition to that, there have been several number of candidates who dropout from school and become disproportional successfully, regardless of this candidates being very few they somehow capture the attention of the media and considered as some kind of alternatives rather than been anomalies, blinded by these anomalies, some have tried to quit their learning curve and just do things their own way. What most of these quitter or dropouts fail to grasp is the actual number of those who quit and be successful on their career or business compared to those who finish the curve and become successful on their careers or business. In summary, following the learning path to the end has comparable better success odds than quitting at the middle. Finally, let us shift gears to economics,
Government can improve individual economy by regulating prices in market.
I once have long discussion on this specific category kindly check Price Madness.
So, what is the conclusion to this?
The main aim of this article was not to dismiss a number of several facts we constantly face but rather to be more attentive when something appealing get presented to us. There are many approaches to achieve right mindset while facing particular facts, one of the easiest to adopt is by becoming a respectful critique. You might ask why should I be respectful for something I’m not sure of it’s validity?!, Well the reason is straight, When people present facts they actually attach a huge amount of emotions to the fact. The statement may be a fallacy by itself but the way you approach an individual is as critical as the way you debunk the validity of one’s ideas. But maybe apart from dealing with other individuals the other important purpose of this article was to put emphasis on actions you take based on information you receive from someone or somewhere else.
Afromist 