How many ways to make porridge?
Published: Mon, 09/30/13
There is a saying which goes something like. "If you keep
doing what you have always done, then you will keep getting what
you always got." It quite often gets quoted as a suggestion
for how to solve a problem as in, if the government keeps doing
what it has always done then we can never create a better society.
Which may be true but on the other hand you might be quite happy
with what you got and want to get it on a regular basis. I have a
very specific routine for making porridge each morning and, if I
keep to it I get perfect porridge, sure I can vary the routine, and
sometimes I do accidentally and yes, I get different results, burnt
porridge, or lumpy porridge, or too salty, or not salty enough, or,
well there are only so many things that can go wrong in making
porridge, certainly nothing that is going to end civilisation as we
know it, but I think you get the idea.
Doing what you have always done to get what you have always got
does have a certain appeal and in many aspects of our lives it
makes a lot of sense. If your diet keeps you in good shape or your
tooth care routine works keeps your dentist happy then why change
it? Real efficiency develops through well practiced routines
followed rigorously. This has been applied to great effect in the
past say, 150 years in everything from production line
manufacturing, retail distribution, athletic training, the mass
media and some aspects of medicine. It is also the reason that
Western society is slowing down economically, the flip side of
established routines is resistance to change and being slow to
adapt to circumstances.
The real problem with change and trying new stuff is that most
things don't actually work very well. In industry they call it
Rand D or research and development and there is always an argument
as to how much should be invested in developing new ways of doing
things. It should seem like a new brainer that all industries must
develop new products but the 80/20 principle suggests that out of 5
new ideas investigated only 1 is likely to work and it could be
less than that, so people who do R&D are being paid to fail
most of the time, what a waste of money, so it is no wonder R&D
budgets are often the first things to be cut in hard times.
So is it actually better to hang onto what you have got by doing
what you always did? Even that isn't really an option since
the world is always changing. Better to know how to change and
adapt in the most effective way. There are basic principles behind
everything which are learned from what I would call a
'Classical education'. This means really knowing the
fundamentals of a subject and then when you try new approaches you
are doing it without reinventing the wheel. So the expert chef
trying out a new recipe is doing it with a vast knowledge of the
culinary arts and should be able to come up with something worth
eating. The person who knows nothing about cooking may well be
just as original in their creations but whose would you rather eat?
The Hafskjolds passed on Stav over many generations so it is safe
to assume that Stav is a classical training in body, mind and
spirit training, Ivar spent 14 years in Japan getting a classical
education in Martial Arts. My training in Stav combined the two.
Now I am trying to do something new in terms of teaching Stav
through an enhanced membership scheme. I don't know how it is
going to work in every detail, but it will be built on well proven
principles. So if you want to be part of it join before the 5th of
October at the reduced rate and help me get it rolling. You can
join at http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/join.html
regards
Graham
P.S. Today I was installing some new wall lights as part of a major
refurbishing project Venetia and I are doing. One of the lights I
couldn't get to work until I tracked the fault to a loose wire
in the bulb holder. It shouldn't have happened in a supposedly
high quality product. However that fault was nowhere near as
difficult to sort as a really strange problem I had to fix a few
years ago, more on that tomorrow.