Australia and the World Past and Present

First-hand experience is the ultimate.

It is as close to events as you can get.

It is yours. You know it for yourself. It is not from anybody else. You have not borrowed it.

You know it on a level that is not just in your mind. You feel it more concretely than that. You feel it in your core, you feel it in your gut. It is heavier than the mere intellect. It is more physical than that, more weighty and solid.

You know that it doesn’t matter what other people say about it. You have experienced it and you are confident in its validity and it is not easily shaken.

Second-hand knowledge feels further away.

It is the kind of knowledge that comes through books. Or somebody tells it to you. It is really theirs rather than yours. Or they may have just heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend…

It is lighter than first-hand information. It is more wispy, less solid.

People try to do fancy things with second-hand information. They dress it up in fancy words and string it together with other ideas in complicated chains. They make these chains dance. Second-hand information may even have the effect of dazzling you or making your wonder which way is up and which way is down.

People play games with second-hand information. They try to be tricky, try to impress.

First-hand experience is more down-to-earth. It is more humble. It doesn’t feel that it needs to impress another or make out that it is more special than it really is.

You can try to share first-hand experience. But when you do, it changes into second-hand experience as it jumps across to the other person. It may change back into first-hand experience if it is assimilated into the other person, but there is no guarantee. And it is almost given that the other person will experience the same truth in a slightly different way. But that is ok, because yours will be your and his will be theirs.

Consider the colour blue. Imagine trying to explain the colour blue to a person who has never seen it before.

You might say that it the colour of a gumboot or a piece of bubblegum, but remember that this person has never seen a blue gumboot or a piece of blue bubblegum before.

Try as you might, you can be pretty much assured that with all the words in the world you will not be able to convey to this person your first-hand knowledge of the colour blue. And yet for someone who has seen it, they will be able to recognise it a glance for the rest of their life.