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Commitment X Intelligence = Success
I saw one of these fascinating TED stories a couple of days ago. A story about restoring a complex ecological balance to a place that suffered what seemed to be an irreversible deforestation and ecological collapse due to overuse of natural resources. For me, it is first and foremost an example and a lesson of what could a single or few committed individuals achieve by applying nature's most powerful resource - intelligence. This is a story of bringing back to life a place where hope was not expected to visit any time soon, and it is an undeniable proof of capability to what mankind can achieve when direction and motive are clear.
Here is a few words about the man that made it happen:
Willie Smits works at the complicated intersection of humankind, the animal world and our green planet. In his early work as a forester in Indonesia, he came to a deep understanding of that triple relationship, as he watched the growing population of Sulawesi move into (or burn for fuel) forests that are home to the orangutan. These intelligent animals were being killed for food, traded as pets or simply failing to thrive as their forest home degraded.
Smits believes that to rebuild orangutan populations, we must first rebuild their forest habitat — which means helping local people find options other than the short-term fix of harvesting forests to survive. His Masarang Foundation raises money and awareness to restore habitat forests around the world — and to empower local people.
...
"This man has dedicated his life to saving the world, and for this he earns our deepest respect."
Jean Kern, Ode
And here is his talk on TED:
I was thinking whether there is a deeper lesson that can be taken from this story. Is there a formula that can be extracted and applied in different and possibly wider contexts? I think there is one and it has to do with a unique combination of commitment and intelligence. It can be put as the following symbolic formula:
Success = Commitment X Intelligence
Success is a product of commitment and intelligence. Intelligence amplifies commitment, and commitment amplifies intelligence. Commitment without intelligence becomes too narrow and fixated, while intelligence without commitment can easily lose direction and momentum.
What is fascinating in this story is that Willie Smits is committed, as he claims, to saving Orangutan lives. How come that he managed to achieve something so much greater than his initial goal? The secret, I think, has to do with the unique combination expressed in the formula. The clarity and the depth of Smits' commitment have brought him, it seems, to relate to his goal in an ever broader context. It made him to see and contain a much wider picture, and eventually access the reality of interconnectedness and multidimensionality in their broadest sense being the defining characteristics of any complex living system. Commitment of the kind exemplified in this story, allows one to start with a single thought and take this thought to its limits and than beyond these limits. This process is impossible without free running intelligence being the second ingredient of the formula. The product of these ingredients, their recursive combination, brings about, as we see, results that are surprising and far reaching.
It can be said that most of Smits' achievements are side effects. The initial purpose and motive, his seed thought and the anchor of his commitment as if disappears in the light of the greater success that seems almost unrelated. But this apparent 'disappearance' is, I think, the most significant mark of an interesting success because it means that the motion of intelligence here was open ended and therefore as powerful as only life without parenthesis can be.
Here is a few words about the man that made it happen:
Smits believes that to rebuild orangutan populations, we must first rebuild their forest habitat — which means helping local people find options other than the short-term fix of harvesting forests to survive. His Masarang Foundation raises money and awareness to restore habitat forests around the world — and to empower local people.
...
"This man has dedicated his life to saving the world, and for this he earns our deepest respect."
Jean Kern, Ode
And here is his talk on TED:
I was thinking whether there is a deeper lesson that can be taken from this story. Is there a formula that can be extracted and applied in different and possibly wider contexts? I think there is one and it has to do with a unique combination of commitment and intelligence. It can be put as the following symbolic formula:
Success = Commitment X Intelligence
Success is a product of commitment and intelligence. Intelligence amplifies commitment, and commitment amplifies intelligence. Commitment without intelligence becomes too narrow and fixated, while intelligence without commitment can easily lose direction and momentum.
What is fascinating in this story is that Willie Smits is committed, as he claims, to saving Orangutan lives. How come that he managed to achieve something so much greater than his initial goal? The secret, I think, has to do with the unique combination expressed in the formula. The clarity and the depth of Smits' commitment have brought him, it seems, to relate to his goal in an ever broader context. It made him to see and contain a much wider picture, and eventually access the reality of interconnectedness and multidimensionality in their broadest sense being the defining characteristics of any complex living system. Commitment of the kind exemplified in this story, allows one to start with a single thought and take this thought to its limits and than beyond these limits. This process is impossible without free running intelligence being the second ingredient of the formula. The product of these ingredients, their recursive combination, brings about, as we see, results that are surprising and far reaching.
It can be said that most of Smits' achievements are side effects. The initial purpose and motive, his seed thought and the anchor of his commitment as if disappears in the light of the greater success that seems almost unrelated. But this apparent 'disappearance' is, I think, the most significant mark of an interesting success because it means that the motion of intelligence here was open ended and therefore as powerful as only life without parenthesis can be.
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