Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Digging Past Oversimplification


Occam's Razor isn't always sharp enough to pierce through the complexities of arguments, especially if they revolve around human interactions. Beneath the simple answers of cause and effect lies a mucky mess of ramifications, mitigating circumstances and other conditioning factors that affect attitude, feelings and sometimes even facts. Digging beneath the surface of an oversimplified argument requires empathy and emotional intelligence, along with the willingness to emotionally crumble under the weight of the errors that come with oversimplification.

The irony is that once the resistance to digging is overcome, the effect is less an emotional crumbling and more an expansion of possibilities. The feelings may be uncomfortable at first, but the new awareness serves as a payoff for the hard work of digging.

Managing the emotions behind thinking like thinking itself requires practice and training to assure you can dig deep without crumbling into an inert heap.