အရင္အပတ္က တင္ခဲ့တဲ့ အေပ်ာ္တမ္းသမား ရဲ.မူရင္းပါ ။ မူရင္းစာေရးဆရာရဲ. သေရာ္ကြက္ေလးေတြကုိ နွစ္သက္မိပါတယ္ ။
The Avenging Amateur
By KURT ANDERSEN
By KURT ANDERSEN
Time (Monday, Aug. 10, 2009)
The financial crisis came about because we got complacent, depending on all-knowing financial experts — mortgage lenders, Wall Street sharpers, the Federal Reserve — to run our system expertly. But then the experts did the same thing, imagining that they had laid off all their risks on other experts. Until finally the last expert down the line turned out to be just another greater fool, and the system crashed.
We still need experts. But we can no longer abdicate judgment to them or to the system they've cobbled together. This country, after all, was created by passionately engaged amateurs. The American spirit really is the amateur spirit. The great mass of European settlers were amateur explorers, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren who created the U.S. were amateur politicians. "I see democracy," the late historian Daniel Boorstin wrote, as "government by amateurs, as a way of confessing the limits of our knowledge." In the early 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville approvingly noted the absence of "public careers" in America — that is, the scarcity of professional politicians.
Back then, amateur was an entirely positive adjective. An amateur pursuit meant something that one pursued — a field of study, an artistic enterprise, a craft — not unseriously, but out of love rather than merely to earn a living.
Amateurs do the things they want to do in the ways they want to do them. They don't worry too much about breaking rules and aren't paralyzed by a fear of imperfection or even failure. Active citizenship is all about tapping into one's amateur spirit. "But hold on," you say. "I will never understand credit-default swaps or know how to determine the correct leverage ratio for banks." Me neither, and I don't want to depend on an amateur physician telling me how to manage my health. But we can trust our reality-based hunches about fishy-looking procedures and unsustainable projects and demand that the supposed experts explain their supposed expertise in ways we do understand The American character is two-sided to an extreme and paradoxical degree. On the one hand, we are sober and practical and commonsensical, but on the other hand, we are wild and crazy speculators. The full-blown amateur spirit derives from this same paradox. Even as we indulge our native chutzpah — Live the dream! To hell with the naysayers! — as a practical matter, it also requires a profound humility, since the amateur must throw himself into situations where he's uncertain and even ignorant, and therefore obliged to figure out new ways of seeing problems and fresh ways of solving them. At this particular American inflection point, after the crash and before the rebuild, frankly admitting that we aren't absolutely certain how to proceed is liberating, and crucial. I like paradoxes, which is why, even though I'm not particularly religious, Zen Buddhism has always appealed to me. Take the paradoxical state that Buddhists seek to achieve, what they call sho-shin, or "beginner's mind." The 20th century Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, who spent the last dozen years of his life in America, famously wrote that "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." Which sounds to me very much like the core of Boorstin's amateur spirit. "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance," Boorstin wrote, "but the illusion of knowledge."
This isn't just airy-fairy philosophy: it's real, and it works. A decade after Steve Jobs co-founded Apple, he was purged by his own board, but after the sense of betrayal passed, and he went on to build Pixar and oversee Apple's glorious renewal, he realized his personal reset had been a blessing in disguise. "The heaviness of being successful," Jobs has said of his firing, "was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." I happen to know what Jobs means: my sacking as editor of New York magazine 13 years ago freed me to reinvent myself as a novelist and public-radio host. Getting fired was traumatic. Finding my way since has been thrilling and immensely gratifying. May America and Americans have such good luck figuring out how to climb out of the holes we find ourselves in now.
Notes :
come about (that…….) ~ (phr v) to happen : Can you tell me how the accident came about?
complacent (about sb/sth) ~ (adj) too satisfied with yourself or with a situation, so that you do not feel that any change is necessary; showing or feeling complacency: a dangerously complacent attitude to the increase in unemployment. We must not become complacent about progress.
sharper ~ (n) a professional gambler
abdicate ~ (v) to give up the position of being king or queen : He abdicated in favour of his son. She was forced to abdicate the throne of Spain. နန္းစြန္.သည္ ။
cobble sth together~ (phr v) to produce sth quickly and without great care or efforts, so that it can be used but is not perfect: The essay was cobbled together from some old notes. ရရာနွင့္ စပ္ဟပ္ျပဳလုပ္သည္ ။ လြယ္လြယ္နွင့္ ျဖစ္ကတတ္ဆန္းလုပ္သည္ ။
active citizen ~ (n) a person who is actively involved in trying to improve things in their local community
be all about sb/sth ~ used to say what the most important aspect of sth is
credit default swap ~ (CDS) is a swap contract in which the buyer of the CDS makes a series of payments to the seller and, in exchange, receives a payoff if a credit instrument – typically a bond or loan – goes into default ရႈံးနုိင္ေျခရွိမႈကုိ လက္လႊဲ ေရာင္းဝယ္ျခင္း (သင့္ေလ်ာ္သလုိ နားလည္လြယ္ေအာင္ ဘာသာျပန္ထားျခင္းသာ ျဖစ္ပါသည္ ။)
leverage ~ (n) အရင္းဆပြါးကိန္း (ေငြေၾကးေဈးကြက္မွ စကားလုံးျဖစ္ပါသည္ ။ မိမိဘာသာ သင့္ေလ်ာ္ေအာင္ျပန္ဆုိထားျခင္းျဖစ္သည္ ။ )
hold on ~ (infml) used to tell sb to wait or stop: Hold on a minute while I get my breath back. Hold on! This isn’t the right road.
