Posted by Luke in A key idea that emerged in recent years for as meaning something to me… is this strange idea of ‘pragmatism’. In a very dirty definition this has to do with a description of events and things that involve practical elements or what kind of knowledge we think is useful. So a pragmatic question might be what is useful as opposed to what isn’t useful to say or do.
Coming down out of the academic ‘stratosphere’ for a moment I realised when I was reading something for a piece of work I wrote on strategic thinking (unpublished paper … so far anyway) that for the best part the desire to focus on the pragmatic means a desire to focus on that which is observable as ‘evidence’. Or in my own words… stuff that works well and is seen to be ‘of use’. Here is my key problem:
How will you know what works unless you try it…
I am in no way a philosopher of any sort. Neither would I consider myself a bare bones pragmatist… it’s just a bunch of books and words. However, this struck me about problems and how we approach them when I was writing and reading with my colleague had written. How can something work and you not know it? I give you the Campbell “Old Spice” Paradox:
You need to have experience in order to know what works. However, what works doesn’t always (if ever) work the same way as things do in other contexts. So, as I found Roy Bhaskar to explain in a round about way… philosophy fails to explain a lot to me. This could be my remarkable denseness or the fact that I have come to find it a tiresome bore to interpret and try and decode the dense philosophy territory of philosophical works. The exclusiveness of the language is my main concern… secondly the oversimplification of things to the point of sheer ignorance is the other. But I digress… back to the main point.
Being too pragmatic, means I am not willing to try something because I don’t know if it’s going to work because I can’t establish it’s usefulness! It reminds of what Horst Rittell said of wicked problems… you only have one shot to get it right. We often don’t know what’s going to work so we model, test and fail… often. The key thing to pull out of this is that often in life, love and the imagination there is a place beyond analysis. A place where the most obscure of ideas has a home. Call it irony, confusion or plain stupidity… my experience tells me that things in life often are confusing.
In closing this note on the key problem of being too pragmatic I want to deliberately confuse you by saying that it’s also one of the greatest strengths to recognise what works well, even if you don’t know it’s useful to do so. What works well, often isn’t what works well. This makes you hated. But if you manage to convince people that it works well and they believe you… when you are dead they will say “nice” things about you, name halls after you and create bronze (well puter) statues in your honour. Remember, if you have one shot to get it right be prepared to fail and succeed at the same time… it’s what I do!
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