Climate, technology and chaos Blog

In the last blog post, I discussed the ‘two minds’ issue and the way of problem solving this suggested. In this post we move on to climate change and, incidentally, Covid-19. It is useful to have some experience with the method described in the previous post, before moving on, but there is no harm in getting more of a perspective beforehand.

The Nature of the Problems

Covid-19 and Climate Change present as what are called ‘wicked problems’. In my opinion this is a bit of a silly term, but there you are. It basically means there is a set of problems which are complex, intertwined, have multiple interacting (and probably opaque) causes, and do not have well defined solutions. People may not even agree on what the ‘problem field’ is, consequently there is almost always significant dispute over the problem, its existence, its interpretation, consequences and possible solutions – and this may become tangled in wider politics, which makes finding a ‘solution set’ even harder.

Furthermore, applying the solutions (or avoidances) we generate, can change the situation and the problems we face, often in unexpected ways – so wicked problems do not finish neatly. We might solve part of the problem and set off a landslide of other problems. In the worlds of Tom Ritchey “wicked problems won’t keep still.”

The hallmark of a wicked problem is that, even when faced up to, it doesn’t appear solvable within our current frameworks.

Even recognising the problem can be a problem, as wicked problems often become Black Elephants, foreseeable, but exceptional, crises, which no one wants to talk about – often for fear of unresolvable arguments or social exile.

Wicked problems and Black Elephants are not extreme and rare, they are normal in complex systems, and all social systems are complex systems, and not predictable in specific. Most people know how difficult predicting ‘the economy’ is, or even what will happen in politics in the next few weeks – it might be possible to predict general outlines, or trends, perhaps, but specific events are much harder – the more detail you want, the harder the events are to predict exactly. If you act, then you cannot be exactly sure what the results of your action (or non-action) will be until afterwards, and even then it can be difficult to disentangle the results of your actions from ‘background events’. Knowledge in, and of, complex systems is always provisional and uncertain, although many people try to guide themselves by dogma.

Climate change is precisely a wicked problem. It is complex with many intertwined and connected causes. To make it more politically and socially complicated, it is generated by the same processes which have made ‘modernity’ and ‘development’ possible for almost all the world’s large scale societies. These processes are disrupting and destroying ecologies, all over the globe, often in indirect ways. These processes also tend to be ingrained into our directed minds, because this is the world we have grown up in.

Solving normal problems such as development in China, protecting ‘position’ in the US, or maintaining a favourable export market in Australia, may all emit greenhouse gases which cause melting of the ice caps, rise in sea levels, rise in temperatures, drought, rain storms, death of crops, massive fires and so on. This rise in temperature can also generate collapse in the breeding of krill and plankton, which then has effects on fish populations, or on water purity, and adds to burdens on food production. Burdens of food production implies more deforestation, which exports more essential minerals to cities and from cities through waste into the sea, where the minerals become irrecoverable. Increased use of artificial fertilisers is then required, which may further denude soils. Production of essential plastics can poison people, creatures and land, and so on.

However, stopping the use of machines which increase greenhouse gas production, may mean we don’t have enough energy to replace our energy systems, and people may be condemned to poverty which, in turn, increases their precariousness in the face of climate disruption. The problems seem both endless and interconnected.

As a purely incidental remark, one of the advantages of the so-called ‘Donut economics‘ is that it provides a tool which draws attention to some of the world’s boundaries, which are ignored in normal economics. This normal lack of interest in the ecological consequences, and basis, of economic action is another problem.

Likewise with Covid, we are faced with the problem that lock-down, which is so far the only solution we have, sends businesses broke, makes people unemployed and precarious, as well as isolated and prone to mental breakdown. Lock-down encourages resentment as peoples’ livelihoods and sociality are removed. It may further increase sickness as people avoid medical treatment. The economic crash may make governments more precarious as they have less income and receive greater pressure to open the longer lock-down goes on (where it is actually going on). Rushing vaccines, as President Trump and others promote, means that the vaccines are less likely to be properly tested for safety, people are likely to avoid them, and if bad effects occur, people are likely to increase their distrust of mainstream science (confusing it with corporate science). It may be the case that Covid-19 is vaccine resistant, or mutates under the pressure of vaccination and so on. The disease also reveals which people are defined as socially unimportant (old people, sick people etc), which can increase political pressures as those people organise to rebel, or are more effectively ignored.

