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In the Chinese culture, there is a word for that — gongfu, 功夫, which means mastery accumulated over time. Although it is used these days in English to refer to

by hosh 3y ago

In the Chinese culture, there is a word for that — gongfu, 功夫, which means mastery accumulated over time. Although it is used these days in English to refer to Chinese martial arts (kungfu), it’s something that can be developed for any skill, and is closer to what people say when they say “10,000 hours of deliberate practice). There’s a meditation teacher named Adyashanti. He used to be a competitive bike racer. In one of his talks, he had talked about winning races. The audience ate it up and loved the idea, so he said, no, you don’t really want it. He explained that, that feeling of victory and accomplishment from winning a race wasn’t just the race, but all the hardships that went into the training. And just as the audience’s enthusiasm wound down, he told a story about that woman who was in the crowd for a marathon. She ran out into the street to cross the finish line; people were confused and kinda applauded here. There was a flash of anger from the audience. How dare she cheat? And then Adyashanti put her experience in context of how crossing that finish line came without all the experience of hardship in the training. The feeling of victory, and even being applauded for it was hollow. You can feel the audience shifting from anger to pity …

bluGill 3y ago
Then there is a preacher friend of mine who is a big runner. One Sunday he was traveling in Greece and is route home from church happened to cross the Marathon (the original marathon route!) around mile 22, so he jumped in the race there ran a few blocks while making his way across the street and then continued on to wherever he was supposed to be. He can now tell people he has run in "the marathon". He didn't run the whole thing and since he is a preacher he will never have Sundays free (even on vacation he will be at Church somewhere) - but since he has put in the training effort he can claim to have run in the Marathon and we all feel amusement at his story (and maybe pity)
mmkhd 3y ago
I like your Chinese culture comparison and the Englisch language has such a word, too. It's "experience". True, you also can have "an experience", but generally it is used in the sense of "having experience" which is having accumulated mastery over time. In German it is "Erfahrung" which maps 1:1 to experience. I like, that Chinese, Englisch and German have common ground, showing that the "human experience" is something quite universal across cultures.
- hosh 3y ago
  The way "experience" is used in English and in modern American culture has a very different connotation, mindset, value, and frame. In its use in the hiring/HR world, and in the subcuture of wargaming and RPGs, "experience" is understood as a quantity and does not convey the depth of meaning as "gongfu". It's why there are some martial arts teachers who say, "Americans are no good at gongfu" -- not in the sense of not being good at martial arts, but that there's a cultural thing that makes "gongfu" easy to be misunderstood. The closest term I have seen to "gongfu' in English is the ancient Greek loan word, "arete", which is usually translated as "excellance". What's important to note here is that both "arete" and "gongfu" are understood as quality, not quantity. For example, you'll hear "Adam has 20 years of experience", or "Barbra has 5 years of experience", but "Adam has 20 years of gongfu", and "Barbra has 5 years of arete" doesn't make sense.
  - mmkhd 3y ago
    So maybe the German "Erfahrung" does not map 1:1 to the concept of "Experience". But maybe it is not so much a lack of concept in the language, but something that is related to particularly American hire-and-fire culture, where every employee is an easily replaceable cog in a machine, whereas I think that the full depth of many tasks is not easily conveyed in a documented standard operating procedure, but often needs the actual experience in doing things often. (This is of course an over generalization, because we seldom hear form the established well run smaller companies. You hear much more about dysfunctional companies and dissatisfied employees on the Internet.)

by hosh 3y ago

bluGill 3y ago

Then there is a preacher friend of mine who is a big runner. One Sunday he was traveling in Greece and is route home from church happened to cross the Marathon (the original marathon route!) around mile 22, so he jumped in the race there ran a few blocks while making his way across the street and then continued on to wherever he was supposed to be. He can now tell people he has run in "the marathon". He didn't run the whole thing and since he is a preacher he will never have Sundays free (even on vacation he will be at Church somewhere) - but since he has put in the training effort he can claim to have run in the Marathon and we all feel amusement at his story (and maybe pity)

mmkhd 3y ago

I like your Chinese culture comparison and the Englisch language has such a word, too. It's "experience". True, you also can have "an experience", but generally it is used in the sense of "having experience" which is having accumulated mastery over time. In German it is "Erfahrung" which maps 1:1 to experience. I like, that Chinese, Englisch and German have common ground, showing that the "human experience" is something quite universal across cultures.

hosh 3y ago
The way "experience" is used in English and in modern American culture has a very different connotation, mindset, value, and frame. In its use in the hiring/HR world, and in the subcuture of wargaming and RPGs, "experience" is understood as a quantity and does not convey the depth of meaning as "gongfu". It's why there are some martial arts teachers who say, "Americans are no good at gongfu" -- not in the sense of not being good at martial arts, but that there's a cultural thing that makes "gongfu" easy to be misunderstood. The closest term I have seen to "gongfu' in English is the ancient Greek loan word, "arete", which is usually translated as "excellance". What's important to note here is that both "arete" and "gongfu" are understood as quality, not quantity. For example, you'll hear "Adam has 20 years of experience", or "Barbra has 5 years of experience", but "Adam has 20 years of gongfu", and "Barbra has 5 years of arete" doesn't make sense.
- mmkhd 3y ago
  So maybe the German "Erfahrung" does not map 1:1 to the concept of "Experience". But maybe it is not so much a lack of concept in the language, but something that is related to particularly American hire-and-fire culture, where every employee is an easily replaceable cog in a machine, whereas I think that the full depth of many tasks is not easily conveyed in a documented standard operating procedure, but often needs the actual experience in doing things often. (This is of course an over generalization, because we seldom hear form the established well run smaller companies. You hear much more about dysfunctional companies and dissatisfied employees on the Internet.)