Month: January 2024

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Solutions Without Answers

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Give a fool a hammer and the problem is a nail

Surely, your leaders and politicians must excel in one thing above all others; problem solving. I suggest this because all aspects of life are eventually about solving problems. It does not matter if you are trying to look after a home or a country, the principles of good management using skilled problem solving, are the same.

Astoundingly, the study of ‘problem solving’ is not freely available. In the academic world it is assumed that the skills learnt in schools and places of higher education are transferable to the ‘real world’. Well in my experience, I can say that most of those skills are not transferable, which is a problem in itself. Theory and practice should be salt and pepper, but they are not.

To solve a practical problem takes a special kind of thought process. Most importantly there must be a consistent intention aimed at a fruitful result. Technicians and those who learn practical ‘trades’ such as building walls with bricks or carpentry, become great problem solvers very quickly. If they make a mistake, it is plainly on view and has to be taken down and attempted again. Generally, the selection process for soldiers will involve problem solving. Recruits become part of a small team arranging logs and ropes and other props to overcome an obstacle. Real work in real time.

It is said rather cynically that ‘doctors bury their mistakes’; but it is true. It is unfortunately also true of many of today’s politicians and leaders who are entrusted with the welfare of the State and it’s citizens. If they make a wrong policy decision or invent a plan for some new project or public works that goes wrong, the failure is forgotten. Money is wasted on projects that any ordinary person would say is a waste of time and money (just read my earlier blogs on the UK High Speed train project predicting failure). Why, you might ask, does India have a Space Programme when there are thousands of villages in India without proper sanitation? I am only using India as an example. Avoiding and/or mismanagement of real and urgent problems happens in every country run by politicians with their own agendas, not the people’s

If a race of intelligent beings came down from the Planet Problemsolving, they would certainly be appalled at the ignorance of humans in a skill the PP inhabitants are taught from birth.

If humans cannot learn from present times, we can learn from history. In the Biblical era, when Herod heard there was a child to be born who would one day be King, his solution was simple and brutal. To kill all male babes under the age of two years. The solution to his problem was immoral, self centred, and ineffective. Have we improved?

Giovani: The Slaughter of the Innocents

Today, the State of Israel is being led by a person with Herod like, problem solving hypothesis. Because there are fighters who are against the State of Israel (as a consequence of decades of ill treatment towards Palestinians) Israel is using genocide to prevent further problems, just like Herod. And just as Herod assumed a massacre would get every child, so it is assumed that the Israeli government actions will eliminate every fighter who is against the Israeli State. But history tells us that using starvation, disease, killing and maiming, stopping fuel supplies in winter and stopping safe escape routes, will be condemned by world organisations like the United Nations. South Africa has emerged from apartheid in the last century and has been the loudest voice of condemnation. They have learnt from their history.

Hitler is perhaps one of the greatest despots in modern times, who used similar problem solving techniques indiscriminately. He constructed concentration camps with impregnable exterior defences, then filled them with people of direct and indirect Jewish blood. We know the rest. Indeed, the people who know this best are living in the State of Israel today.

Let us examine a less emotionally charged problem being played out over the English Channel at the moment. The problem always requires a definition and for voters in the 2016 referendum it was identified as ‘immigration’. The ‘Vote Leave’ champagne and UKIP party championed the idea that ‘immigrants are a problem to the country’, in the run up to the referendum. Whilst most economists would disagree with this concept ( the USA is a prime historical example of immigration creating prosperity ) the problem was described in emotional terms. We know that rational debate stops when emotions are stirred, if we have lived life at all! Emotional beliefs do not use constructive thinking patterns based on analysis of facts and figures. ‘Solutions’ were expressed as three word slogans such as ‘Take Back Control’, ‘Brexit means Brexit’ ‘Get Brexit Done’.

Broadcaster James O’Brien on LBC said: “I’m looking for a chronology of the meaningless slogans Brexiters used to give people an excuse not to actually look at any detail, evidence or do any thinking.”

As the supposed ‘problem’ of immigration, moved from fringe to mainstream politics, the ‘final solution’ became leaving the European Union. The principle of ‘understanding the problem’ by using statistics for instance, was ignored since only one third of UK immigrants actually came from the European Union. Many of those who did were short term immigrants, such as students and migrant workers. As the fish and chip shop owner said to me on the day of the Brexit vote in June 2016, ‘Who is going to pick my potato’s?’