Both Climate Change and Covid-19 are problems which involve information overload and propaganda, and allow people hostile to particular countries, or to particular politics, to try to undermine those countries’ responses. This almost certainly adds to confusion and panic, which becomes part of the pandemic problem.

The obstacles to agreed knowledge of Covid and knowledge of climate are marked, even if probable trends are clear. What we might call ‘directed skepticism‘ (ie skepticism towards one side of the debate only) is common.

The directed mind adds to the problems, as it seems to be tempted to ignore evidence, and how others are reacting, to make things appear simple and easily solvable.

The interaction of the wicked problems of Covid-19 and Climate change has the potential to make both situations worse, as more stress is added to the system response, and the system response is further disrupted.

Directed Mind

We can now move into the difficulties of solving problems from within the habitual directed mind. This mind is part of our social life and is largely shared or collective.

I am going to suggest that our contemporary directed mind, especially in the English speaking world, is heavily influenced by neoliberal ideology and its axioms.

This is to some extent to be expected. The corporate sector controls nearly all sources of information, directly or indirectly, so it is not a wonder if its ideology permeates our thinking practices – however much we may want to resist recognition of this, and however much they try to reassure us that we have reached neoliberal conclusions and accepted neoliberal axioms, through our individual wisdom, reflection, or gut instinct.

To be clear, neoliberalism is not a feature of every society’s common directed mind, but it does seem to affect a large portion of people living in the English speaking world. Again variation is to be expected. Not every directed mind will have all these features, but the socially prevalent directed mind cannot be analysed without reference to these axioms, standard paths, or habits of thinking. Nearly everyone will be affected by some of these.

1. The directed mind, whatever society it is in, wants to preserve its habits, and use the solutions that it has used before. These habits and solution processes have given it meaning. They have generally seemed to be secure and are probably thought to avoid unknown futures and disturbances. They seem adequate and protective. They are known and familiar.
2. The socialised directed mind in the English speaking world, probably considers ‘the corporate economy’ a vital part of life, perhaps the most important part of life, which should not be disrupted as that will supposedly produce poverty and challenges to social relations – “How can society survive without the economy?”. There is a habitual slip between ‘this corporate economy’ and ‘the economy,’ which halts consideration of change. Because it forms a habitual base for human life, the corporate economy gets taken into the directed mind and becomes normal.
3. Taking ‘this economy’ as the most important part of social life, conceals all the other processes that humans require for satisfaction, or life in general, such as a working ecology, beauty, low levels of pollution, or human connection and co-operation. So the assumption this economy is vitally important hides information about all these other even more important factors.
4. The corporate economy and its associated technology, has previously provided a route out of poverty for many. It is not quite so certain it is still doing this in the previously-developed-world, but history counts. Politicians realise that it has also provided military might and military security, and vast wealth for some small, but now powerful, part of the population. It can be felt to be good, and as providing a secure solution. It is also promoted by those who have apparently benefitted from it, partly because it helps them, and it saves them the effort and discomfort of trying to think differently.
5. The corporate economy has provided the directed mind with a path whereby nothing is anyone’s fault or responsibility – so it’s morally easy to leave everything to the corporate sector. What the corporate economy delivers is supposedly always the best possible result in the circumstances. It is reputedly the best problem solving device we have, and we, and our governments, don’t have to do anything which might hurt us or our habits – and we are never to blame if things go wrong. This path allows us to hide, or deflect, many ethical dilemmas, and put them to sleep, thus producing a degree of conscious ease.
6. In a counter-position, it also allows easy blame, also helping to put ethical dilemmas to sleep. Everything is the fault of other people, socialists, individual capitalists or billionaires, or possibly protestors; we are not involved.
7. Life’s meaning, for most people in the previously-developed-world is generated by work, purchases and/or consumption. Anything that threatens consumption and work is a threat to peoples’ sense of meaning, their identity, and/or to their survival, so it is resisted – even if continuing is a bigger threat to survival.
8. To the directed mind, buying something appears the solution for most emotional and existential problems. If we are unable to buy things, we are more likely to have to face those discomforts, and this is threatening so the market must continue.
9. In this mindset, the directed mind feels we should be at liberty to do nearly anything we want. This, nowadays seems to allow liberty to proceed even if it hurts someone else indirectly, or directly, if we call them ‘bad people’. Those bad people can look after themselves, they are weak, and “we are individuals”. In neoliberal theory you are not responsible for what happens to lesser beings as a result of your actions, even when those results are predictable. Hence restriction tends to seen and felt as bad, unless generated by employment, in which case it is largely ignored and realisation is suppressed.
10. As I’ve argued elsewhere, neoliberal positive thinking of the form that avoids problems and focuses on having-what-we-want now, is now a major way of avoiding problems, and pretending there is a solution without discomfort. Our directed mind often learns that we should be able to solve problems without really facing them – trusting in the corporate economy, the free market, extra consumption, or God, to solve those problems for us.
11. The positive directed mind can put faith in technology, as this is a major feature of life in contemporary capitalism. However, technology cannot necessarily be produced on demand, or without disruptive effect. This axiom allows us to fantasise about ‘new nuclear’, carbon capture and storage, disruption free batteries and so on, instead of facing the problems.
12. The world tends to be seen by this directed mind as a resource to be transformed by human labour and technology for our benefit, pleasure or comfort. Otherwise it is not particularly valuable. Even ‘wilderness’ has to be tended by humans and should be open to human use – such as for tourism, four-wheel driving, hunting etc.
13. Things should be property and be treated as property owned by someone. If they are not ownable, they are worthless.
14. This directed and individualised consciousness weakens attempts to perceive humans as part of the world, as subject to the world, or as interconnected with the rest of the world. The only recognisable interconnections allowed are economic. This promotion of lack of connection to the world-as-a-whole, may promote isolated and aggressive nationalism as part of shadow politics, as well as ecological destruction.
15. The great pressure in ‘information society’ is for our conscious mind to be correct. To be right. Our status can depend on others thinking we are right. This inhibits problem solving, as we stay comfortable by staying right. This means not changing our mind and only finding evidence that supports what we already think. Real problem solving requires failure and requires being wrong, as we test what sounds plausible and find it does not work.
16. In the modern directed mind, anything that disrupts our comfort seems bad, and probably a conspiracy by hostile people.
17. Everything that is uncomfortable tends to become political. Hence, everyone who disagrees with us is biased, and can be denounced so we can be right. This reinforces convention in the directed mind and means that we don’t have to think about all the problems, only a fragment of the set of problems which appear friendly to us. Wicked and complex problems are best solved by leaving them alone, or turning away from them – which is reinforced by the conventionality of the directed mind and by social forces.
18. These forms of action and belief encourage a shadow politics, which primarily attacks the evil scapegoats provided for us, and clings to the habits of our directed mind. It is easier to be distracted than to face the problems.

