Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), We all spend some time reading a book either suggested by someone or maybe something that appeals to our thought process and there can be many other reasons as well for reading. This week again let me bring to your attention an interesting excerpt from this thought provoking work, ‘Knowing How to Know’. In this work the author draws our attention to concealed patterns, normally invisible to our customary modes of thought.
Excerpt:
Solving Problems
When a problem arises, or is believed to have arisen, the human being’s first reaction is not always to solve it – although he will pretend that it is.
This pretence is only the beginning of a whole exercise.
The first reaction is to ‘worry’, like an animal with a piece of food or other attention-object. It is being used, at this stage, as a game or food, to get some juice or reaction out of it. The man is ‘getting paid as he goes along’.
Even if the problem is a dispute between two parties, each of them will expect some enjoyment from the very fact of participation. Without this, the solving of the matter will not suffice them.
The man who solves problems ‘too quickly’, or even the one who ignores them, is signaling by this very fact that he is independent of the enjoyment-content in the problem-game. It is because of this, much more than because of his having solved the problem, that people respect him. They are in some awe of him because he has shown that he can do something that they cannot: dispense with the indulgence of wrestling with a problem
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Concluding today’s session.
Let us remember: Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.
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