I think about too many things. It would be a lot better to be a complete and utter expert on exactly one important thing. Then I could offer a set of blogs on that thing, and everyone would know what to expect. But that isn’t the way my mind works.
One early 20th century English philosopher said that the world can be divided into the simpleminded and the muddleheaded. Everyone was one or the other. A very few people can be both, but never simultaneously.
The simpleminded can focus on “the instant,” a specific item or event or phenomenon. They can know a very great deal about that instant, in detail and with precision. But the effort to understand the complexity of that simple thing keeps them from being able to understand fully the context of that thing. They can draw a brilliant portrait, but won’t have much idea of background. Think Rembrandt.
The muddleheaded understand the milieu, the pattern and how everything within it inter-relates. They can master complexity of context. But in doing so, they have no remaining ability to understand in detail the specific components of that context. They might paint beautiful landscapes, in which the people are not much more than smudges. Think Turner.
Society needs both types of minds. I want all the bridges I drive over to be designed by simpleminded engineers. I want them to know, in exquisite detail, the strengths and the loads, and the qualities of the materials. God forbid we ask a muddleheaded person to do that work.
But too often we ask the person who designs the bridge to tell us where to build it. Not the same skill set. For deciding where to build the bridge, you need to know about the context, the land uses, the life of the people in the area, their history and their future. Siting bridges is muddleheaded work.
However, we live in a society that currently fetishizes simplemindedness. Want to make kids learn better? Give them tests. What to improve the quality of healthcare? Design a measurement tool. Want to be a Good person? Follow these rules. Want to get a promotion? You have to show that you are the best at the given task you have been asked to perform. Want a grant? You have to demonstrate your simpleminded devotion to the details of what you wish to study.
Tenure? Only to the simpleminded. But, after a professor has done 25 years of increasingly detailed simpleminded work, and been acknowledged and lauded for it, we then ask him or her to answer muddleheaded questions in his or her field. What is there about decades of simplemindedness that prepares one to respond to muddleheaded problems? Not much.
Some few people can be both, but only at different times. In a kind of Heisenbergian catch, the best of us can only understand one or the other at any one moment.
Public health, the field where I have done most of my work, is inherently muddleheaded. We want to know about how things inter-relate in communities, how systems can be made to respond to problems, how power is used within the body politic, how groups of people cooperate in the Public Good. Of course, we have to have simpleminded people, too. We need people to study the chemistry, the microbiology, the statistics. But there work must be entered into a muddleheaded system in order to make a difference.
Politics is a muddleheaded pursuit. So is ethics. And religion. And management. And cooking. Sometimes, the practice of law. Many of the things to which I am drawn. So, this blog that I am starting today will cover a lot of different topics. Sometimes they will relate to each other; sometimes they will not.
I believe some of my ideas are important, and I feel the need to share them. Some of my ideas are merely interesting, and I hope you find them so. Some of the things I will share are just simply fun. Along the way, I hope you will find these concepts presented clearly and well. I will be disappointed if we don’t find a few laughs, too.
Time to begin.
DS
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