I know I will likely be lambasted and burned at the stake for this but what is life if you cannot insite a little riot every now and then… So here we go…
(but before I do let me fist appologize if this post wonders a bit. I’ll do my best to make it cohesive and to the point. Onwards…)
The world makes sense to me when I contemplate it in generalities. I’ve been a accused, on these boards, a time or ten for making very wide and sweeping generalizations on several occasions. Be that as it may, I find that in dealing with complete strangers on wide ranging topics I find I must fall back on my personal base of knowledge from which I can extrapolate or interpolate my stance on the given subject.
Now, this is not because I find it difficult to deal in specifics or facts vis-a-vis a given individual event. Not at all. In fact I much prefer it when possible. But for me, generalizing becomes useful when dealing with a large number of interpretations on a subject or an interpretation that, in my experience, runs contrary to previously accumulated knowledge. In other words, like most people, I test a given interpretation against my personal gathered experiences and thus make subjective judgements based on the merits of a given individual claims. More precisely, I weigh the validity of any given claim based on its likelyhood given some fairly basic common assumptions. These may include personal experience with a similar situation, second hand knowledge of similar situation, anecdotal discussions by professionals and lay people of similar situation in published or spoken form.(It’s worth mentioning here that I never attempt to postulate a universally applicable rule in these cases. I merely make personal judgements which seem reasonably accurate under the circumstance.)
This is by no means a fool proof method but it works for me on many levels and in a great majority of cases where I choose/need to make a personal call. To put it in simpler terms, I arrive at my results by intuition and gut feel. The evidence to support my final, all be it generalized, opinion is often within the body of the claim I evaluate but I myself sometimes have trouble identifying the precise clues that lead me to a decision. In fact it’s usually the sum of the clues rather than a single one that lead me to my resultant opinion on the subject.
Some may claim that the weakest link in my methodology is the fact that my experiences may differ dramatically with those of the next individual. Perhaps so. But in very broad and general terms, I don’t believe that our experiences differ in as many ways as some claim. In fact, if they did, I doubt that we as individuals would be able to communicate amongst eachother with as much success as we currently do.
It is an often quoted and much overused idea that we are all unique individuals. From a strictly cultural point of view, our perceptions and experiences are far more global and common than many of us would care to admit. In fact, there are some seemingly far fetched theories that human experience is a globally shared attribute. Not everyone needs to go through the same experience to have a sense of it to some degree. (I know, pretty wacky, huh? - I wish I could remember the book and author who proposed this idea a few years back.) On the other hand, perhaps it’s a normal reaction to assert one’s own individuality and indominable spirit in the face of an increasingly invasive ouside world. But I’m inclined to think that as the world shrinks and availability of information grows, experiences become increasingly shared and common rather than unique and personal. It is my speculation that they were not that varied in the fist place.
Humans operate on very basic and primal needs. These are food, shelter, pro-creation and gathering/exchange of information to fascilitate the first three. Despite our evolution and industrialization, these four remain our guiding principals. Given these common needs, is it really that inconcievable that many generalizations hold true despite our ever increasing desire to assert individual uniqueness? (Please understand that I am in no way trying to discourage people from thinking freely and independantly. It is a valuable trait practiced by far too few IMHO).
So there it is. The world according to QuickSilver. Love it, hate it, or simply be indifferent to it. Though I am curious how many others have thoughts along the same lines.
<flame retardant suit on>