fishy ~ (adj) that makes you suspicious because it seems dishonest
fishy-looking ~ မသကၤာဖြယ္ရာ ။ မဟုတ္တရုတ္ ။
neither ~ (adv) used to show that a negative statement is also true of sb/sth else: He didn’t remember and neither did I. I hadn’t been to New york before and neither had Jane.
neither ~ (infml) I don’t know. Me neither.
hunches ~ ထင္ျမင္ခ်က္ ။
sober ~ (adj) တည္ၾကည္ေသာ ။ တည္ျငိမ္ေအးေဆးေသာ ။ သင့္တင့္ေလွ်ာက္ပတ္ေသာ ။ အလြန္အကြ်ံ မဟုတ္ေသာ ။
chutzpah ~ (n) behaviour, or a person’s attitude, that is rude or shocking but so confident that people may feel forced to admire it သဲထိတ္ရင္ဖုိ ၊ ရင္တုန္ပန္းတုန္ ။
profound ~ (adj) 1. very great; felt or experienced very strongly: profound changes in earth’s climate 2. showing great knowledge or understanding: profound insights; a profound book 3. needing a lot of study or thought: profound questions about life and death 4. (medical) very serious; complete: profound disability
indulge ~ (v) (~ in sth)(~yourself with sth) to allow yourself to have or do sth that you like, especially sth that is considered bad for you: They went into town to indulge in some serious shopping. Indulge myself with a long hot bath. အရသာေတြ.သည္ ။ က်ဴးလြန္သည္ ။ ေမြ.ေလ်ာ္သည္ ။ အလုိလုိက္သည္ ။
naysayer ~ (n) a person who habitually express negative or pessimistic views: Despite a general feeling that things were going well, a few naysayers tried to cast gloom.
full-blown ~ (adj) fully or completely developed; an idea expanded into a full-blown novel
appeal to sb ~ (phr v) to attract or interest sb စိတ္ကုိ စြဲေဆာင္နုိင္စြမ္းရွိသည္ ။
The financial crisis came about because we got complacent, depending on all-knowing financial experts — mortgage lenders, Wall Street sharpers, the Federal Reserve — to run our system expertly. But then the experts did the same thing, imagining that they had laid off all their risks on other experts. Until finally the last expert down the line turned out to be just another greater fool, and the system crashed.
We still need experts. But we can no longer abdicate judgment to them or to the system they've cobbled together. This country, after all, was created by passionately engaged amateurs. The American spirit really is the amateur spirit. The great mass of European settlers were amateur explorers, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren who created the U.S. were amateur politicians. "I see democracy," the late historian Daniel Boorstin wrote, as "government by amateurs, as a way of confessing the limits of our knowledge." In the early 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville approvingly noted the absence of "public careers" in America — that is, the scarcity of professional politicians.
Back then, amateur was an entirely positive adjective. An amateur pursuit meant something that one pursued — a field of study, an artistic enterprise, a craft — not unseriously, but out of love rather than merely to earn a living.
Amateurs do the things they want to do in the ways they want to do them. They don't worry too much about breaking rules and aren't paralyzed by a fear of imperfection or even failure. Active citizenship is all about tapping into one's amateur spirit. "But hold on," you say. "I will never understand credit-default swaps or know how to determine the correct leverage ratio for banks." Me neither, and I don't want to depend on an amateur physician telling me how to manage my health. But we can trust our reality-based hunches about fishy-looking procedures and unsustainable projects and demand that the supposed experts explain their supposed expertise in ways we do understand The American character is two-sided to an extreme and paradoxical degree. On the one hand, we are sober and practical and commonsensical, but on the other hand, we are wild and crazy speculators. The full-blown amateur spirit derives from this same paradox. Even as we indulge our native chutzpah — Live the dream! To hell with the naysayers! — as a practical matter, it also requires a profound humility, since the amateur must throw himself into situations where he's uncertain and even ignorant, and therefore obliged to figure out new ways of seeing problems and fresh ways of solving them. At this particular American inflection point, after the crash and before the rebuild, frankly admitting that we aren't absolutely certain how to proceed is liberating, and crucial. I like paradoxes, which is why, even though I'm not particularly religious, Zen Buddhism has always appealed to me. Take the paradoxical state that Buddhists seek to achieve, what they call sho-shin, or "beginner's mind." The 20th century Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, who spent the last dozen years of his life in America, famously wrote that "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." Which sounds to me very much like the core of Boorstin's amateur spirit. "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance," Boorstin wrote, "but the illusion of knowledge."
