Guest post: A Hipbone Approach to Analysis II.
I’m thinking of the flight school students who “focused on learning to control the aircraft in flight, but took no interest in takeoffs or landings” — who asked one instructor where they could take lessons on jets without learning to fly smaller planes first, a request he concluded indicated they were “either joking or dreaming”.
In the not-so-terror-conscious atmosphere pre-9/11, a lack of interest in takeoffs and landings might have seemed quirky — but the “connections” weren’t obvious enough for the info to travel all the way up the FBI food-chain to the very top, as it would today. In post-9/11 retrospect, such things look a bit different – but I presume it still took reasoning by analogy for an instructor in a SE Asian diving school to recognize that a student who appeared less interested in the business of avoiding the bends and surfacing safely than in learning underwater swimming might pose a similar threat.
With 20/20 hindsight, this sort of thing seems glaringly obvious: even Monster Slayer could see it.
5
Let’s think about ignorance for a moment.
There’s Rumsfeld’s famous quip about known unknowns and unknown knowns, there are the genres of black swans and unintended consequences, there is what’s obvious and non-obvious, there are blind spots and hidden assumptions — and it’s the non-obvious that blindsides us, right?
We could rephrase the Spider Woman idea to state that Monster Slayer proceeds in terms of the obvious, while Child Born of Water works with the non-obvious. Jami Miscik, at that time Deputy Director for Intelligence at CIA, once remarked, “To truly nurture creativity, you have to cherish your contrarians and give them opportunities to run free”.
Child Born of Water is the contrarian, the maverick, the one whose oblique angle on things provides insight by… making non-obvious connections between the non-visible dots.
Page 2 of 2 | Previous page
Arherring:
October 29th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Great twist to the Fox (knows many things, or in this case deals in possibilities) and the Hedgehog (knows one big thing, or in this case deals in probabilities) analogy. Nice.
Larry Dunbar:
October 29th, 2010 at 6:08 pm
"Great twist to the Fox (knows many things, or in this case deals in possibilities) and the Hedgehog (knows one big thing, or in this case deals in probabilities) analogy. Nice." For a minute there I thought you switched the order and was calling the Hedgehogs the leviathan force and I was having a hard time with that image, but of course you are correct. The Hedgehog knows one big thing, let’s say Liberty as an example, and moves in a linear fashion using the force vector from the orientation. The fox on the other hand, is of single-mindedness and skips along the non-linear path to his destination, the orientation of his dreams."…hipbone, does double duty for me, since it refers to Ezekiel’s apocalyptic prophecy…" I will have to check that out. Does your hipbone analysis say wither the Monster Slayer is human or not, as all humans are Children of Water?
Charles Cameron:
October 29th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Thanks, ARH. Now I must go and read Isaiah Berlin <grin>.
Charles Cameron:
October 29th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Larry: they are <em>yei</em>, Holy People, and as such are impersonated by masked dancers in the ceremonials. More than that, I won’t venture to say, although I’d recommend John R. Farella’s <em>The Main Stalk: A Synthesis of Navajo Philosophy</A> as a fascinating introduction to the Navajo view. Joseph Campbell’s first book, <em>here the Two Came to their Father</em> deals largely with the Twins (Monster Slayer and Child Born of Water) — and the (expensive and rare) first and second editions came with gorgeous plates of the relevant ceremonial sand-paintings.
Charles Cameron:
October 29th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Larry: they are yei, Holy People, and as such are impersonated by masked dancers in the ceremonials. More than that, I won’t venture to say, although I’d recommend John R. Farella’s The Main Stalk: A Synthesis of Navajo Philosophy as a fascinating introduction to the Navajo view. Joseph Campbell’s first book, Where the Two Came to their Father, often filed under his co-author Jeff King, deals largely with the Twins (Monster Slayer and Child Born of Water) — and the (expensive and rare) first and second editions came with gorgeous plates of the relevant ceremonial sand-paintings.
T. Greer:
October 29th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
I agree, you have a foxish take on things. And hey, all the better for you.
Charles Cameron:
October 29th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Nice blog post you have there, T Greer! Thanks for pointing us.