Philosophy is a Monster Movie

Shin Godzilla and fiction like A Man in Full, offer plot, material and layers enough to read-in narratives and meaning beyond the surface — pattern making in accordance with the viewer/reader’s mental model, unbound, strictly speaking, by the characters and temporal unfolding of the work itself. There feels sufficient intentionality in the material to claim a surface, a plane from which the viewer/reader can spring into creativity –and there feels sufficient implicit action, connection, non-intentional gestalt to warrant this creativity. These are characteristics shared with useful and enjoyable philosophical works -or works which can otherwise be waxed about philosophically. Or minds which can wax philosophically on a wide range of works. Ditto problem solving in business.

APPLICATION

The pattern-recognition capacity described here, the ability to hold a work, a situation, or a problem with enough loose attention that non-obvious connections become visible, is a trainable cognitive skill relevant to decision making under uncertainty. Traditional analytical frameworks ask you to decompose a problem into its components and evaluate each against a fixed set of criteria. That process is useful for tame problems where the relevant variables are known. For complex and wicked problems, it systematically misses the emergent properties that arise from the interaction of components, the gestalt that cannot be reduced to its parts. The leader who approaches a strategic challenge the way a thoughtful reader approaches Shin Godzilla, staying open to what the material is doing rather than forcing it into a preexisting frame, is more likely to see the option that is not yet on the table. Ditto problem solving in business, indeed.