Product, Production, Potential, 2

If the fact that survival factors are products that have to be produced by someone may be underrated, the fact that some of these survival factors are not products but potential for production may be even more underrated. It has been said that a datum is anything that can be known, and an information is a datum meaningful to someone; which means someone will either be capable or not depending on having the information or not. That the information is then used to produce anything depends on someone’s ability and willingness, and these in turn depend on the fact that that someone is there, not just physically but mentally as well, and to be there one has to exist: none of this would have any chance to occur if that someone did not exist in the first place. Hence, the vital resources for the product of running water are not just an aquifer and the materials, tools and energy to bring it to the tap. It also takes someone, willing, capable and knowledgeable. Hence, data, information, ability, willingness, presence, existence. In the absence of any one of these, no product. Hence, whenever one sees an information or a human being, one may come to think of the potential as the chief survival factor.

In fact, the non−material factors of presence, willingness and knowledge are as much important as the material resources are, if not more: is it more likely that a present, willing and knowledgeable individual sets out in search for resources, or that an absent individual endowed with resources sets out in search for willingness and knowledge? Is it more likely that a present, willing and knowledgeable individual spots a resource when he or she sees one, or that an individual having a resource but absent, unwilling nor knowledgeable about it realises having it? And it’s not just the paradox of how can one be unwilling and unknowledgeable if one is absent, isn’t it? In practital terms it could be said that being present consists of being willing and knowledgeable.