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 | "JIGSAW PUZZLES" | |
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| In Chapter 5, I spoke of how our choice of words influenced our thinking. In this chapter I intend to show the virtues of clarification. |
| When people say that they have a problem in choosing whether to do this or that, they are misleading themselves. The problem lies not in which of the two choices to make, but rather in their inability to make decisions. The difference is important. First we need to define our terms, to clarify the actual problem as it exists. Ask yourself, what will be the end result if this problem is not overcome. How realistic was your answer to that question ? When we exaggerate matters, we are making them more than they are. Inflating them. Distorting them. Telling lies to ourselves. Why? Are we trying to convince ourselves that the problem is insolvable, or that our puny efforts will be futile in the face of insurmountable barriers? Are we placing those barriers in our path to deter us from making the effort? Whose side are we on, our own or the problem's? A search for the truth is doomed to failure if we tell lies when drawing the map that we intend to follow. |
| Together with logical reasoning, the other two problem-solving tools are intuition and insight. Our cave-dwelling forebears lived in a chaotic world. So much of what happened in their lives was effect without discernible cause. For a very long time they even remained unaware of the cause of pregnancies. In their timeless world there was little to connect the birth of a child with a sex act of nine months previous. All that which was beyond their comprehension became accepted as the work of unseen powers, of demons and gods. In time there arose creatures who began to see an underlying pattern to external events, the connections between cause and effect. They were our first shamans, the middlemen who placed themselves between the tribe and their gods. All that really happened was that these individuals were developing the pattern-making capabilities of their minds. The ability to take loosely related facts and intuitively arrange them into a cohesive picture. Just as we construct the finished article from the pieces of a jigsaw. The next step was cognitive deduction - insight. It is insight that allows us to form missing pieces from known facts, forging links between small pictures to make a larger canvas. Pictures that are larger than the sum of their parts. Deducing conclusions from inductive reasoning has nothing to do with leaping to a conclusion based on assumption. |
| Millennia of development formed the basis of the scientific method. Science has relegated demons and gods to the backwaters of civilisation while retaining the essential tools of intuition and insight. These tools are not omnipotent, sometimes the obvious answer lacks validity. That we still exist as a life-form is testimony to our getting it right more often than not. Clever little monkeys that we are, our current danger is that we are short-sighted. So busy trying to 'improve' upon millions of years of evolution, before we go to lunch. The solutions to our own problems owe a lot to lessons learned in the life and death struggles of our ancestors. To use a modern analogy, let us employ the methods we follow to solve a jigsaw puzzle. The first step is to define the parameters, the edges and corners that make up the framework. Then look for the pieces that have the same coloration or texture. Pieces that feel right when grouped together. It will help us if we do not attempt to juggle everything in our heads. Cut out small cards of paper on which to write separate details of the problem. Use differing coloured papers. White paper for known facts. Green paper for things that you believe to be true but are as yet unproved. Blue could be the choice for someone else's behaviour that affects the problem. Be extravagant. Keep adding notes until the subject is exhausted. Spread out your notes on a suitable surface, and walk away from them. |
| When you are ready to go back to them, try placing them in some sort of order. An obvious start is to make a pile of each colour. This, in itself can give you a good clue as to what is going on. The clearer our definition of the causes of the problem, the closer we are to solving it. Shuffle the pieces around. Look for pieces that are causative and those that are directly affected by them. Simplify wherever possible. Discard any notes that you can see as not being relevant to the main issue. Bear in mind the words of the philosopher, William of Occam, "A duality is not to be posited without necessity." In other words, keep it simple. Look for linkages, timelines, patterns. In particular, look for your own hand in the problem. Even if it turns out that there is nothing that you can do about it, you are in a stronger position than you were before, because you are no longer expending energy in chasing your own tail. It can be argued that a small amount of stress can be beneficial, part of the day's normal mood swings. A whisper of anxiety prompts us to take our responsibilities seriously. When problems are left unresolved they generate a miasma of free-floating anxiety that hovers around us, distorting our perception of unrelated matters. The method for finding solutions that I have described is one way to give the problem a physical aspect that can be handled by moving its components around to reshape and bring organisation to it. By so doing, we are literally putting our cards on the table. "Let not life's little problems bother you at all, |