2/10/2021 Part 2.31
We are trained to a concept of binary thinking. On any issue, we say we are supportive or we oppose it.
Take farmers agitation. You either support or oppose it. look at subsidies. You are for it or against it. Economists always talk of either for socialism or capitalism. They always have a binary look. Is the binary thinking always true? Are there no gray levels? Most surveys train us nicely to say yes or no or no views. Most questionnaires are designed and tailored in such a way as to get yes or no answers. So we start thinking there are no other options. This needs a change.
Definitely, there are certain ethical aspects and values where deterministic yes or no answers are meaningful. But most social and political issues can be looked at most carefully, analyzed considering all possible aspects and then allows one to arrive at a proper conclusion.
The greatest example of such abuse can be seen in the opposition to NEP. NEP has a lot of suggestions, many are very meaningful and needed ones . But politicians in tamilnadu look at one aspect – three languages formula and decry NEP. This is very unfortunate. I have mostly positive support to recommendations but I also have reservations. But it will take us definitely forward by a quantum leap if implemented properly. Hence overall, I support it seeing the overall impact and not a few reservations.
Our thinking is also controlled by biases and emotions like anger, hatred, love, worry etc. These are dangerous trends to be avoided. Poisoning of my mind takes place everywhere including schools. Those who talk of eradicating superstition should look at this widely prevalent malice instead of attacking religions only.
2/13/2021 Part 2.32
Wrong learning
We know that most habits are acquired ones and
We saw how good learning – learning with curiosity was literally destroyed from childhood.
I want us to look at wrong learnings encouraged from childhood. As soon a child is born, it gets milk only when it cries. So, worry starts there and continues. Worry gets rewarded.
Life is full of expectations, ambitions, wants. Getting what one wants leads to worries. We have been increasing our wants and this leads to misery. Schools increase worries and unhappiness.
This is what Buddha preached – minimize wants.
Gandhiji was impressed with Ruskin who talked of mental wealth. This aspect of mental peace needs to be taught and not ignored. These are now no one’s responsibility – to follow ethical practices.
This leads to unhappiness. we do not normally encourage happiness. The importance of happiness has drawn the attention of most of the famous people and leaders. Let us see a few quotes.
Aristotle says
“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
Sonja Lyubomirsky, Psychologist who wrote a book “the how of happiness” in 2007, describes happiness as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.”
“A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?” so says Albert Einstein.
Happiness is also an acquired habit and needs to be cultivated. Helping others, being recognized for good deeds will increase happiness. Do we feel happy or greedy? Do we encourage happiness? Who should inculcate the habit of becoming happy on achieving small things?
Freedom is another thing we loose. There is control everywhere – at home, at play, at school, at office. Add tension to this list, we get a perfect unhappy life.
As Epictetus said, formal reinforcement and continuous learning are needed.
Children even learn shouting from other people, politicians and movies. It is an undesirable habit. It irritates others.
Where is the line for handling the society?
2/15/2021 Part 2.33
Prof Ashok Kumar from TCE Madurai shows a lot of interest in our posts. He has a question:
“Dear Sir, Greetings
Excellent information on how ourself and society creating an impact on students’ freedom and happiness. This is so sad to feel sir. Is there any way to break this?”
My response.
This situation needs a remedy. NEP talks about the focus of education and it includes ethical values. It is quoted below.
“The purpose of the education system is to develop good human beings capable of rational thought and action, possessing compassion and empathy, courage and resilience, scientific temper and creative imagination, with sound ethical moorings and values. It aims at producing engaged, productive, and contributing citizens for building an equitable, inclusive, and plural society as envisaged by our Constitution.”
Most problems have solutions some easy, some difficult, some need a lot of effort and determination. How do we solve this problem of making students happy, healthy, positive, concerned, helpful and innovative.
We need determination that this is made as an essential part of our curriculum. Just lecturing is not enough. Discussions are a key to clarity and understanding as we have been discussing on several posts. So use discussions on ethical values as a vehicle. Stories, examples, biographies, will help us in this. Institutions should give best student for behavior awards every month. industries use this to improve motivation and quality. The discussions on ethics should be a credit-based activity.
