Black & White Thinking

nice article! nice site. you're in my rss feed now ;-)
keep it up

Thank you for the kind words and for reading, Bethany.

I hope we continue to learn from each other.

Tara

Hi!
This is a great post and a very good question. A few years ago, I noticed that the ways that I used to think about things were no longer serving me. Tired of being in a rut, I made radical changes in the beginning of last year...including leaving a WELL paying job to pursue creative entrepreneurship.

I have a very strong quantitative background, and have been working with creative entrepreneurs for a bit. It took me some time to figure out how to merge all of my interest, skills and talents together...but it was not until I finished my financial planning certificate, that I realized that the traditional approach to financial planning was not helpful to many people...especially creative entrepreneurs. Hence, my niche as a trainer, advisor and personal financial coach for creative entrepreneurs.

I could go on and on about the whole thinking issue. Linear thought has its place..but in order to solve problems, and empower people, we have to retrain ourselves to think more holistically...and to basically not give a crap about what other people might think. I gave up on the right and wrong doctrine a while ago. Now its simply "your way" and "my way". Whatever works!!
EvieB http://fiscalfashionista.blogspot.com
www.eabplanning.com

Evie,

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on holistic thinking and the flaws in traditional financial planning. I am very happy to hear that you have found your calling and have found that helping others is the ultimate reward for your interests, skills and talents.

As you say, the right way is whatever works for the person and the situation. To me, the most difficult aspect of living this way is the comments that it garners from people who see life only in black and white. It would be wonderful if everyone thought holistically though the reality is that we all do not.

The further reality is that those that see the world in right and wrong are the quickest to comment on what they see wrong in the life and actions others choose. While most of the time, these comments slide of my back, there are times when I feel too weary to endure the judgments. It isn't me caring what other people think, it is more me not wanting to hear the unsolicited and single-minded opinions of others.

Thank for sharing your thoughts, Evie.

Your Very Welcome! & Your not alone. What helps me is to surround myself by people who are doing the same thing and leave the naysayers to themselves. You are on the right path!! We are only human...send those folks love and light and keep doing what you do!

I really do enjoy this blog!

Thanks for the support, Evie. All the best and look forward to our
continued chats.

Tara

Great article. It makes me think of how I use mindfulness, meditation, yoga, journaling, and breathing exercises to help bring more awareness to my thoughts, feelings, choices, and actions. It also makes me think of my intention to keep an open heart so I can refrain from judging something as right or wrong especially when it comes to other's actions. That's been a great process for me to use this year.

Ananda,

That does sound like a wonderful process and one that I find inspiring. My goal for 2009 is to get more heavily involved in meditation and yoga as I have found it difficult this year to make it apart of my daily routine. This is simply an excuse and one that I hope to cease giving shortly. I need to make a conscious decision to be more active in these areas and make time for them.

Thank you for sharing how you have cultivated a more open mind.

Tara

You've hit on a very key point. Polarization and dichotomization are very key things that both emerge from and keep us locked into our current unsustainable ways. This issue is addressed wonderfully by Daniel Quinn with his concept of Third-Hand Solutions.

Thank you for the book reference, I will be sure to take a look at it. I appreciate you taking the time to write me.

