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↖️Recalibrating Mental Norms ↗️🃏

↖️Recalibrating Mental Norms ↗️🃏

Our reality - simple or complex?

Ever spent an especially quiet afternoon, sipping on your preferred beverage, staring into space while vividly imagining an alien takeover, fighting off an attack or a covert invitation to join a secret society/secret mission? Have you spent time thinking about how you would behave in these situations, and how that behaviour would change based on who was around you? And then been brought back by a call, a notification or distraction? I hope so. It would mean I wasn't the only one.

There's a world we live in and a world we imagine. The way that both of these worlds interact create our version of reality. To some extent, it defines our beliefs and behaviours. This reality is built, in large part, by an energy efficient, sense making biological machinery that all possess - our brain. The brain uses mental models based on prior experience to make sense of complexity and chaos, simplifying it for easy access (and optimal energy use).

Simplicity is deceptive, however. Consider emergent properties, or emerging behaviour. The interaction of two (or more) simple entities gets compounded into more complex behaviour. So that complexity that the brain tried to run from? Yeah, not so useful. Complex systems need to be understood and explored. This year's Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to scientists who are studying complex systems, and there is a renewed interest in how an understanding of these systems could be applied to learn more about scientific phenomenaand 'wicked' social problems.

Binaries and Spectra

Binaries, extreme & diametrically opposed, make our world easy - easily understood and easily modelled. As a species obsessed with figuring out where we came from and where we're going, modelling is a revered scientific methodology. And I'll agree, it has major benefits. But it's also at the risk of contributing to inaccurate judgements and false predictions if it's overweighted (which it often is) without factoring in relevant context and contributing influences.

A spectrum on the other hand, offer a number of options between two extreme points on a scale. By offering degrees, spectra create a more realistic version of the world we live in, more in line with the world that we imagine - a more 'real' reality for us to conjure. The most prominent example in recent years, of course, is that of gender identity. Resonance from ancient texts and rising awareness has allowed people to embrace and develop a range of gender identities between the traditional male and female. But take a more abstract example - truth and lies. But what are facts? And what is fake news? There are a number of definitions for each and none so definite that one can't sometimes be confused for the other. Another example that could be considered is of a central versus a federal system of governance. There are seldom cases of pure applications of these, with a number of other factors playing a role in fixing the intensity of either of the systems - individual leader qualities, degree of freedom of the press, etc.

Factoring in humanity

The world moves like a machine with multiple moving parts or like a piece of music with multiple notes bound together in an intricate symphony. Assuming some of those to be invisible, while trying to predict the behaviour of the rest, often proves unsuccessful. Ceteris Paribus - assuming all things remaining the same was the first time I questioned an assumption. As human beings change and evolve, most often as a response to our environment, we change our minds and behaviours. Context unquestionably influences interconnected decisions and shapes our reality.

This is the reason that a consideration of the inherent complexity of any system (much like the importance of context on a behavioural intervention) cannot be overemphasised. Most interventions that have proven successful in the sphere of public policy, finance, technology or any others have cast a broader net in terms of cause and effect and considered counterintuitive spillovers.

I believe that moving from absolute extremes, to a more human measurement or definition - such as our vocabulary for defining emotions - can only help us make better sense and more accurate predictions about our world. But we must remain careful to not be complicit in stratifying myriad fields, disciplines and sub-disciplines that create colossal amounts of knowledge that could simply be broken down into bare first principles.

Developing a curated toolbox

Several of these 'disciplines' could actually be considered tools or viewpoints to see the world from, rather than a field of study in itself. We would be better suited to sharing knowledge and experience of which of these tools from a toolbox could be leveraged for best impact in a particular situation.

Several philosophers urge educators, mentors, authors and guides to teach people how to think, rather than what to think. I believe this could be revolutionary, leaving scope for further divergent thinking, and innovation. How to begin doing that is a whole other question that I'm excited to explore.

think about this...


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