There are a lot of books by famous people like Gandhiji, Dalai Lama, Russel, Ruskin, Tolstoy ,Vienna circle, Epictetus, Hitopadesha stories, fables, Panchatantra, Vivekananda, Bhartruhari, shankaracharya, Radhakrishnan and many more. Discussions on these books and ideas will provide a lasting impact on students. Fortunately, environment became a public issue and many are attracted to it. We can think of that option also.
2/17/2021 Part 2.34
We saw binary thinking and one can influence thinking of many. Similarly, wrong learning strengthened the beliefs that people can be directed to think in a particular way. This is visible in many professions – a strong belief in certain things not just principles but many other aspects not well defined. One example is preparing specs to buy something like a PC. Specs are mostly copy paste. They contain many irrelevant items. One example is one spec for a PC was minimum power consumption.it led to rejection of a major company. Why do we need this it in spec? No thinking. Incidentally, this was explained by Yagyavalkya thousands of years ago. In a yagashala there were rats. So a cat was brought in. Later cat was added to the list of items for a yagashala. Not bad. But the spec described a white cat with black stripes. This over specification was criticized by Yagyavalkya. All these may be due to mental laziness people stop thinking. The serious problem here is to avoid thinking slavery.
Minimum power consumption.
2/19/2021 Part 2.35
Bharathi Prabhu has a comment with a query:
Sir. “Is it not true that all of us can’t be experts at all things. Checklists are perhaps an easy way for us to make decisions (it may also be termed lazy thinking!)
In the example you have cited, as a lay person I would think that power consumption is perhaps an important criterion. That a cat is sufficient to kill a rat and that it need not be a white cat with black stripes is obvious but not the power consumption point.
Most of us can pick holes in arguments regarding simple/general topics but when it comes to esoteric or specialized subjects, we are hesitant. We trust the experts.”
My response
I agree that checklists play an important and effective role in many activities. That is why Atul Gawande, the great physician wrote a book on checklists. It is an informative book.
I agree we cannot attack all problems holistically but we can question the reasons behind certain choices. But we need to look in depth to understand various ramifications.
I agree that it is not obvious why the power consumption is flagged by me. We can ask a question why do we need power consumption in the specs for a PC? The answer from technical people will be that it is not relevant. The aim of chip developers is to produce low power chips so consistently we are seeing power consumption coming down over a period of time. We can pose a second question will the inclusion have any effect? The answer will be
It will reduce the number of eligible vendors.
A lesser power consumption means lesser heat generation and lesser loses. Efficiency will be better. So, fixing a minimum is not beneficial.
If we want to compare chips on power consumption, we can introduce a penalty for higher consumption and keep an upper threshold. But here the threshold was a lower one.
Hope this clarifies your doubt. In general, I see a lot of over specification in purchases due to a mistaken feeling of safety. It is not desirable as we may not get the best and latest.
Mr Srinivasan, from PNB has a comment:
“Good morning, sir. A new jargon today is thinking slavery.
I find the mind to be lazier than the body. Always looking for shortcuts.
Since I don’t know Sanskrit, with very great difficulty I try to get into Sanskrit version so as to get the sounds correct.
But when I get a book with transliteration my mind tries to look at the Tamil version and not the Sanskrit.
When you are a slave one advantage is you don’t have to take decisions. Always looking at the boss. This is the problem with PSBs.
Steve jobs told once he is ready to trade off all his wealth for an afternoon session with Socrates.
Regards”
I have nothing more to add or clarify to his statement except to say be alert and active mentally to avoid both slavery and laziness.
2/23/2021 Part 2.36
Let us move to a topic that is not very clear. We use the word holistic a lot. What does it mean? Let us see.
What is holistic?
Used in philosophy and medicine. Answers from dictionaries.
PHILOSOPHY
characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.
MEDICINE
characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the symptoms of a disease.
It looks at various units and interactions.
Holistic view: This means that having a holistic view is having a view where we understand both the whole and the parts of something, and, we understand how the parts, when brought together, make up the whole. When you have the whole picture of something, you have many perspectives (these are the parts of the whole).
