#18 - Problems
Problems through time, a dangerous bunch, and happy tribes
Problems aren’t real. It’s all in our heads.
I’m writing this on Saturday morning, sitting next to a list of problems to mull over the weekend. Are they really problems? I’m not so sure.
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Problems Through Time
A quick Google search tells me:
Problem ~ “a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.”
Unwelcome or harmful. A quick glance at my list. Rewriting our pitch deck doesn’t strike me as dangerous. As for whether it’s welcome? I guess that’s down to me.
It wasn’t always this way. The word first showed its head in late 14th Century France:
Problème "a difficult question proposed for discussion or solution; a riddle; a scientific topic for investigation,"
Riddles! Excellent. The Greek roots go better still:
Problēma "a task, that which is proposed, a question;" literally "thing put forward,"
“Thing put forward”. Isn’t that lovely? Where on earth has all this “unwelcome” and “harm” come from. I’d much rather spend my Saturday tackling “things put forward”- far more enticing.
A Dangerous World
Whilst our definitions are becoming graver the use of “problem” is on the fall.
That peak, if you’re wondering is 1972. Perhaps some of my older readers can enlighten me as to why it was such an unwelcome year. Wikipedia tells me it was the longest year ever, due to two leap seconds being added on top of 366 days. Quite the claim.
Anyway- it’s declining! So are we cheering up as a species? Well… Perhaps not. Checks on “disaster” and “crisis” tell a different story:
(I won’t do “pandemic”)
Gosh. We’re a gloomy lot aren’t we? Is the world becoming more dangerous or are we becoming more cynical? I suspect the latter. I read a biography of Napoleon last month and, my god, that was a hectic time. 2021 is a breeze in comparison.
What if cynicism was not just correlated with our more civilised existence but caused by it? A look back in time holds the answer.
Happy Tribes
50,000 years ago we lived as hunter gatherers. Since then we’ve had the dawn of farming and the rapid progression of civilisation, up until today where I’m typing this on my Mac whilst listening to Classic FM on my Alexa smart speaker. Quite a shift.
But not all of us are listening to Alexander Armstrong’s soothing tones. There are, in small pockets of the world, still to this day hunter gatherers. For many of them little has changed in the passing millennia. Which gives us a unique opportunity to compare: are we happier?
No. No we are not. There have been some remarkable studies in recent years that have found today’s hunter gatherers are simply happy. They might jut be the happiest humans on earth today. So much for civilisation!
The stresses and worries that weigh us down simply don’t exist in these tribes. They move on. A problem once again becomes a “thing put forward”.
It brings me back to one word in our original definition: unwelcome. Whether or not we welcome a “thing” is down to us, and we seem to have become an unwelcoming bunch.
My challenge to you, and to me, on this sunny weekend is to welcome those “problems” on your mind. Will Shakespeare said it best:
“Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”
We each get to choose how we view the world- full of problems or full of riddles? I’ll take the riddles. My weekend’s looking better already.
My Week in Books📚
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
I tried and failed to get through this last summer- 2nd time lucky. One of the advantages of this book section is that it prompts me to prioritise reading each week so that I have something to write in here.
Not the lightest read. It gets easier as you go and the content is profound. One review puts DK in the same league as Copernicus and Darwin for impact on humanity. I agree. Until he came along we were assumed to be nothing but rational. How wrong that was.
Also on Kahneman: The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis is phenomenal. It documents his remarkable friendship with the brilliant Amos Tversky. Inspirational stuff.
Business for Punks by James Watt
The Brewdog story. These guys smashed it. There’s such a lack of authenticity in the business world and yet they have it in bucketloads. Lots of wonderful takeaways.
Gus Allen recommended I read this when I first got a startup job in 2016. I finally got round to it 5 years later- thanks Gus!
I’ll be updating the books I’ve read this year here. Any recommendations? Let me know!
A Final Thought 💡
“All problems are illusions of the mind.”
― Eckhart Tolle