Saturday, 10.39pm
Sheffield, U.K.
Every human has four endowments – self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change. – Stephen Covey
We have less choice in many situations than we think.
We live in systems that make it almost impossible to select choices that are not optimal within the framework of the system.
Take the word “system” itself, for example.
For many people, the word system might bring up an image of a computer system, a stereo system – some kind of arrangement of technology.
Others might think of a larger coordinated construction – like a transport system, the energy system or the judicial system.
A few researchers may argue that a system is something that exists in the mind – it’s a construct rather than something real – you can’t point to a system anywhere in the wild. It’s just a mental shortcut that helps us think.
Decisions you can make are therefore constrained by the framework in which you find yourself.
It’s easier to be a vegetarian in some countries than others.
I believe some of my family survived on just eating apples while travelling in Europe once a few decades ago.
At the time, some of the Europeans they met seemed to think that fish was ok to eat on a vegetarian diet.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that it’s hard to go against the prevailing dominant ideology of the place and time in which you find yourself.
It’s easier to go along with what seems to be winning and what looks like it will go on forever.
In 2007 it looked like housing markets were a sure fire bet.
In 2008 they crashed.
By 2022 it looked like interest rates would stay low for the rest of time.
They did not.
The question for us now, as we head in to a tumultuous few years, is looking at the events that look inevitable and asking what we would do in two cases.
What if those events come true?
And what if they don’t?
The answers to the second scenario may be the more important ones.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 