Having, a fixed set of responses, as is normal for a directed mind, limits our attempts to gain awareness of problems, and provides a false sense of comfort.

The Directed Mind; Problems and Politics

These characteristics of contemporary directed minds, which we all have to some degree, make solving wicked problems even more difficult than they already are.

For example, we can easily find people who focus on the real economic, isolation or ‘liberty’ problems of most Covid solutions, but it seems rare for these people to face up to the compounding death or disabling problems of Covid. Indeed it seems common to deny that the latter problems exist, or to pretend that the people who die would have died anyway – which renders the dying and the dead effectively beneath notice. Even those who recognise the death problem tend to neglect the disabling problems, perhaps because those are too disturbing. Those who do recognise the compounding death problem, tend to ignore the economic and isolation hardships, unless people protest hard, and they then tend to dismiss the protestors as politically motivated. In both cases the complete information is relatively difficult to process, and ‘both sides’ tend to think the other is delusional or conspiratorial, and that they have all-correct information.

The same is true of climate change. People who want to continue to live as they live now, with their current directed minds, see the economic, liberty, and disruptive constraints of dealing with climate change. They tend to think the climate change data is political or exaggerated, and they prefer more comforting data when they can find it. The fires were the result of criminal arsonists. Renewable energy is less reliable than coal or gas or oil. Extinctions are not happening. Small increases in average temperature cannot have large effects. The temperatures were not measured correctly. Scientists are socialists and benefitting from people’s fear. All we need is more nuclear energy etc. etc. The full data is ignored.

Likewise, people working to slow climate change, can think of their opposition as deluded, and political. They can ignore the problems of renewable energy transition. They can ignore the political and organisational problems. They can ignore the problem that most energy use is not electrical, and cannot be lowered by simply making electricity renewable. They can ignore how slowly the transition is happening, and think the rest of the transition can happen quickly. They can think that because it is ‘economic’ to make the transition, it will happen, forgetting the economy is political and under the sway of large established corporations who’s controllers may not want to change.

In these situations, shadow politics are easily activated, distracting from the real problems, which it is probably intended to do.

