| Serena, Venus & Cristóbal Colón |
Jan. 24th, 2019|06:42 pm |
Serendipity is the word we use when someone who is looking for one thing discovers another, more valuable thing. It is odd that we have no word for serendipity’s close-by but troublesome cousin, especially because it is a more common variety of experience. I refer to a situation in which someone looks for one thing, discovers a more valuable thing, but doesn’t know it. I propose the word “columbusity,” in honor of Christopher Columbus, who in looking for China discovered the New World but persisted in believing he hadn’t.
Columbusity visits us all at one time or another, and comes in several disguises. In the case of Columbus, he was afflicted with too much confidence in himself and his beliefs about the size of the world to notice that in his defeat he had achieved a great victory. His columbusity came in the form of hubris. But it may also come in the form of fear. We may, for example, be so preoccupied with defending ourselves against attack that we are unable to recognize when our enemy is inadvertently helping our cause. This is why Napoleon warned his generals that they must never interrupt an enemy when he is in the process of committing suicide.
[Neil Postman. Conscientious objections : stirring up trouble about language, technology, and education]
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