But the emotions of hatred and fear were exploited using false facts by those in power (just as did the leaders of Nazi Germany) and the UK left the European Union in 2020. Since then, the ‘problem’ of immigrants has not gone away. For no obvious reason the ‘problem’ has be re-defined to be the three per cent of immigrants who enter the country without proper documentation.

Under international law these fall into three basic camps; asylum seekers escaping persecution, economic migrants and the criminal underworld. These categories however require time consuming investigation on a case by case basis.

You Can Use Old Slogans

Far simpler for the government to stir public emotions using a three word slogan which is ‘stop the boats’. Chillingly, the ‘solution’ is steered away from creating safe routes and tackling criminal gangs to being one of ‘deterrent’ or fear. By ‘fear of being sent to Rwanda’ the UK government intends to stop people from risking their lives crossing the English Channel.

The horror of this solution and all ‘final solutions’ is not characteristic of any country that wishes to hold it’s head high in the European Courts of Human Rights and the United Nations. Similarly, the government of Israel is prepared to ignore the Article 2 of the Genocide Convention. The false logic of ‘the end justifies the means’ convinces only the emotions.

The complexity of statistical analysis and testing and proof finding and ethics and morality and compassion and common sense and lessons learnt from history and comparing alternatives and cost benefit analysis, should be the bread and butter for problem solving by those who lead nations.

But complexity is ignored because it does not invite the answer, ‘yes’ or ‘no’. These two words are fundamental to what is the basis of the referendum method of problem solving.

  • Shall I kill all the male children under two years of age? Yes or no?
  • Shall I get rid of the Jews? Yes or no?
  • Shall I destroy Palestine and it’s people as a method to destroy their militant leaders? Yes or no?
  • Shall we leave the European Union? Yes or no?
  • Shall we ‘stop the boats’ by making it illegal to do so? Yes or no?

Each time the question assumes a problem with which the man on the proverbial omnibus, may not agree is a reasonable question to be asked. The question is too simple to answer for the complex mind, but easy for the simple mind.

The so called ‘wisdom of the crowd’ is not something that history proves. Wisdom is unfortunately a rare commodity – whether two thousand years ago or the present day. We only have to listen to Socrates (470-399 BC) opinion about the ‘common man’…

Socrates wisely points out that voting itself is a skill. Knowing what kinds of issues are being raised, and how best to deal with them is a real skill required to know how to best govern people. If people are not properly educated, then what ends up happening is demagoguery, which is when people exploit others’ emotions, seducing them with easy answers, so that they could be elected.

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Back to the Present

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The present is the greatest gift

I visited my mechanic at his garage a few weeks ago and was surprised to find the place deserted. But an impressive Delorean sports car sat there with it’s rear engine exposed as if ready for ‘take off’. After a few moments of wonder, the garage owner appeared wiping his hands on a rag. ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘I thought you had gone back to the future!’

He didn’t laugh and had probably heard the joke all morning but it made me think on the film ‘Back to the Future’. What a nonsense premise for a story I always think. Odd that in a society that considers itself rational and scientific, writers are fascinated by illogical impossibilities and their absurd consequences. Such non-real accounts are of course, fiction, and humans have an ability that is often taken for granted; to live in factual and fictional worlds simultaneously.

Films like this such as Disney’s ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ introduce concepts of non-linear time that I do not believe children are likely to understand or benefit from. Contrary to Lewis Carroll’s original concept, a character known as ‘Time’ played by Johnny Depp, is central to the story as Alice time travels to change the past.

‘You cannot change the past!’ screams Alice at one point in the film.

The same insight applies to the future…a simple fact that children would do well to be taught at an early age. But of course, science fiction knows no end to the concept of jumping forwards and backwards along the illusion of linear time.

‘The Time Machine’, directed by George Pal, 1960. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Whilst Western fiction writers are sending their characters off ‘through time’ in absurd contraptions, philosophers and some indigenous tribes like the Dogon, describe a ‘non-linear time’ model in which all pasts, presents and futures exist together.

Just as one needs a map to know a destination, a time traveller needs to know the where and when of a proposed journey. There are many oracle card designers and readers in Western societies today; overtaking the famous ‘Tarot’. An ‘oracle reader’ will use cards to predict ‘the future’ but preface the prediction with ‘this is only one of many futures.’

It would be good for us all, in my view, if we admit that the fourth dimension which we call ‘time’ is a mysterious, filtered perception and, in my view, better left so.

What then? Well, this leaves us with ‘the present’ and we should not feel the lesser for it. Perhaps we should pause and seriously contemplate how much we live in the present and how much in selected memories of past and an imaginary future.