This isn't just airy-fairy philosophy: it's real, and it works. A decade after Steve Jobs co-founded Apple, he was purged by his own board, but after the sense of betrayal passed, and he went on to build Pixar and oversee Apple's glorious renewal, he realized his personal reset had been a blessing in disguise. "The heaviness of being successful," Jobs has said of his firing, "was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." I happen to know what Jobs means: my sacking as editor of New York magazine 13 years ago freed me to reinvent myself as a novelist and public-radio host. Getting fired was traumatic. Finding my way since has been thrilling and immensely gratifying. May America and Americans have such good luck figuring out how to climb out of the holes we find ourselves in now.
Notes :
come about (that…….) ~ (phr v) to happen : Can you tell me how the accident came about?
complacent (about sb/sth) ~ (adj) too satisfied with yourself or with a situation, so that you do not feel that any change is necessary; showing or feeling complacency: a dangerously complacent attitude to the increase in unemployment. We must not become complacent about progress.
sharper ~ (n) a professional gambler
abdicate ~ (v) to give up the position of being king or queen : He abdicated in favour of his son. She was forced to abdicate the throne of Spain. နန္းစြန္.သည္ ။
cobble sth together~ (phr v) to produce sth quickly and without great care or efforts, so that it can be used but is not perfect: The essay was cobbled together from some old notes. ရရာနွင့္ စပ္ဟပ္ျပဳလုပ္သည္ ။ လြယ္လြယ္နွင့္ ျဖစ္ကတတ္ဆန္းလုပ္သည္ ။
active citizen ~ (n) a person who is actively involved in trying to improve things in their local community
be all about sb/sth ~ used to say what the most important aspect of sth is
credit default swap ~ (CDS) is a swap contract in which the buyer of the CDS makes a series of payments to the seller and, in exchange, receives a payoff if a credit instrument – typically a bond or loan – goes into default ရႈံးနုိင္ေျခရွိမႈကုိ လက္လႊဲ ေရာင္းဝယ္ျခင္း (သင့္ေလ်ာ္သလုိ နားလည္လြယ္ေအာင္ ဘာသာျပန္ထားျခင္းသာ ျဖစ္ပါသည္ ။)
leverage ~ (n) အရင္းဆပြါးကိန္း (ေငြေၾကးေဈးကြက္မွ စကားလုံးျဖစ္ပါသည္ ။ မိမိဘာသာ သင့္ေလ်ာ္ေအာင္ျပန္ဆုိထားျခင္းျဖစ္သည္ ။ )
hold on ~ (infml) used to tell sb to wait or stop: Hold on a minute while I get my breath back. Hold on! This isn’t the right road.
fishy ~ (adj) that makes you suspicious because it seems dishonest
fishy-looking ~ မသကၤာဖြယ္ရာ ။ မဟုတ္တရုတ္ ။
neither ~ (adv) used to show that a negative statement is also true of sb/sth else: He didn’t remember and neither did I. I hadn’t been to New york before and neither had Jane.
neither ~ (infml) I don’t know. Me neither.
hunches ~ ထင္ျမင္ခ်က္ ။
sober ~ (adj) တည္ၾကည္ေသာ ။ တည္ျငိမ္ေအးေဆးေသာ ။ သင့္တင့္ေလွ်ာက္ပတ္ေသာ ။ အလြန္အကြ်ံ မဟုတ္ေသာ ။
chutzpah ~ (n) behaviour, or a person’s attitude, that is rude or shocking but so confident that people may feel forced to admire it သဲထိတ္ရင္ဖုိ ၊ ရင္တုန္ပန္းတုန္ ။
profound ~ (adj) 1. very great; felt or experienced very strongly: profound changes in earth’s climate 2. showing great knowledge or understanding: profound insights; a profound book 3. needing a lot of study or thought: profound questions about life and death 4. (medical) very serious; complete: profound disability
indulge ~ (v) (~ in sth)(~yourself with sth) to allow yourself to have or do sth that you like, especially sth that is considered bad for you: They went into town to indulge in some serious shopping. Indulge myself with a long hot bath. အရသာေတြ.သည္ ။ က်ဴးလြန္သည္ ။ ေမြ.ေလ်ာ္သည္ ။ အလုိလုိက္သည္ ။
naysayer ~ (n) a person who habitually express negative or pessimistic views: Despite a general feeling that things were going well, a few naysayers tried to cast gloom.
full-blown ~ (adj) fully or completely developed; an idea expanded into a full-blown novel
appeal to sb ~ (phr v) to attract or interest sb စိတ္ကုိ စြဲေဆာင္နုိင္စြမ္းရွိသည္ ။
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