From Humanoid Faults to Manipulated Consensus, 36

We’re short−sighted:

The map of short−sightedness has at least two dimensions, that we may call width and length: width is connecting items located all in the present, but possibly belonging to different contexts, while length is connecting items belonging to different times; any further possible dimension may mix these as well as span across any kind of seeming extraneousness between areas and facts. All of them require knowledge and broad−mindedness to pick up the pieces to put them together, so all those who aim at whatever degree of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty−Four target our ability to handle those dimensions: our willingness, curiosity, independence, initiative, intelligence, orderliness, critical sensibility, knowledge, historic memory, etc. In other words, our willingness to look beyond. And we’re more than obliging: whether induced or spontaneous, the way we can’t focus farther than our nose and thus fall short of our duties as members of mankind is even a Russian Doll, where the inner one is at the root of the next outer one.

Short−sighted as to the scope:
We’ve been taught that the brightness of our future is founded on all of us concentrating on becoming specialists. Interestingly enough, this very concept of specialisation is stressed at both ends: both individuals and nations must specialise in the few things they do best, and the fewest these things are, the better.
We’ll discuss its purpose for the nations ahead; here, far as the individual is concerned, let’s observe that it’s when you piece the puzzle together that you see the picture and understand it, that to piece it together you have to have the pieces, that to have them you have to dig them out, and that to dig them out you have to be aware there are pieces out there to reassemble in the first place.