Problem Solving #1
From Mixing Music (Perspectives on Music Production) edited by Russ Hepworth-Sawyer, Jay Hodgson (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 27:
Learning requires a willingness to fail and is often uncomfortable. Learning requires admitting to knowing what is to be learned and being receptive to something new. Adding to this, learning to listen requires a commitment to trust that what is not known is actually present — that this sound quality that has never been perceived, never been experienced, actually exists.
Spoiler Alert: In The Wizard of Oz (1939), Dorothy and her dog, Toto, alongside their friends, the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, head to the Emerald City because they’ve heard that there’s a wizard there who can grant each of them their wishes. Dorothy wants to return to her family in Kansas, the Tin Man desires a heart to become more human, the Lion seeks courage, and the Scarecrow wants a brain. Upon their first meeting with the Wizard, he tells them that before he can grant their requests, they must bring him the broomstick belonging to the Witch of the West. After enduring many challenges to get the broomstick, the Wizard says he needs more time to think about their requests and asks them to return the next day. Frustrated by the Wizard’s response, Dorothy says, ‘If you are really great and powerful, you’d keep your promises.’ Meanwhile, Toto, doing what dogs do best (snooping), pulls back a curtain to reveal a startling truth: the powerful and frightening voice that had made them quiver in their shoes was actually a dude using a voice-modulating microphone, located in a small cubicle filled with all sorts of gear, levers, and pulleys, all designed to create the illusion of grandeur and power. You can watch the scene here. Don’t worry, it’s under 2 minutes. Side note: You might think that Dorothy was young and naive, and no one would fall for such tricks today. I can tell you for free that you’d be mistaken to think that. People still fall prey to scammers who use techniques very similar to the one used by The Wizard of Oz. Con artists, through a hose or pipe in a wall, pretend to be God, Jesus, or a lost relative, speaking to you and instructing you to do one thing or another. This often results in you losing a container load of money, that’s if you’ve got it. Why ruin the film for those who haven’t seen it? It's because, as the Nigerian proverb states, ‘What you don’t know is your master.’ or ‘what you don’t know is greater than you.’ 🍄
Things remain mysterious when you lack the knowledge to understand how the parts fit together or even what the parts are. And as long as you don’t understand it, you’re at the mercy of whatever the thing is. Modern life has been marked by iterative attempts by humans to control their environment. I often laugh when people focus solely on the benevolent aspects of nature, praising ‘Mother Nature’ this and that. They often forget that Mother Nature can escalate from calm to catastrophic in a matter of seconds. Earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters frequently reported in the news are examples of this. Humans have had no choice but to either shield themselves against nature’s forces or find a way to align with them. If you can predict the behavior of something, you can impose order on or control it. Think of control as following a recipe. If you have a recipe and follow it, you can expect a certain outcome. Many things in the world are quite resistant to demystification. We only understand a minuscule portion of the world, and the universe is quite reluctant to release its secrets. Think about it this way: a large part of the world is not visible to a child who can’t read. It’s there, but the child simply can’t have access to it. Once the child learns to read, more worlds, or a new world, unlock. Language is therefore a tool for either mystification or demystification. That’s why groups of people, or even subcultures, create their own language to keep the uninitiated out. The more complex the language or signs, the more they will dissuade those without great determination from understanding them. The more control you have over your environment, the more peace of mind you’ll have. The less control you have, the more frustrated or unhappy you’re likely to be. Probably why young people are so disoriented because they have or will have less control of their environment than their parents or grandparents. The faster an environment changes, the more skill or resources you will need to adapt successfully. All of life is problem-solving — this isn’t an original idea; Karl Popper titled a book that. 🫁
But in doing so, he highlighted an important truth. It may sound sad, but it’s just another definition amongst many of what life is. The better and faster you are at problem-solving, or at identifying and attacking a problem before it becomes unmanageable, the more effectively you can keep life’s madness at bay. Let me state a problem: For instance, how can I, as a parent in 2023, provide for my children? What are the basics? It probably includes giving them an education that prepares them for future challenges like sensing and leveraging changes in their environment, ensuring shelter and healthcare, protecting them from crime, supplying food and clothes, and still giving them access to great experiences. If you choose not to have kids, you have managed to duck that problem and its sub-problems. However, that choice comes with its own set of problems, so good luck! If you choose to have kids, then the first question would be: how have others successfully handled the problem? This is what learning is all about — knowledge as a problem solving mechanism. Do you solve the problem the way others in the past have, or has the terrain changed, requiring you to tweak those solutions to be fit for purpose? If you live in a country with subsidized services, you might not need an abundance of resources and will likely be fine, thanks to government safeguards. However, the question remains: how long will this last? It's another problem for you to solve. A potential solution could be to prevent corrupt individuals, who are not accountable to their electors, from taking leadership positions. Additionally, you could advise the government on how to generate more revenue, so they can maintain those subsidies and still have a large reserve for emergencies. If you’re in a country that doesn’t have that kind of luxury, your problem set is different and your solution should reflect that. Let’s say one possible solution to the original question of raising kids would be to have more resources. Another solution would be to transform your country into one with good leadership that can cater to the basic needs of its citizens. However, the latter approach is more challenging because it requires a capacity for organization at scale, which still demands resources. 🩺
The most annoying yet interesting aspect of capitalism is that it rewards several key qualities: fluidity (or flexibility), prolificacy (or high output), and the ability to co-opt or synthesise (meaning everything is up for grabs). People have eventually realised that the more resources you acquire, the easier it becomes to say and maintain No. It can also work the other way: with more resources, you can influence those with fewer resources to comply with your wishes. That aside, the cost of just existing is so high, that if you don’t participate in capitalism, you know the rest of that story. I have to stop here and will continue next week. I listened to three albums: L’enfant Prodigue by Claude Debussy, Symphony No. 4 by Sergey Prokofiev, and The Wizard of Oz soundtrack. 🍄
Thanks for reading. If there’s anything you’d like to chat about, or if you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email. I’d love to hear from you. 🍿