I don’t think the difficulty in getting actual life-improvement out of “a stich in time saves nine” comes from any impossibility in figuring out what that phrase means. (If that were the case then probably instead of saying “a stitch in time saves nine” we’d be saying “fix small problems early, before they turn into big problems”, which is almost as short and pretty unambiguous.
I think the actual difficulties are:
Knowing a valuable principle is not the same thing as actually applying it; for that, you need to remember it at the right time, you need to find the motivation to do what it says, etc. Maybe you have a minor health problem but some bit of you flinches so hard at the prospect of going to see the doctor and maybe getting bad news that you can’t make yourself do that; the problem isn’t that you don’t know it would be a good idea.
… and one reason why we don’t always apply useful principles we’ve heard might be that …
Having heard a valuable principle is not the same thing as knowing it’s good advice; you might not actually believe it. Maybe you’re a young person and have constantly heard your elders telling you to work hard, and it’s occurred to you that giving you that advice might be good for them more than it’s good for you. Even if in fact working hard would be good for you, and you’ve been told as much, you don’t know it’s true.
… and another reason might be that …
A principle like “a stitch in time saves nine” may be good advice only sometimes. (There are plenty of pairs of equal-and-opposite proverbs. Look before you leap; he who hesitates is lost. Better safe than sorry; nothing ventured, nothing gained. Many hands make light work; too many cooks spoil the broth.) The real wisdom is the pithy principle plus a load of extra information about when it’s actually a good principle to apply. The problem isn’t that wisdom can’t be unzipped, it’s that important things never got zipped in the first place.
The last of those points is a bit like the one you’re making. You could say that the pithy phrase is genuine wisdom, in the hands of someone who has the extra contextual information to indicate when to apply it and the life experience to make it properly motivating. But I don’t agree; I think that the extra contextual information and life experience is the actual wisdom here, and that’s what hasn’t been zipped in the first place.
What’s difficult mostly isn’t unzipping wisdom, it’s identifying actual wisdom and zipping it.
What’s difficult mostly isn’t unzipping wisdom, it’s identifying actual wisdom and zipping it.
Agreed.
Maybe this is just because of it’s age, but “a stitch in time saves nine” strikes me more as an attempt of “pretending to be wise”. If I was trying to help, I’d try communicating a procedure one can actually follow:
“Set a 5 minute timer to figure out the biggest problems in your life.”
I don’t think the difficulty in getting actual life-improvement out of “a stich in time saves nine” comes from any impossibility in figuring out what that phrase means.
For what it’s worth, I have met people who had no idea what “a stitch in time saves nine” means, although I do agree largely with your point.
I think that the extra contextual information and life experience is the actual wisdom here, and that’s what hasn’t been zipped in the first place.
There’s some nuance here—I think we’re agreed that the contextual information and life experience is the wisdom. It’s what isn’t communicated by the pithy saying that matters—and yet the pithy saying is clearly meant to point to or contain the contextual information/life experience.
Which is to say that while pithy sayings are useful ways of reminding someone who already has the wisdom to apply it in a given situation, they’re useless for actually conveying wisdom.
And in my experience, the latter is the way they’re most commonly used.
I don’t think the difficulty in getting actual life-improvement out of “a stich in time saves nine” comes from any impossibility in figuring out what that phrase means. (If that were the case then probably instead of saying “a stitch in time saves nine” we’d be saying “fix small problems early, before they turn into big problems”, which is almost as short and pretty unambiguous.
I think the actual difficulties are:
Knowing a valuable principle is not the same thing as actually applying it; for that, you need to remember it at the right time, you need to find the motivation to do what it says, etc. Maybe you have a minor health problem but some bit of you flinches so hard at the prospect of going to see the doctor and maybe getting bad news that you can’t make yourself do that; the problem isn’t that you don’t know it would be a good idea.
… and one reason why we don’t always apply useful principles we’ve heard might be that …
Having heard a valuable principle is not the same thing as knowing it’s good advice; you might not actually believe it. Maybe you’re a young person and have constantly heard your elders telling you to work hard, and it’s occurred to you that giving you that advice might be good for them more than it’s good for you. Even if in fact working hard would be good for you, and you’ve been told as much, you don’t know it’s true.
… and another reason might be that …
A principle like “a stitch in time saves nine” may be good advice only sometimes. (There are plenty of pairs of equal-and-opposite proverbs. Look before you leap; he who hesitates is lost. Better safe than sorry; nothing ventured, nothing gained. Many hands make light work; too many cooks spoil the broth.) The real wisdom is the pithy principle plus a load of extra information about when it’s actually a good principle to apply. The problem isn’t that wisdom can’t be unzipped, it’s that important things never got zipped in the first place.
The last of those points is a bit like the one you’re making. You could say that the pithy phrase is genuine wisdom, in the hands of someone who has the extra contextual information to indicate when to apply it and the life experience to make it properly motivating. But I don’t agree; I think that the extra contextual information and life experience is the actual wisdom here, and that’s what hasn’t been zipped in the first place.
What’s difficult mostly isn’t unzipping wisdom, it’s identifying actual wisdom and zipping it.
Agreed.
Maybe this is just because of it’s age, but “a stitch in time saves nine” strikes me more as an attempt of “pretending to be wise”. If I was trying to help, I’d try communicating a procedure one can actually follow:
“Set a 5 minute timer to figure out the biggest problems in your life.”
“Consider reading book X”.
For what it’s worth, I have met people who had no idea what “a stitch in time saves nine” means, although I do agree largely with your point.
There’s some nuance here—I think we’re agreed that the contextual information and life experience is the wisdom. It’s what isn’t communicated by the pithy saying that matters—and yet the pithy saying is clearly meant to point to or contain the contextual information/life experience.
Which is to say that while pithy sayings are useful ways of reminding someone who already has the wisdom to apply it in a given situation, they’re useless for actually conveying wisdom.
And in my experience, the latter is the way they’re most commonly used.