I myself see patterns, causes/effects and hierarchies everywhere. I’ve mentioned how open I am to new ideas, and acknowledged how fluid my relational thinking is. I can take one reference and smash it together with another reference, so when 2 seemingly disparate ideas intersect through a cognitive relational leap, I synthesize a new link at the junction. This starts me thinking about my own mind. Did my R-side push these two things at me? Yes.
I realized this synthesis long ago. I was shopping for food to take back to my shared 1 bedroom in college, and I was thinking about buying a few cans of chili since it’s good to have backup food in the house — especially in case I ran out of money between paychecks (yeah working to put yourself though college makes you really try to get your money’s worth). It helped that chili is a guilty pleasure of mine (this “dual motives” way of choosing actions has been a SOP of mine for at least 12 years). I was reading chili labels and “Con Carne” kept repeating itself as I looked at the wall of various brands and styles of chilli. The maker or type of spiciness would change, but on almost every can was the phrase “Con Carne.” In my psyche, that became a part of a phrase. What was it with? But then a stray neuron attached to “con” triggered… “vaya.” Then the entire phrase was in my head “Vaya con dios:” or “Go with god.” So, “Go with Meat?” Odd, but I just thought it. For a while, anytime I said goodbye to a friend, I said, “Vaya con carne!” Most reacted like I set off a flash grenade in their mind: it stopped them in their tracks, they’d repeat it, and then speak the translation a bit unsure if they heard right. Some were perplexed, some laughed. Some even found it as funny as I did. Ever since then, when my brain presents me with a silly scenario, I let it play out in my mind. Sometimes, I even write it all down. The Feliminati, running conspiracy theory gag is one of those musing that got written down.
I wish I had time to craft a funny story around it, but I know my limits. It would take someone with much more of a gift with prose to make the writing palatable. But what this freedom of thought has allowed me to do is to view things from more than one point of view (PoV). This PoV can shift, and align with others, or it can move to the opposite side of the problem, where few people go. The dark side of the problem is one where you discard what you can see, and what ideas you had, and look at it with no preconceived judgements or the opposite of your preconceptions, or maybe even just see the edges of the problem — its limits. You can start with a reversal or collect and challenge each given. Often if you can negate a preconception, then you know it is not a given.
Often just seeing the edges and finding a way to leap that edge is a fast way to find the answer. I was never one for the phrase “think outside the box” — I think its overuse in business (like many terms business coins) diminishes their intended effect as they become platitudes, robbed of meaning once they become a buzzword checked off in a box. There is no box — just the assumed edges people trust as much as they trust gravity to keep them from spinning off into space. Find the given: test the given & repeat until you find the exception which proves or disproves the rule.
The funny thing is, this free-R, does much of this for me automatically now. If can reverse, strip and rebuild, I can often solve pretty much anything with even a smattering of info. Often if I find a flaw, I study it: where did this defect come from? What are the signs? What are the ways to avoid running into that dead end? I do this to each tree of knowledge so I can understand how each one affects the forest. As I’ve written: I’m a foundational learner, so understanding how things came about and the foundations helps in learning new things because pretty much everything is based on something old in some way.
Welp, after this I wandered off into the weeds. So, I’ll just end this post here and say, thanks for reading.