Cross Posting: Post No. 1,820 - Knowing how others do things is not always good

This is an extract from a post on my main blog which was published at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2021/04/post-no-1820-knowing-how-others-do.html.

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One of the most arrogant, patronising and aggravating people I've ever known had the attitude that anything she perceived as a shortcoming about me was because I hadn't been taught well enough "how things are done" - which was basically the worldview and lifestyle she had been taught by her parents, who were conservative bigots. It never occurred to her that I was challenging that teaching - nor that I could be correct. 

On one evening, her brother had told her that anything could be found on the Internet by typing ".com" on the end - and that did, indeed, lead to a website, but not the one I wanted, which was a ".gov.au". I told her, repeatedly, that the site she had up on her screen was not the one I used, but she insisted that it must be, and would not let me access the keyboard to type the correct URL in. 

Of course, that speaks to a desperate insecurity on her part, and reflected events such as a past, damaging - "less than ideal" - relationship, and she deserved sympathy for that - and she had many other excellent attributes, but it made trying to help her access information in that particular instance impossible. 

I've come across other blind spots - other "idée fixe", if you will - in others (and, for that matter, myself). The worst are always those relating to parental views - and it is gravely concerning to come across people in their 40, 50s, and 60s who are - often without realising it - still craving parental approval (doubly so when the parents have passed). 

I've often found that when trying to get people to think about better ways to view and build housing - smaller, more durable, and with infinitely better insulation (such as mud brick, earth, rammed earth, modified compacted brick, etc, possibly one or two metres thick), but they still want some long dead parent to smile and say "that's right" when they trot out platitudes about how houses are about building wealth when they're not: they're about having the security of having somewhere to live. 

That also extends to those who build houses, who take any suggestion that there might be a better approach as an insulting aspersion on how skilled they are at building houses the way everyone else has for some decades now (and our current construction techniques actually only go back a century or so). They cannot - or refuse to - comprehend that they can be very skilled and talented at something, yet there can be a better way. (Consider: we have mostly changed from gas guzzling big cars to smaller, more efficient, and - for their size - safer cars.)

As an example, we use to have extremely skilled people - mostly women - who were so expert at doing calculations that they were termed "computers" - there's even a film, "Hidden Figures" (based on a book, which I have not read), about the black  women who were computers in the early US space industry. Electro-mechanical and now digital computers are faster and more accurate, so there is a better way to accomplish the task (albeit at a human cost, perhaps), so someone arguing for digital computers is NOT saying the human computers were not incredibly talented, skilful and competent, they are saying that there is an even better way. (On the other hand, someone who crewed for me years ago thought that new technology would change people - he was incapable of understanding [or chose not to understand] that I was seeking to change people for the better irrespective of whether or technology was changed. I consider that online abuse shows I was right, and he was wrong. Incidentally, I have a fondness for using slide rules, but will not go back to them for anything other than the occassional bit of entertainment or the odd reminiscence or nostalgic story.)

There is a similar example in the apocryphal story about the British business person in the late 1800s who, when encouraged to consider installing and using phones, said they didn't need phones as they had message boys (yes, it was sexist era). Again, no-one was saying the message boys weren't quick and accurate in delivering messages, they were saying "there is an even better way". 

One other example is from my time racing sailing dinghies in Queensland in the 70s. The dinghies had no spinnaker or trapeze, and were relatively slow two person boats,  but they surfed well enough down wind. When we came off a wave, what most people used to do was just wait passively until another wave came, and hope they had enough speed to catch it. I tried bearing up to more of a beam reach to try to pick up speed and have a better chance of catching the next wave - and another skipper was deeply, deeply offended and mortified that I wasn't doing things the same as everyone else. There were no rules against this, and it is widely used these days (along with other techniques developed after I stopped sailing competitively), but he was just utterly incapable of handling change. (Mind you, I have a fond spot for some of the old ways in sailing as well - for instance, if I ever built another boat, I like the look of a 17' gaff-rigged sloop design from New Zealand - traditional rig, but a hull built using modern plywood. I'm also in favour of using sail or hybrid powered vessels for commercial cargo, but I consider those have to move beyond simple re-enactments to finding ways to enable sail-powered vessels to load shipping containers.)

There are a stack of "even better" ways for us to live right now. Those include living in an environmentally sustainable way (reducing climate impact yes, but also not over-consuming resources nor allowing species to be made extinct - all of which are separate issues involving often but not always overlapping causes and solutions - and smaller, better housing is part of that [see here, here, here, here, here, and here] ), raising our children to be more adaptable and flexible (including future proofing their working life by planning on working in more than one career) and to be free of our personal biases, bigotries and flaws (or to do so as best we can), and for the world to be more aware of our interconnected nature and thus be more caring, humane and human in our politics - especially towards others in our society who may be different (e.g., sexuality, gender identity, race, or religion) and towards other nations.

For those of us involved in working psychically and spiritually for a better world, the same applies: there will - not "may", it will happen - be better ways of working towards our goals. Be prepared to adapt when you come across them.