THE PROBLEM WITH THE PROBLEM SOLVING

THE PROBLEM WITH THE PROBLEM SOLVING, A PROBLEM REVISITED

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 19, 2008

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all His Laws."

John Adams (1735 - 1826), statesman and second president of the United States

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People come to me all the time for advice mentioning my books in the conversation, books, which by their comments clearly they have not read.

CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s is a book in point of fact. It was misnamed because it is actually a book about confident thinking.

The book is basically about the world of problem solving in a world of predators and prey, suggesting that the greatest predator we face is ourselves, and the most likely prey to be consumed by us is that same self.

It is not other people problems, relationships or money that throws us into the soup. It is our own. We invariably put ourselves into the soup only to blame everyone else.

CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s is therefore a problem solving book with the major problem we all face every day looks at us in the mirror, and by God's mysterious guile, we seldom see the real face staring back at us.

THE SPOILED BRAT GENERATION PERSONIFIED

Recently, someone came to me "to write" something for him after he had been "taken to the cleaners" by his ex-wife for more than $300,000 and counting.

"I cannot see my kids." I was to imply from this that his ex-wife was an evil woman, as only an evil woman could do that.

He wants me to write a two-page something that he can put on the Internet and tons of men in the same boat will agree with him, and want to embellish him with money and support for his cause - to mount a cause to result in changed legislation more favorable to dads separated from their kids.

"It is a common problem today, and many men are facing it the same as I am and they have no recourse but to suck it up and comply. It isn't fair."

When he had calmed down. I said, "What is your problem?"

"What is my problem? I've told you."

"No, you have told me your frustration, which has flooded your brain. So, I repeat, 'what is your problem'?"

When faced with complex problems, problems we cannot resolve, we attempt to change the problem to one we think we can solve letting us off the hook. We hope by some mysterious accident the problem will solve itself. Notice how far from the problem this man is by preferring mounting a costly and time-consuming campaign to lobby for "changed legislation" than to face his problem today.

We're not alone in this type of thinking. It is all around us. It is how the government thinks, the church thinks, the school thinks, the business community thinks, the man and woman on the street thinks.

Solving problem by avoiding the pain of the problem solving is a plague, an epidemic with no way out because we try to resolve the complexities with old, well established but ill-suited practices.

The human community changes slowly to new experiences. It is a cautionary tale that has preserved humanity for at least 50,000 years. The reason for this is the brain, and its hard wiring.

Don't be confused with everyone with a cell phone attached to his or her ear or an iPod in his or her hands. They're as lost as everyone else only they are hip, which gives them a false sense of security.

Our brain has a finite capacity to process information. We suffer today from information overload. This is obvious, you say. Still, when the information fits the network and is within bounds of our ability to process the information, things go reasonably well. When such conditions fail to exist, things go belly up.

This man is attempting to deal with a problem that has grown in complexity and out-of-hand, and yet he prefers to think it just happened, and unfairly so, and he must do something monumental to deal with it, which is not dealing with it at all.

The brain uses the principle of the "match" by which incoming information matches more or less exactly the patterns already stored in the brain, or else it is not recognized and summarily rejected.

This is another fail-safe mechanism that is neither a negative nor a positive but a human condition of conscious thinking.

Present behavior depends heavily on previous behavior; present learning depends heavily on previous learning.

To be hit with changed values, beliefs, or imposed behaviors is to approach gridlock, or worse.

I'm writing a novel about my time in South Africa in 1968. Yesterday, Nelson Mandela celebrated his 90th birthday. He was in prison when I was in South Africa, and was not released until the 1990s, and became president of South Africa in 1994 with the abolition of apartheid, or separate development of the races.

South Africans are crying, people mainly white, how bad things are in that country what with crime, AIDS, poverty, unemployment, corruption, and so forth.

What has happened is that the repressed majority population which has been subjugated for 300 years, was suddenly liberated, and expected to behave as if they had been in power all those years, with an equal opportunity for a quality education, jobs, property, voting rights, and so on when they had none of the above.

The majority population of Bantu or Blacks is working their way through this maelstrom, and they will, but it will not be in my lifetime, nor should anyone expect it to be so.

Whatever our core belief system, it represents an amalgam of our genetic inheritance, social conditioning and cultural experience. The perceptual structure, whatever it is and has been, matches information to our existing mental models. We cannot dispose of them as we like but must treat them with the reverence and attention that they deserve.

In these times of rapid technological change, rigid belief systems threaten our individual and collective ability to cope, display confidence and exercise control. Chaos is a manifestation of our current frustration in this transitional and transforming period.

The problem solving is an adaptive mechanism but it must be understood and used or chaos follows.

THE PROBLEM SOLVING

When a person encounters complexity, the rules of social conditioning automatically translate the scene into another order for standard practice.

For example, the guy that wants me to write two magic pages of wisdom to place on the Internet to invite all other wayward husbands to rally around him, change the law so that deadbeat dads have more recourse to being deadbeat dads, doesn't see the folly in this.

As I said earlier, he has access to my books but hasn't read them or he would know that I name baby boomers like him among the spoiled brat generation that expects to have its cake and eat it too, without consequences. And sadly, these spoiled brats have essentially succeeded.

He is insensitive to the plight of single mothers, but only sees his plight in terms of lost cash. This is a mismatch between reality and self-interest. His Internet blog, should he realize it, will not represent a quick fix; will not rally tons of people to his plight, but will magnify rather than resolve his problem.

Complex problem-solving involves four systems and two pairings all of which are inner related, and which can prove successful, but it takes people acting like grown-ups and I don't see many of them around at the moment.

PROBLEM SOLVING MECHANISM

(1) TECHNICAL SYSTEM (the tools to deal with the complexities of the problem) is inseparable from the

(2) SOCIAL SYSTEM (the current relationship of the parties and their common or uncommon history, including all the dirty linen) and the

(3) PURPOSEFUL SYSTEM (the problem domain from all perspectives honestly wrought and ethically established) is mated to the

(4) CONTROL SYSTEM (the solution domain where a win-win proposition is meted out).

Good solutions are flexible; bad solutions are not. Good solutions never give anyone everything they want but everything they need. Good solutions are alive and sensitive to unexpected problems and changing circumstances. It is not simply that good solutions anticipate unanticipated demands, but they have the flexibility to absorb them.

All of you know I am a writer who has been writing for nearly forty years (Confident Selling 1970), but am still unknown. That is okay. I mention this because many established writers are still struggling to get our attention to the problem solving with shock therapy.

Most recently, I read WILD FIRE (2006) by Nelson DeMille, which is more disturbing than you can imagine.

WILD FIRE is about a group of high government officials in the State Department, Defense Department, White House, and so forth, along with billionaire industrialists who have conceived of a plan to solve the energy crisis and the threat of Islam.

They have in their possession several small dirty nuclear bombs and they plan to bomb American cities -- I'll let you read the book -- and blame it on the nations of Islam in the Middle East, justifying a blitzkrieg of nuclear retaliation by the United States against the entire Islam World from the Middle East to Indonesia. The code name for this is "Wild Fire."

It is a novel. It is fiction. But it demonstrates what some twisted minds might believe a problem-solving strategy to remove the threat of a changing world.

WILD FIRE is scary and it reminds this writer that I dare not slow down in my desire to advocate the middle ground to sanity where we are all one race, the human race, made up of men and women, with neither gender more important or more gifted than the other, or no people more important or superior to any other.

How would something like a request for two pages of whining self-pity generate this response? I don't know. You'll have to answer for me. I promise BB I wouldn't write these things anymore.

Be always well,
Jim

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Check out Dr. Fisher's blog: www.fisherofideas.com