Especially in the realm of “problem solving” or “invention” or “towards a more perfect”, there is a distinction, a difference, between doing something less bad and doing something that is a good.
This can be a tricky thing to wrap our brains around. Because certainly fixing something has to be good, right?
Well, yes/no. It’s similar to the conversation around efficiency. Often when we see something that produces something we want, yet has these drawbacks*, we fixate on those drawbacks and limit our plan of attack to reducing them. It is evolutionary design and problem solving. “If I can get it to emit 10% less toxics, then that’s better!”
So we work, and work some more, and boom, we’ve gotten something that produces 15% less badness. Hooray! We dance, and celebrate, and then miss the point that the thing/system/machine/process/etc is still producing plenty of badness. Badness is still there.
We also often forget that nothing is inherent. Just because something is a certain way, doesn’t mean it is meant to be that way.
Instead, we can return to the primordial. Design from first principles. Create with intention. And invent something that delivers a good on all fronts. Something that not only produces what we want but may even produce extra of the things we’d want.
This is how we get a house built in the harsh desert that don’t just use 10, 15, or even 30% less energy for air conditioning by making it more ‘efficient’, making it less bad. From our glorious spirited wellspring, we craft and get a house that, through good design, uses 100% less energy for AC even in the hottest of days, while at the same time being a more gorgeous house to live in.
This is revolutionary or primordial design. It is not less bad. It is a good.
When we cut ourselves, we put on a bandage. Emergency problem solving is going to be limited in that way. And we should absolutely do it! Bleeding is no good. But if we cut ourselves continually in the same manner, getting or creating better bandages is not the best way forward. The less bad way still ends up hurting.
Returning to the source to chart a new course lets us avoid the knife and create many a good thing along the way.
* Which in of itself can take work to become aware and present that there are drawbacks, and even then to get over resisting or downplaying or ignoring the drawbacks because we get caught up in a false dichotomy that says we have to abandon the thing** entirely to avoid the drawback.
** We can also get caught up in the notion that the thing is the best, or even only, way to deliver that result. The only way to have fun. The only way to generate income. The best way to transport our bodies. By coming again from the primordial, designing by intention, we often create something that is not only a good instead of less bad, but the end result/product is even better than it was before, a better we never knew or could imagine existed, and would never had seen had we stuck with the same old, just less bad.
Lynx Thoughts 