the Complexity and "Numinous Objects" |
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“It is altogether amazing how little most people reflect on numinous objects and attempt to come to terms with them, and how laborious such an undertaking is once we have embarked upon it.”
---- Carl Jung
Have you ever considered what goes into making a standard number 2 pencil? Let’s see, there’s wood and lead and some paint and metal and that eraser
thingamajigger. Yes, those things are all part of a pencil, but it is not those things alone which make it a pencil. They are simply the few materials,
but it is really ideas which ‘make’ a pencil.
To truly discover the pencil, let’s start from the inside and work our way out. Inside, we have a perfectly round and thin piece of lead. Who mined it and from where? How was it prepared? How did people know
where to find it? Who made the equipment to find it?
Next we have the wood. Who cut down the tree and from where? Who made the saw to do the cutting? How was the wood prepared? How did
the lead get inside the pencil? How was it cut so perfectly? On the outside we have some paint. Who made the paint? What chemicals are in the paint and how did we know to use them? What resources were created or harvested and how? How
was the pencil painted?
At the end, we have an eraser and a metal clip......
The number 2 pencil has become a pretty complex thing. More than likely, this “simple” pencil has parts from around the world, made by people who speak many different languages. The only
things which these people probably have in common is that they are trying to make a living and they all use pencils.
The moral of the pencil is humility. Does any one individual person have the knowledge of logging, mining, chemistry, biology, mathematics, computers, etc. to make one single pencil? I have my doubts.
The world is complex. The division of labor in our society has become very specialized which means we depend on a vast array of people for even the simplest item. Of course,
this is a very good thing because without it, we would still be using quill pens. Why? Because if we were still in an age where the pencil maker, like a blacksmith, made his art one
at a time as a specialized trade, then only the rich would be able to afford the labor involved in making one.
Millions of people participate in making a pencil. The humility of realizing your own lack of knowledge about particulars can make you a more effective manager or team participant when
you are one of the millions. The reason is simple: You know when to ask for help, when to delegate authority and when not to run off half-cocked in some crazy direction! You know you are not as
smart as you would need to be to make certain decisions.
A classic example: “Most experts believe that without deep changes in both industry behavior and
government policy, U.S. microelectronics will be reduced to permanent, decisive inferiority within ten years,” wrote
MIT’s Charles Ferguson in a 1988 Harvard Business Review article. He called for government directed policy to help U.S. chip
companies and denounced the “fragmented, ‘chronically entrepreneurial’ industry” in Silicon Valley. As authorities for this view, he cited the U.S. Defense Department, the
CIA, the NSA, the National Science Foundation and the White House Science Council. In a beautiful example of Hayek’s ‘Fatal Conceit’, the
best and brightest minds agreed with this silliness in 1988.
As we all know, the catastrophe he predicted if we did not take ‘action’ did not happen. In fact, what he did not and could
not see was that software, microprocessors and networks would become the power and wealth generator it has. He thought hardware was the future, but
it was the present. In a nutshell, he thought he was smarter than he was and he was willing to stake your paycheck on it.
Carl Jung spoke of the laboriousness of understanding simple things. He is right. I am a huge fan of inquiry and trying to specifically understand how things
work, but with that must come the wisdom of scarcity. Often, we lack the time or knowledge to do what we may want to do. What
we should try to do is simply keep our boundaries open.
Believe it or not, delegating authority, giving people the freedom to utilize their skills and knowing you are not smart enough to know everything are all in a pencil. That’s one big writing utensil.
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