The point is, that with a complex wicked problem set, it is easy to select those parts of the problem field that you think you can solve, in the way you are comfortable to solve them, and ignore the rest. You can ignore the complexities of the situation, and the tendency of human actions to generate unintended effects which rebound through the system, changing it into a new state.

One of the further reasons for avoiding problems is that as well as being associated with a challenge to habitual thought and problem solving, the problems can be associated with, or produce, bodily discomfort, mental dislocation, trauma, threatening images and sensory experience, even to the point of feeling ill, sick or disgusted. That is why, I previously suggested that facing into these kinds of sensations may also be useful in problem solving, while warning that people should be careful if doing this without prior experience or support.

The aim of our normal activity is to preserve our directed consciousness, and our comfort. Sometimes people will use drink, drugs, consumption, unsafe sex and so on, not to dissolve the directed mind, but to dampen down the growing discomfort of the problems.

Facing the problems

As the reader has probably now guessed. I’m going to say again that we need to face these problem fields squarely and face on, as suggested in the previous post. We need to face our discomfort. Exhaust ourselves, realising that our preferred solutions do not work, will not work and ignore vital parts of reality. Argue, put solutions forward, let others destroy them. Fantasise that your opponents are right. Question your knowledge. Acknowledge your grief and pain. Feel the lack of simple and visible solutions. Dissolve what you ‘know’ to be true.

Engage your phantasy, listen to dreams.

Then step back and wait for solutions and symbols to come. Preferably recognise a solution because it is not what you wanted or expected.

It is probable that these solutions may not work either, be prepared to explore them, talk with others about them, share them. Evaluate them carefully in practice.

Treat the solutions experimentally. It is best to test them in your daily life as dispassionately as possible. Remember a persuasive solution may not work, or may work but generate unintended consequences. It may need modifications, or further procedures. And keep going.

If your solutions involve exterminations, or mass imprisonments, look out for the possibility of your having been captured by shadow politics. The same if the solution depends on ‘impossible’ technology or high improbability events such as being saved by aliens. The unconscious can be tricky.

Obviously I cannot be definitive here. There are almost certainly other problem solving techniques, and people have written a lot about complex and wicked problems, and some little about unintended consequences. Take inspiration where you find it, but use it to solve problems rather than to make yourself feel comfortable.

Why Me?

You might well ask “why me?” and the rather sad answer is because people who get paid to solve problems in the government and in business are not succeeding that well. They get tied into the politically possible, the pressures of fitting in, or the need to protect the State, business, or the system as it is.

You are as creative as most other people. You are as prone to mistakes as other people. Why not you? Especially if you can find support and stimulation working with others who hold the same commitment and curiosity about extending their consciousness beyond the directed mind.

Solutions have to come from somewhere. Understandings have to come from somewhere. It might as well involve you, or you and your friends.

Perhaps you might waste your time. But there is nothing more important to waste time on. And perhaps you might succeed and spread the solutions to others. Even small personal solutions might be important.

However, despite the ambition, there is absolutely nothing wrong in practicing the technique described in the last post on smaller problems first. That is, after all, how we learn, and how you will find whether the method works for you, or needs to be modified to work for you. Small steps are good.

Is the problem with Climate change due to a failure of imagination? That is the main question in these next couple of posts, but let us begin with a discussion of creative problem solving.

Let me begin with a personal anecdote. For many years I have participated in role playing games. These games are forms of group storytelling with rules. The players take on the role of characters who are engaged in a generally fantastical adventure. One person, known as the Game Master, sets up the world, all the other characters, and most of the problems the players face.

Sometimes the players face a problem, that they cannot solve. After a while, the game master might ask whether the characters themselves (not the players) can come up with a good idea. Some kind of dice roll will generally answer this question. If the dice role is good, the play moves on. Interestingly, we can almost guarantee that some while later a player will find an ingenious solution to the problem – one that surprises everyone. This won’t necessarily happen if you expect it – it’s not a testable hypothesis – but it happens enough to be noticeable.

What we seem to need, in the game, is a facing up to the problem, seeing all the options and the situation as accurately as possible, lots of failure and argument, and then proceeding as if the problem is solved – and then a solution can arise. This is not the same as those forms of positive thinking, in which the problem is ignored and not investigated – here the problem is faced dead-on.

This seems true of a lot of creative process. Engage with the problem intensely. Learn all you can about it. Fail, and then step back, knowing a solution will arise. Do something differently, and a solution may well appear when you no longer ‘need’ one and are relaxed. Sometimes the solution will appear in a dream – although the dream solution may well have to be decoded or pondered upon – it may look like something entirely different.

