Everyday we can walk to the crossroads of our lives and make a change.  We can chuck it all for something new, or we can stick with what we’re doing and ride it on through.  If someone were to ask us honestly “you can do anything you want, what do you want to do?”, how many hours a day can you say that it’s what you’re doing currently.  How would you justify it or what would you be?

Our lives are automatic, led by the instincts we’ve created.  Our decisions impulsive, yet predictable.  Our emotions calculated and spent.  How much of it all are we actually in?  Where do we fit in our very own lives?  Are we lost in the abyss of I, or are we warring for the helm.

Staring blankly into the eyes of Prospective, lost for response, and failing because of in love with it.

One of the less ingenious (hence most useful) methods for solving problems is to try every possible solution, then pick the best one.  Where solutions require cleverness, problem solving methods require simple principles.  Unfortunately, most problems cannot be solved this brute-force way.  For instance, some permutations of “how do I disarm this bomb” obviate future possibilities by destroying the problem.  In other cases, a less than optimal solution provides enough benefit to move forward and abandon the search altogether.  Halfway through “how do I get through this door” you might have kicked your foot through it.  At this point, it would be stupid to try unlocking, as it’s already open.  Lastly, some problems have so many possible solutions that it is statistically impossible to try them all.  These are the most fun problems for computer scientists.

Human progress, as far as my limited mind can tell, depends on two things: permutations and feedback.  We’re intelligent beings, but we’re far too stupid to see into the future.  We don’t see the immediate ramifications of our actions clearly, so we certainly have no chance of seeing long term consequences.  Yet despite these limitations, progress is visible (though along a tremendously jagged line).  A minority of humans live in relative security and comfort where none had such luxuries before.  In some ways, this is a Good Thing™.

Thus, the question of “how did we do it” transforms into “how can we do it better” and becomes a meta-problem of sorts: the problem of how to more efficiently solve our problems.  This meta-problem has far less possible solutions than the combined possibilities of what it seeks to encompass and has potentially farther reaching consequences, making it easier and more important (and also more likely to have no answer).  Win.

Back to permutations and feedback: try and test.  The “velocity” at which we can run through permutations depends on the solutions themselves, but more importantly how quickly we can ascertain how optimal they are.  If we give up on suggesting that humans can more intelligently make decisions by wallowing over their details (which seems more and more likely to be false), then it’s not implausible to suggest that this velocity can be directly related to progress.

The “volume” of feedback (compared to a pipe) depends on this “velocity” and its cross-sectional area: the number of permutations we can get through simultaneously.  We can wait for one country to trample through three governments, or we can take a overview of three countries at the present time (and get more accurate results if time period has any factor on the success of a government).

But… we don’t live in a lab.  A lot of these aspects we cannot control.  The number of countries is not going to jump to infinity to suit our desire to have the best (and to offer it to the infinitesimal fraction of people living it that one, blessed country), nor are trees going to grow faster to allow us to develop better plant feed.  Generalities are all we can offer, and generalities are all we have and can need.  Waiting for the best solution to fall on our heads is not a solution.  Oftentimes it takes wet feet to make your first steps.

The best heuristics we have for solving our biggest problems depend on feedback through transparency, accountability, and frequency as well as permutations in variety, uniqueness, and humility.  The intrepid problem solver must work quickly and leave no stone unturned, even for the best of reasons.  And the guinea pigs must be callous to the continual toe crunching (sorry kids).  Preconceptions, foggy judgments, and a reactionary test body (read: public) are the enemy of the optimal just as much as limited imagination, invalid judgements, and an apathetic subject.  Similarly, the quickest way to become obselete as a human is to solidify your worldview.

The applications of simple principles universally would result in a drastic change in how we humans live our lives…which is why it will never happen.

Life resists oversimplification and dooms those who succeed in the endeavour to placate themselves with their misunderstanding.

At 10:45am I mosey my way into the car and onto North Central Expressway, a road that I’m quietly becoming more and more familiar with.  Google maps has pointed me to a rather intimidating structure that houses Dallas Fellowship, something of a non-denominational Bible Church on the edge of Dallas.  As I pull into the three or four story parking structure adjacent to the Church (visitor parking is for noobs) and wander in wearing my undershirt amongst crowds of well dressed fathers, mothers, children, and others I’m struck by the sight of a totally unnecessary escalator (given the size of the sanctuary)…

I shift gears and push it out of my mind; I am committed to keeping my eyes open and my critical imagination shut down.  But I couldn’t help it.  The worship was uninspired.  The congregation wasn’t required to stand for a while, and they didn’t.  The leader seemed uninterested, and other than the female vocalist who sung like her career was about to blossom, everything seemed dead.  Except for the artsy puzzle pieces on the back wall.  As the pastor took the stage, I hoped for something amazing to spew out of his mouth.  Surely something brought these people in, and the music wasn’t it.

But it wasn’t the pastor.  And it wasn’t the music.  I’d actually totally misjudged everyone there, given the rather unfortunate event that had fallen on their heads.  One of the counselors that the church had hired to serve the congregation had committed suicide that week, leaving behind his wife and two daughters.  The pastor wept as he broke the news, despite the fact that he’d probably told it many times before at other services.  He was remarkably honest about the stages of grieving he had gone through, and managed to gracefully step around while not avoiding the issue at all.

But the while situation dances in me.  A man that was depended upon for spiritual guidance through depression and anxiety, with a PhD and plenty of education takes his life.  Why?  We don’t know.  How will his clients manage?  What does that say about…everything?  The pastor assured everyone that suicide = hell was a lie from the “fires of hell”, but having never seen anyone there before I was left wondering a lot more.

The short sermon was about spiritual warfare, and a lot of emphasis was put on a secular society who sees change through “education and medication”, something that actually hit me hard.  He knocked naturalists and said this was a spiritual thing, and that our lack of eyes to the invisible didn’t make it less real.  But with a suicide rate in the profession of 7 for every 100,000 psychologists, if it wasn’t medical, what was it?  If it’s entirely a spiritual thing, is he blameless?  Surely a person who deals with suicidal people on a regular basis knows how to get help and when, how to protect himself from…himself.  Yet a decision was made, that this world was too much and the tangle was too taught to unravel.  What the hell?