Holistic thinking
Holistic thinking is the ability to see things as a whole (or holistically), to understand and predict the many different types of relationships between the many elements in a complex system, and also perceive the whole picture through sensing its large-scale patterns.
ANALYTIC thinking
is a cognitive style that is characterized by logical reasoning and involves understanding a system by thinking about its parts and how they work together to produce larger-scale effects. Analytic thinkers believe that events are the products of individuals and their attributes. They have a narrow focus on objects in the foreground and tend to disentangle phenomena from the contexts in which they are embedded.
Let us see more in the next.
2/25/2021 Part 2.37
HOLISTIC thinking (HT)
is characterized by dialectical reasoning and involves understanding a system by sensing its large-scale patterns and reacting to them. Holistic thinkers believe that events are the products of external forces and situations. They tend to give broad attention to context, relationships, and background elements in visual scenes.
Most explanations refer to holistic practices in medicine or systems approaches.
It started with interaction of one unit with another. Then it moved to looking at the system as a whole. It believes the fact that whole is more than sum of all its parts. Now we need to move looking at systems level multiple complex interactions. We are talking about system of systems. Body has multiple systems, multiple interactions and transfers, multiple sub systems, – blood, nerves, muscles, digestive, oxygen, lymph fluids etc. – and multiple synergized controls. It now encompasses areas. Interdisciplinary concept moves to a higher level.
This concept of Thinking unfortunately means it is highly organized and structured. We don’t look outside this circle. That is not real thinking. Thinking coupled with imagination can open our mind and eyes wider. We need unstructured thinking. May be that is why our great rishis went to totally isolated places in Himalayas and meditated ab initio without societal behaviors and conditions. They asked fundamental questions like purpose of life and looked for answers and found answers. Many questions have multiple answers.
My feeling is that HT is more than internal units, their interactions and systemic understandings. It depends also on external environment and changes in various internal and external entities and their impacts. Let us consider energy as an example – it depends on multiple types of resources, their characteristics ,extraction and generation, their availability and seasonal variations, transport and transmission, distribution systems in a city or area, technologies and devices for conversion and their efficiencies, ruggedness and ease of use, people’s acceptance- biogas acceptance was very slow-,impacts on atmosphere like pollution , climate change and economics of energy use and finally its impact on life – lighting improved useful working hours by at least a third, from about 12 hours to about 17 hours and it made working easier . In addition, energy heralded many innovations. So, to understand these aspects we need many views, we should study several interactions amongst these disciplines, we need to meet requirements like demand and supply balancing, quality of energy, reliability, cost etc. Hence, energy planning is not a supply and demand problem as considered and practiced by experts and planners. It is intertwining of may be hundreds of problems each affecting others. So it is not a simple thinking. It is a 360-degree thinking. Same is true about customers, their demands, preferences, changes in behaviors, interactions, types of services needed and accepted etc. Learning and getting good cognition is a major area for holistic approach. Holistic thinking is quite complex but useful to understand at depth the multiple faces of a situation or problem.
2/38/2021 Part 2.38
There is a query
is holistic thinking utopian?
I want to quickly answer as no. It is possible to think holistically and apply it by most people in many situations. We will see details as we go along.
Second query is where do I use it?
My response is in many places and situations which involve many entities and many relationships and many possible choices and outcomes. Examples are agriculture, management at leadership level, startups, education, etc.
The question we now look at is:
Is thinking autonomous? This is my query.
Looks like we inherit some traits of thinking. But we need to train our mind to think holistically. We need to practice simple meditations to calm the mind. We need to practice concentration next. Mind becomes receptive. Clean mind needs clean body and a good ambience. Next listen carefully and with concentration to talks and lectures and abstract essentials from what we hear- what are useful, what can be followed, what can be looked further etc. Next observe happenings around you. Next create checklists with multiple views. Practice looking at many views for problems faced by you. Intuitive thinking is not well understood.
But we can train our thinking.