What this suggests, is something proposed some while ago by Jung and Gregory Bateson: we have at least two forms of thinking. Jung later implies we have at least four forms of psychological activity, but let’s stay with this binary for a while.

The Primary, Habitual, Conscious Mind.

One mind tends to be dominant in daily life. It is habitual, largely ‘rational’ (given the axioms, emotions or desires it is working from), and rule driven. This mind is wonderful when we already have solutions that seem to work. Then it is simply a matter of applying those solutions correctly. This is especially so, when life is regular and without much change, so that the problems we face are largely similar to the problems we have faced before.

This habitual mind automatically faces some difficulties, as life involves change and situations are never exactly the same as those we have faced before, even if they are similar. And sometimes the solutions we have to problems don’t actually work anymore. They may even make the problems worse…

The main difficulty with this mind is that it is largely automatic. It rarely gives insights, or new behaviour, or even sees contrary evidence.

The theories that this mind accepts tend to influence the world it perceives – what we might call the ‘theory dependence of observation’, to use a term from philosophy of science. Under its influence, we tend not see our evidence critically, and easily assume a few confirmations imply there is only confirmation. We may not wonder if our evidence is that good, or if we are less critical of that evidence, than of other evidence.

This mode of thought is usually shared and reinforced by others, although sometimes, it is just habitual for an individual and can be socially incomprehensible.

Jung called this ‘directed thinking.’

This habitual mind represents our general consciousness. It is relatively stable, other than when it is subject to traumatic shock, or voluntary dissolution.

To some extent that statement is a bit circular – we can tell a shock is traumatic because the consciousness is changed. However, traumatic change often produces an extremely ‘programed’ consciousness. The person goes along a path without being able to stop, even if they know it will take them somewhere painful, or in some direction which other people do not comprehend. A traumatised person may see a new situation almost entirely in terms of the previous trauma, even if they are not aware of this. The trauma, then acts as a template which can make very different situations seem the same.

In this mind, people can be largely immune to ‘rational’ argument or ‘evidence’ because they are stuck in their own rationality, habits and ways of looking at the world, as conditioned by that trauma.

These ‘failures’ of the directed mind are often easy to see in other people, but harder to see in oneself.

It can also be useful to remember any form of conscious thinking can become programmatic in this sense. The fact that our thinking is similar to, or different from, the programmatic thinking of other people is no proof it is accurate.

Indeed, the habits of consciousness are probably unconscious in most people. We can, as discussed in previous blog posts, suppress awareness of moral dilemmas, failures, or other problems, in order to get on with the lives we have chosen, no matter how painful, self-destructive, or misguided those choices may be.

If there is a group of us, sharing these pathways, then it becomes even easier to make the solutions part of our group identity, and appear as if they are part of reality. Changing to new solutions can become socially threatening, and is even more strongly resisted.

Luckily we do not need trauma to change our perceptions of the world, and find creative solutions.

Voluntary dissolution of standard consciousness can be useful, but it can also be destructive when powered by addictive external poisons such as drugs, alcohol, or unsafe sex etc. – practices which tend to have diminishing returns the more they are used. I’m not saying that ritual uses of these procedures are always harmful if done carefully and with wide separation between uses…, but it pays to be cautious. It is also relatively easy to engage in safer, less traumatic, forms of dissolution – although even these may benefit from supervision, or someone else’s experience.

We will talk more about this in a few paragraphs.

The Other Mind

The ‘other’ mind is less accessible. We may even want to call it ‘the unconscious mind’, as it is hard to direct with our consciousness (which tends to be habitual and a bit unperceptive, as stated above). This second mind is great at pattern finding and problem solving. Jung originally called this second mode of psychological activity “phantasy thinking”. It is tied in with fantasy, image (‘sensory analogue’ – see below), association, dream, pattern detection and so on. It is pretty much mind as free flow, rather than mind as rule following. It can use perceptions we are not consciously aware of, and set our thought on new paths, helping us to get out of the ruts and ignorances we have constructed through our daily social life. It also seems to be better at dealing with complexity, perhaps because it is better at perceiving many things happening at once, or simply because it is less directed.

In my opinion, Jung’s main contribution to thought is the insistence that phantasy thinking is normal, important, worthy of study and vital for therapeutic processes.

