The Saunterer

George Orwell on military experts always being wrong

    With firsthand experience of wrong predictions by military experts, George Orwell would understand why the U.S. is not getting its promised win in Iraq. Listen to him:

One way of feeling infallible is not to keep a diary. Looking back through the diary I kept in 1940 and 1941 I find that I was usually wrong when it was possible to be wrong. Yet I was not so wrong as the Military Experts. Experts of various schools were telling us in 1939 that the Maginot Line was impregnable, and that the Russo-German Pact had put an end to Hitler’s eastward expansion; in early 1940 they were telling us that the days of tank warfare were over; in mid 1940 they were telling us that the Germans would invade Britain forthwith; in mid 1941 that the Red army would fold in six weeks; in December, 1941, that Japan would collapse after 90 days; in July, 1942, that Egypt was lost - and so on, more or less indefinitely.

Where now are the men who told us those things? Still on the job, drawing fat salaries. Instead of the unsinkable battleship we have the unsinkable Military Expert. . . . (Quoted from volume III, p. 59, of As I Please: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.)

    Nothing limits this object lesson to the military and losing the Iraq war. Think of forecasters in government and business who deceive us about the reliability of their crystal balls.
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    For a brief biography of George Orwell, click here.

George Bernard Shaw on how to find the career that’s best for you

    For finding the career that’s best for you, choose work that uses your born talents, advised George Bernard Shaw, and that means first discovering what your born talents are. Although he doesn’t say it, try short experiments with a variety of work to discover them. Hear him:

I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be a musician. But I couldnt draw. I couldnt compose. If anyone had taught me I could have been a mediocre artist or painter or actor or singer or pianist. But nobody taught me; and I was a born writer. You must use the talent you have, not the talent you have only a taste for. You cannot really taste the talent you are born with, just as you cannot taste water because it is always in your mouth. . . . (Quoted in The Life of the Creative Spirit, p.212.)
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    For a brief biography of George Bernard Shaw, click here.