Recycling, a human tradition
Post #16 in a series examining Understanding, its components & importance
“This is like déjà vu all over again.”
- Yogi Berra, baseball legend and philosopher
Why is it that when we experience something “never seen” (the literal interpretation of “déjà vu”), it sometimes feels like an old experience? Perhaps it is because we are recycling models of understanding that we had developed to store unique experiences from prior times.
If the way we develop understanding is based on the creation of virtual models in our brains (which we occasionally give real form to via books, art, toys and structures), if survival has wired us to choose a model quickly rather than waiting for a better idea to arise, and if there are only so many ways to create a model, then it is likely we are using the same basic models over and over again. And that could be why so much of what we experience is felt and explained in similar ways… because it provides a survival advantage, not to mention makes us occasionally laugh and ponder the possibility of time travel.
What about times when a model, an explanation loses credibility and is considered dead? Then the entire model may be thrown onto the scrap heaps of history. But every waste pile I have ever visited is regularly picked over by some living being to reclaim whatever value remains.
Sometimes a discarded model can be reused with little adjustment by somebody else whose needs are not as exacting. Other times a discarded model may be polished and buffed so it can be presented in modified form and under a different name. For example, even though western society has convincingly discredited the Communist economic management model, I am often amazed how Corporate Boards of Directors look and act a lot like Politburos… with self-selection of successors, unquestioning empowerment of the executive (at least in public), centralized control of resources, and a rigged voting process that gives the appearance of bottom-up legitimacy but where few choices are provided to the masses.
Even after something is recognized as totally useless, it may still find new life. Other processes may take that discarded thing apart, exposing smaller components that can eventually be recombined into something entirely new. In other words, death is rarely the end for any aspect of creation, even its intellectual models.
Recycling prior creations and occasionally creating something new from them is the way of the universe. Black holes consume matter and may spit out stars in an alternate reality. Steel and concrete from the destroyed World Trade Center are recast into new buildings and new battleships. Even artists, the creative specialists in our society, are ultimately recyclers, combining nominally disparate things into new wholes, giving refreshing insight into how we are all put together.
The majority of mankind is conservative, and I think that is because it takes so much energy to create something new, and even more energy to prove that something new is better than what it aims to replace. When the conservative is confronted with a need to explain why or how something is the way we experience it, he opts to use models that he previously invested in rather than build something new. The most prevalent example is calling God “the Father.” It may describe how we perceive God to be, caring, protective, strong and all-knowing, but it is likely an inaccurate and incomplete depiction of the Supernatural. And for those who had abusive fathers, such a description is probably a disincentive to believe anything religious authorities say.
The value of reusing old models to gain understanding and control in new situations is that it provides predictability (precision), though not necessarily accuracy. Still when we need to act fast, we may have no choice. Thus it is likely we will continue to apply economic models (all based on distribution of scarce resources) to non-economic situations (e.g. where we create an artificial scarcity such as limiting how much carbon dioxide can be emitted) if we think our survival depends on immediate action.
Finally, there are times when we just get bored with the tried and true models we have been using, be it the spouse we have lived with for years, or the job task we have been implementing our entire career. That is when we realize that the energy required to find and adopt a new model can also energize us, and we pursue that “something new” even when the older models we decide to reject remain relevant, useful, growing and with unexplored dimensions. Thus seeking something new may not always be an attempt to invalidate the old, but rather an inability to get deeper meaning from that which is more readily available.
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Tags: deja vu, models, recycling, Understanding
Understanding | Stan Kaczmarek | 11 March 2010 |