Best example is running a company or business. Training workshops are held to learn and practice lateral thinking. Business as usual or follow practices of previous managers does not work in most cases. You see changes even in restaurant business – example is Dharshinies in Bengaluru. Fortunately, food habits change slowly
So some survive. But most businesses are dependent on various factors and need lateral thinking for survival for growth and scaling. Clayton Christensen talks of disruptive innovation. Even in agriculture lateral thinking will take us far
Some farmers like Prafulla Chandra of Shimoga have shown this. Many industries practice the six hats of thinking as proposed by Edward de Bono. It is a form of holistic approach – multilateral thinking.
It is time to graduate to multilateral from lateral.
It provides multiple angles to find answers to a problem. It creates multiple attitudes and beliefs like positivity or optimistic, negativity, futuristic, customer oriented, research oriented or knowledge driven, procedure driven, inward looking, outward looking, intuitive, algorithmic ,etc. This means another dimension to be added to our example of energy discussed in the last post. We need to adapt multi hat model to suit our situation. Don’t go by Bono model.
3/01/2021 Part 2.39
Holistic thinking is not instantaneous. It is a process, may need time to complete it. It may be a group activity.
But the most important requirement is open mind. We may not have all required data on hand. So, surveys and experiments are needed. One good tool is checklists.
Remember Dr Atul Gawande has written a book on checklists. He finds it useful in surgery. It gives you a preparatory thinking. Plan all possibilities, outcomes, constraints etc. and even look at steps needed. Mr Marc Randolph has written a book titled That will never work. It is about a startup Netflix. startups need multilateral thinking. He explains the stages – ideation, negation, customer interests and acceptability, scalability and demand, feasibility ,funding etc.
It gives a sequence of actions he went through. It is easy read and useful to understand holistic. Remember startups are one or two person operations. Discussions play an important role here.
3/03/2021 Part 2.40
Ms.Padmapriya ,senior manager at Motorola and later at symbol technologies- now called Zebra technologies- and then onto other companies is a well-wisher of FAER. She has detailed comments on holistic thinking.
Her comments are
Thank you very much for triggering my thinking. I learnt today about Pragulla Chandra.
I have one query: when you speak about Bono and multi-lateral thinking, what is your thought process on “emotion “. In almost all industries and businesses emotion is dismissed vehemently and data bas
Continued: Data/ facts-based decision making is celebrated. While it makes sense and seems absolutely correct, many critical decisions are made out of “emotional” requirements in businesses and then substantiated by presenting the data accordingly. I have repeatedly seen this in different large corporates. And this leads to a closely connected point of “honesty”, just honesty in thinking, in the ability to understand the weakness in a current “system “. My view is emotion needs to be given more importance in a workshop or discussion than just a mere acknowledgment or putting it out of the way as in case of Bono’s method.
I have seen that “emotion” is scoffed at and discouraged so much. Not discussing some of the deepest fears and insecurities that people may have in a current situation or in a new outcome and by not having a forum to discuss it people tend to collude to often maintain the status quo or influence a decision by manipulating data. Pretend to be cool in meetings but act purely based on emotions in decision making. Interested to know how this could be addressed in holistic thinking.
My response.
Emotions, beliefs, biases and influence are part of decision-making processes. Subramanian Swamy says emotions win elections in India not policies or economics. But Their effects lead to wrong decisions many times. Egos are the worst. Hence professionalism discourages emotions. Unfortunately, Management’s don’t like outspokenness of people. This -emotions and curbing freedom -may lead to failures of companies or mismanagement or loss of good people. Listening is a good trait of some people but not all. Many don’t like opposite views.
Second multilateral thinking helps in knowing many views of a problem. It avoids ignorance. But it may not lead to good decisions if beliefs, emotions, influence play a dominant role. One reason to have a devil’s advocate in the group is to reduce emotional involvement. Nay Sayers lead you to right paths. They cannot be ignored. Randolph tests his ideas with his friend to know whether they work. Nay Sayers are not total negativists. They are knowledgeable and wise. They analyze and give opinions.
I agree that Today’s world is data driven. So we can’t avoid data. But we should not fall into the trap of misinterpretation. That is why thinking on all aspects is important not just dependence on algorithms alone.