Not For Public Consumption: Dream of a New Job

Last week I had a dream right before waking. I was looking for work. Manual, temporary work. The kind of job search where one mulls around with others of the same lot, in public places, waiting for luck or charity or some other invisible goddess’ handout. I was suddenly gathered up with a group of others and driven in a van to a place that needed some mopping or digging or something. I was happy to have a job, but bored beyond tolerance, so I decided to play a game. I acted like I was kind of simple. I stood kind of strange, my right foot always twisted in a bit and my shoulders hunched. I did not say much, and any responses were deliberate and strained. No jokes or eye contact.

The fun part was dealing with the "bosses". These men were no more skilled, intelligent or empathetic than any one else in the group, but through some mysterious means had been given a place above us in the hierarchy. Having no clue what it means to guide or motivate people, they relayed messages from the top without question and relied on fear to get things done. One look at me and they built an entire mental model, filed it away in their brain and treated me thereafter in a very predictable and stereotyped manner. With such a blind spot I imagined all sorts of tricks and manipulations that would open up, with no one ever suspecting. I know, a lot of people would categorize that as a nightmare.

For a long time I have felt the ability to categorize is important to getting things done and building mental models, but at the same time it is a weakness. Everything, everyone, is really different, and the more we unquestionably rely on things or people being the same, the more we are blinded to what is really happening. This blindness is not always a problem, but if someone sees you are blind and decides to use it to their advantage, it can be hard to defend against.

In a draconian sense, you can allow yourself to become a mind-slave. This is not so bad if the master is whispering "stop smoking" or "be nice", but those voices seems to fade out after the age of 10. Soon after it is "be cool and smoke" or "be mean" or "the cause of all your suffering and pain are those other people who a) have leprosy/aids/some other disease as punishment b) have dark skin c) are not male d) believe in a different god e) have a different sexual orientation."

I came across an interesting study about children’s naiveté, that also reveals the blindness of categorization. The article, quoting the authors of study of how children remember things differently than adults, had this to say:

The results show how some types of memory might be better when people forget what they know and instead approach a subject with a child-like sense of naïveté. "Verbatim memory is often a property of being a novice," said Sloutsky, who is also associate dean of research at the university's College of Human Ecology . "As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and one of the costs they pay is lower memory accuracy for individual differences."

The ability to categorize is often very helpful, but this study shows how it can lead people to ignore individual details, Sloutsky said. The inappropriate use of categorization can also lead to problems such as stereotypes of groups, Sloutsky said.

Sloutsky said adults are flexible and can pay attention to and remember details if they are asked. However, the key is for people to know when to "turn on" their ability to remember details and when the ability to categorize is more important. "If you categorize a person, you will be less likely to remember individual details about the person. At the same time, these individual details undermine stereotypes," he said.

Another route to arguing that we should be smarter about when to use categorization comes from philosophy. In reading Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology, he recreates the word Gestell (bookrack, skeleton) into a term which is usually translated as Enframing, but which I read as Categorization. In Gestell he sees the source, or essence, of why we have pursued and succeeded in technology. He also finds danger there. If we allow it to override all other aspects of our being, bad things will follow (I am paraphrasing here.) Not surprisingly for Heidegger, his solution to / protection from this danger refers back to the Greeks and their use of the poetic. He posits that art and technology for the Greeks was combined, or at least balanced, more than they are today. That art allows us to see more clearly.

Could it be that the fine arts are called to poetic revealing? Could it be that revealing lays claim to the arts most primally, so that they for their part may expressly foster the growth of the saving power, may awaken and found anew our look into that which grants and our trust in it?

Part of what gives an artist or designer their results is an ability to turn off categorization, to see things not in the usual context but to "awaken and found anew our look", and go forward from there. Not wholly unlike the path to innovation (but that is a different soap box.)

p.s. In case you are wondering why I would include Heidegger (philosophy) instead of, say, Jung (psychology), in a entry about a dream, I was a little surprised myself. You see, when I woke up that day last week, I figured the dream was metaphorical and this entry would end up as a bit of psychoanalysis. Until two days later, when I was laid off from my job due to cost cutting. Such literalness really demands a more philosophical approach. Although in truth I do hope the dream does not completely play itself out.