Tara,

I read your post question -" Black& White Thinking"on the Twitter with great interest. It reminds me of a splendid observation of H.Mumford Jones, who reasoning about
the "instant" society, that faces fewer mental challenges than before, being spoiled by the fruits of technology, consiously simplified enormously for the use of people who can't
or don't want to think said -"Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspisious of men who try to." It is obvious that Boolean Algebra Thinking, that is essentially black&white, and incorporated in computers,deals only with 0 or1 situations that could be visiulized as the two ends of a straight line. You may know everything that goes on in dot 0 and dot 1, but nothing about the practically endless dots that objectively exist in between. I like Tweedledee's charectisation of logic in Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking Glass: "If it was so, it might be; and if it were so it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That is logic." I also love the following story about the great German mathematician David Hilbert. He was a very absent minded man and one evening, just as quests were about to arrive at his house for a party, Hilbert's wife said to him:"David, go up and put on a nice tie." David went upstairs and didn't come down for an hour. His wife went upstairs to see what was wrong and found him asleep in bed. What happened was that once Hilbert took of his tie, he ,by habit, took off the rest of his clothes and got into bed! "Nothing is too good for our customers." So says the sign in the window, but what does it mean? Is it -" There is no thing in the world that is too good for our customers." Or does it mean: "Giving them nothing would be giving them something too good for them." Are you lights on? - If people really have their lights on, a little Remminder may be More Effective than any complicated solution you offer, because -Don't SolveOther People's Problems When they can Solve Them Perfectly Well Themselves. If It's Their Problem, Make It Their Problem!
Concerning your 'Thoughts on the Polarization of Everything', I learn to my utmost surprise tha Cultural Creatives are different from the other cultural groups(sounds a bit vague)
and unlike Modern or Traditiunal minsets, are consious that nothing in life is black and white and perceive everything as part of a larger system, not scipping the universall law of interdependency! CC are the true strategic thinkers! Woops! That already sounds Profound -When he who hears doesn't know what he who speaks means, and he4 who speaks doesn't know what he himself means! With so many unclarified but introduced concepts, we can suspect the author that he lives in an ivory tower and dribbles over the battlements.
CC ask five questions(dowlisted are only four) in order to create SOLUTIONS!?( Down in the Ways of thinking list, we identify - solutions thinking, that presupposes alternatives!?). Alternatives are the Raw Material of decision making. They represent the range of potential choices you'll have for pursuing your objectives. Because of their central importance, you need to establish a high standart for generating alternatives. Two important points should be kept in mind at all times. First, you can never choose an alternative you haven't considered. A terrific house in a great neighborhood may be available for rent, but if you are unaware of it, you won't end there. Second, no matter how many alternatives you have, your chosen alternatuive can be no better than the best off the lot. Thus the payoff from seeking good, new alternatives can be extremely high. I can just add to this extremely complicated issue that unfortunately, people don't tend to think a lot about their decision alternatives and stop right here. Skipping the rest of the post with terapeuthtic silence and delve a little more in Systems Thinking - " ...the new orientation to thought and the future of business."
Systems thinking reverses the three- stage order of Machine - Age thinking: 1) decomposition of that which is to be explained, 2) explanation of the behaviour or properties of the parts taken separetely, and 3) aggregating these explanations into the whole. This third step, of course, is synthessis. In the systems approach there are also three steps:
1) Identify a containing whole( system) of which the thing to be explained is a part.
2)Explain the behaviour or properties of the containing whole.
3)Then explain the behaviour or proprties of the thing to be explained in terms of its role(s) or function(s) within the containing whole.
Note that in this sequence, synthesis preceds analysis.
In analytical thinking the thing to be explained is treated as a whole to be taken apart. In synthetic thinking the thing to be explained is treated as a part of a containing whole. The former reduces the focus of the Investigator, the latter Expands it. I will scip giving an example to clarify the difference, since CC seem to be far ahead of their time. I will only state that Analysis looks into things; Synthesis looks out of things. On what basis does general systems thinking promise to be useful? The principal answer seems to lie in what Boulding calls "The Main Article of General Systems Faith": This is that the ordrer of the empirical world itself has an order which might be called order of the second degree. My advice to any young man/woman, be it CC or not is to at the beginning of their career to look for the mere outlines of big things with fresh, untrained ,and unprejudiced mind! If they delight to find a law, they get estatic when they find a law of laws. If laws in their eyes are good, laws about laws are delicious and are most praiseworthy objects on earth.
Systems study is a report on what the system problem is and what scould be done about it. The systems study in turn is made up of a prelimenary report, a feasability report, an evaluation report, and a final report. The overal purpose of each report is:
- Prelimenary report - to determine what the problem is.
-Feasibility report - to see if there are any workable solutions.
-Evaluation report - to establish the relative cost/ effectiveness of each solution.
-Final report - to show which solution is the best and establish system goals for implementation.
Of course the system study has to be more detailed in order to be made precise, but this is not the purpose of our brief outline.
Lastly concerning thinking and thinking for some purpose, without daydreaming we shall try to identify some usefull brain skills that we will take the risk to recommend, as follows:
1) Concentration.
2)Observation.
3)Memory.
4)Logical reasoning.
5)Making inferances.
6)Forming hypothesis.
7)Generating optons.
8)Making assosiations between ideas.
9)Recognizing patterns.
!0)Spatial and kinestic perception.
My six functioning skills are:
1)Fact finding.
2)Crap detecting.
3)Thinking on your feet.
4)Idea production.
5)Problem solving and decision making.
6)Happying.
Brain is the apparatus with which we think that we think. Finance -Is the art of passing money from one hand to another until it finally DISAPPEARS!

Tara,

Thank you for this. Regarding your question:-

"Why do you think so many people find it easier to reduce the world into black and white? Right and wrong?"

My short answer to this question is "because that is how we all have been taught to think".

Accordingly, for real change to occur I believe each of us needs to learn a new way of thinking based on whatever is the current scientific understanding of the world and the human mind- Integrative Thinking - as well as Critical Thinking and apply them both as we think, plan, organise, govern and act.

Could you see the fine work done in Systems Thinking evolve into something along the lines I suggest?

Graham,

It is my belief that what we are experiencing in our culture is exactly that, the evolution of thinking/consciousness/enlightenment.

To think that humans will never grow from the state they are in today would be ignoring evolution and everything that it has taught us. Evolution is constant and never ending. And while it may seem that our physical evolution has slowed, our mental has only just begun.

There are so many of us who, alone, have developed this way of thinking and discarded what we have been taught. My only explanation for this is that our thinking evolved. We became more conscious, socially, environmentally and spiritually, through our own means.

The fact that so many of us, unwittingly, have adopting this thinking style and that this thinking is beginning to be taught in schools leads me to believe that we are witnessing the inevitable rise of Systems Thinking. It is not yet at the tipping point but it will be someday soon.

Tara

Kenya,

You are so right that the most obvious polarization of thought is in the news media. And what is worse is the fake neutrality that is pursued and presented by the news instead of truth.

Thanks for reading and supporting the 'Systems Thinking' cause,

Tara

yes and thank you for this post! i've noticed polarization on Twitter et al but primarily in our news media.

whatever happened to nuance? contextual reasoning? diaglogue?

don't get me wrong, i love to *discuss* topics with the best of'em (as a Libra, i can often have a fantastic argument with myselves) ... but two sides is too boring.

i was a journalism major and my mother -- an English professor -- taught argumentative comp, so perhaps i have a higher expectation for our country's discourse. but it's lovely to read and find a "pocket" of likeminds.

thank you again!

PS: snagged your innerpreneur button for my site ... love it!
www.bewellgroomed.com