First-Hand Experience: There's No Substitute

I had heard, seen, and read a lot about Italian drivers, and thought I had a pretty good conceptual understanding of how they're different from the American drivers I'm familiar with.  After all, I'd seen dozens of movies and TV shows, including some with both a car-related focus and some made for prospective visitors, so I felt comfortably well-informed.  And driving is something I do all the time and am a extremely comfortable with, so hey, no surprises could possibly await me.

I was wrong.

Spending two weeks all across Italy from Sicily to the Alps has finally educated me on Italian drivers.  Like in America, their habits and circumstances vary from place to place.  But from the mad almost-a-demolition-derby scramble in Sicily and Naples, where every car seems to have dents and broken mirrors, to the please-stay-away-from-my-Mercedes-while-I-hurtle-down-the-mountain thrill ride in the Alps, it dawned on me that it all makes sense in a very Italian sort of way.  While there are rules, markers, signs, and cops, the Italians seem to approach traffic like they approach food and family relations, with GUSTO.  They don't piddle around with polite waiting at traffic round-abouts, they barge in and get through!  If you want to go slow, you go slow.  If you want to go fast, you go fast.  And it all sort of works out.

To truly understand something, there's no substitute for hands-on, first-hand, in-person experience.  Ask anyone who has ever climbed a high mountain peak, or snorkeled in a reef, or watched lava explode on contact with the sea.  By reading or watching a screen you can get the general idea and learn a lot, but I've learned it's a mistake to mischaracterize that as actual knowledge or understanding.

It's the same with people, families, and culture.  If you'd like to understand a people or a country, for goodness' sakes GO THERE.  And don't make the mistake of preaching about them until you have.

How many of the world's current ills could we solve by sending people to places for first-hand experience?

Financial Crises

The logical conclusion reached from the financial crises in several European countries is that their governments spent too much.  Yet Washington has been spending recklessly for the past dozen years with no sign of slowing down.  It's like the lemming at the back of the pack, who sees his fellows plunging off the cliff--he could choose either to stop before he reaches the edge, or he could plunge to his demise with the others.  Guess which Washington has chosen.