Hierarchies of Objectives II

The obvious reason is differences in skills and accumulated resources.

What is proximate for one nation, one organizations, or even one person may be far out of reach to another.  The obvious reason is differences in skills and accumulated resources.  An understanding of this is sharpened from an illustration discussing helicopters.

PJ lives on the East Cape of Baja California.  He is now a surfer and a fisherman, but was once a helicopter pilot, first in Vietnam, and then in rescue work. The land in Baja California is unspoiled by shopping malls, industry, paved highways, or fences.  One day in a conversation PJ was asked if helicopters were safer than airplanes, since if the engine failed, a helicopter could be auto rotated to the ground, like having a parachute.

PJ snorted "If your engine fails you have to pull the collective all the way down, get off the left pedal and hit the right pedal hard to get some torque,  You have about one second to do this before you are dropping too fast."  He paused, "You can do it , but you better not have to think about it."

He continued, "To fly a helicopter you've got to constantly coordinate the controls: the collective, the cyclic, and the pedals, not to mention the throttle.  It is not easy to learn, but you've got to get on top of it.  You've got to make it automatic if you're going to do more than just take off and land.  After you can fly, then  you can learn to fly at night--but not before!  After you can fly at night with ease, maybe then  you're ready to learn to fly in formation, and then in combat."  "Master all that--make it automatic--and you can begin to think about landing on a mountain in high wind in the late evening, or landing on a rolling, pitching deck deck of a ship at sea."

ACTION POINT: Sharpen key skills and take advantage of accumulated resources to make them automatic so that larger objectives can be pursued.