Phantasy thinking is directly related to imagination, however one problem with the term ‘imagination’ is that it can suggest this thinking is primarily done by visual images or “pictures in the mind’s eye”. With investigation we can see phantasy thinking involves: feelings in the body (‘gut feeling’, ‘the heart’, as well as touch), sense of movement, taste, smell, sounds as well as images and words. As such, it functions and thinks through what we could call ‘sensory analogues’ – that is not just by image or words but through other sensory channels and representations. Phantasy thinking can use all modes of information gathering and processing.

However, we need to be aware that sometimes the patters and solutions this mind finds can also be harmful and deceptive… This is to be expected, as we are humans and not gods. We are often wrong. We need to be able to evaluate the insights. Fortunately, the general conscious mind is quite good at evaluation (if given that task, rather than the task of purely justifying or destroying the new insights), and can get better with practice. But evaluation needs to come at the right time. Too soon, and the insight can be lost.

This other mind is not entirely without unconscious rules and programs of its own, which is why it can be deceptive. We may be even less aware of what this mind is doing and, without caution, can find ourselves entangled in its deleterious fantasies – as with shadow projection, ‘complexes’, trauma, etc.

The two minds working together.

Let’s return to my anecdote about role playing games and solution finding. My suggestion is that just as in these games, we can work towards a solution by facing up to the problem, seeing all the options we can and the situation as accurately as possible, perhaps even listing points and problems. We think about what we would like from a solution; and generate lots of failure and argument, perhaps to the point of exhaustion.

Through this process, the directed mind is brought to bear on the problem. We don’t have to solve the problem at this stage, but simply be aware of everything that we are currently perceiving as involved in the problem.

[We might also want to ask questions about what we might be missing (the directed mind is directed and prone to ignore parts of the problem to make it simple), and we might want to ask if what we are doing is making the problem worse for the same reason.

[I’d also suggest when you get a bit more familiar with the process, that you bring in your full response to the problem. Perceive how you might feel the problem, whether you have bodily responses to the problem, pictures of the problem, a sense of the problems movement, its smells or sounds etc. Do this without evaluation. What you find does not have to be rational, its just data. If it gets too painful back off and calm down.]

We then distract, or dissolve, the directed mind.

This may be the place were normally people tend to go and get drunk or have unsafe sex, but this is absolutely not necessary, and you might forget the solution when you return to normality. Instead we can invite the other mind into play, through phantasy (preferably allowing things to arise by themselves), looking at something completely different, going for a walk, putting in random input, relaxing, getting on with something else, or just getting the directed conscious mind out of the way.

Don’t expect the solution to arise immediately. It may arise in a short period of time, but be accepting if it takes a week or even longer. Expecting immediate answers can shut down the process. The solutions will come when they come; often unexpectedly and, as said earlier, perhaps in a dream.

When a solution, or some kind of ‘image’ arises, you can play with it. See where it leads. You may find more new ideas arise. Write them down, try them out. This is just phantasy. Again no pressure. It’s seeing what happens.

If you get interesting dreams then pay attention. It will help if you have already cultivated the habit of paying attention to your dreams, but no reason you cannot start now.

If you don’t get a new start towards solving the problem, then wait a bit longer. Come back to the problem, think about it again, and see what happens again. If you can, record your thoughts – either on a sound file or on paper, having a record can be useful. Engage in distraction or phantasy. Eventually something is extremely likely to shift.

Other ways

There are many ways of approaching this issue.

One way is described very clearly (much better than me) by a friend of mine on his blog.

He writes:

I think the unconscious is often the source of lots of our ideas. The trick to using it is threefold:

First, just knowing it exists and that you can use it to solve some kinds of problems;

Second, feeding it enough raw materials, so there are bits and pieces for it to connect to solve the problem;

Third piece, leaving a silent space for it to present its answer to you.

I’ve found the more I use it, the more I come to know the feeling when my unconscious has something ready for me.

L.J. Kendall. Unconscious Thought Theory as a Creativity Tool. A toe in the ocean of books, 31 July 2020

He also gives some useful references to the scientific literature. This is real.

The spiritual psychologist Sydney Banks, tells us that all we have to do is stop our endless thinking and just listen for our inner wisdom, or a good feeling. Simply knowing that your current (‘directed’) thinking is helping to form the problem and that you have an inner wisdom which is easily accessible through ‘listening’, can be enough for some people.

There is nothing occult, or strange, about this process. It is just the way our psyches work. And we have to be prepared to work and play with the process.

What this means for Climate change in the next post…