I have noticed how older people, enjoying the last flourish of their lives, tend to talk too much about things that they have done in the past. Sometimes these stories contain humour or valuable life lessons but mostly they are experiences intended to impress rather than amuse or inform.

This phenomena is not only applicable to personal history, but also scholars of global history, politics, religions and any subject that has come and gone.

We tend to understand now, that history is ‘written by the victors’. Writers filter facts in order to record a biased account for intentional or unintentional reasons. Politicians of all colours, do the same. We tend to put previous leaders on pedestals and forget their misjudgements and misdeeds. For example Winston Randolph Churchill was a man whose military mistakes are overlooked for his finer qualities of oratory and leadership. Nelson R. Mandela was an ANC terrorist imprisoned for his acts and yet later was awarded the Nobel peace prize for laying down the foundations of equality of the races and democracy in South Africa. Mother Teresa valued ‘poverty’ so much she rarely distributed the money she was given to the poor. Are these people really good role models for future generations?

The further back into the past one investigates, the more imagination and conjecture colours and shades reality. Religions have a hard time presenting a solid case around revered or ‘holy’ prophets and saints for the same reasons. The main difference compared to politics, in my view, is that for religions, ‘faith’ can be used to excuse the unprovable.

Religious scriptures that do not change endure, because they can be trusted. The dynasties of ancient Egypt could be argued to have remained powerful through thousands of years for this very reason. An nnovatory pharaoh, such as Akhenaten, was overruled by the priests on his death and past traditions restored.

Today academics study the past, apparently for it’s own sake. A cabinet full of Stone Age flints, for instance, is meaningless to the ordinary person. In contrast, the causes and consequences of war might be considered worthy of study and learning lessons, but this rarely happens. For this we pay a price and wars continue to this day.

The tales of olden times, told around the camp fire by our ancestors, sustained knowledge and wisdom, whereas today there is little such continuity and consensus for our children.

Past and future are fraught with conjecture, imagination, bias, incomplete facts and false reasoning. I suggest that the value of both the past and future as treated in the West today, is at best limited and at worst, misleading.

Which leaves us with the present. The ancient Greeks had a word for the quality of the present moment which is ‘kairos’. It describes the true value of every moment. When they measured time with solar shadows or lunar observations for purely practical reasons, they called it ‘chronos’. The two were distinct and even turn up in the Holy Bible in Acts 13:18 and 27:9 .

In the East, ancient thinkers have encapsulated the same idea; such as in Zen Buddhism and Taoism. In Zen, the meditator is kept in the moment by being struck with a stick by the teacher, should a student’s mind be observed to be wandering.

But perhaps it is a surprise to find the same understanding also described in the Holy Bible. Ephesians 5, 15-17, James 4 and Psalm 118 all refer to and imply an awareness of the quality of the ‘God filled’ moment. What the ancient Greeks called ‘chronos’ is time as a measured ‘tick’ of time, however this might be done. This, apart from being helpful when arranging appointments, is a double edged concept that creates the stress of having to avoid ‘lateness’ and ‘sloth’ and ‘waste’.

‘What a complete waste of time!’, we say and yet how is this ever possible?

In contrast, the kairos moments embrace all our thoughts and actions and give grace for inspiration to enter a persons soul. Those who only measure time experience the frustration which we call ‘impatience’.

In Western Judaeo-Christian history, there has always been an understanding of not only the right moment to perform an action but a right season. For instance, there are times in the Jewish Astrological calendar that is it wise to start a new enterprise. This is the month of March or Aries in astrology. If one is wishing to start a new business, for instance, then the unique qualities of this part of the solar year, add benefit to the enterprise and make it more likely to succeed.

The contrast between chronos and kairos concepts of time bear a parallel resemblance to a ‘five senses’ life and an ‘inner senses’ life respectively. The majority of the population are primarily engaged in the former; particularly the agnostics who believe that when the watch winds down, it is dead. Non such ‘clockwork minds’ are able to give less importance to the five senses and develop awareness of ‘Mind’. Mind is what is happening within ones body / mind unity, as a microcosm of everything in the Universe.

This ‘universal’ way of life, is one of the many graces obtainable through being sensible of the subtle, ‘unmeasured’, qualities of our soul and being present in it.

The poet and mystic William Blake expressed this most perfectly in his poem

Auguries of Innocence;

‘To see a world in a grain of sand,

And heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour,’