Hi everyone!
Thanks for coming...
This post is part of a series about "Anatomy of ideas". If you didn't read the previous parts you can find them here:
Episode 1 - My own research about IDEAS
Episode 2 - Ideas and light bulbs
Today I'll talk about another way to think about ideas - the snowflake model.
Picture: Alexey Kljatov (CC BY-NC 2.0)
An idea within an idea
We talked about that idea hold some energy that drives us to act, it also functions as a glue that connects people to collaborate and work together. When something gets wrong with the story-telling of an idea, it causes our belief to get weaker and weaker then we have to find a way to fix it.
Once we identify the problem we can look for a known method to fix it, but we can also think of a new method, a new idea. In that case, we've got an idea within an idea.
Reconnecting the wires
If we recall the metaphor from the previous episode, the electrical circuit, so now we'll build another circuit, a small one under the main circuit, in order to reconnect the wires and get the light back in the bulb.
But it's not so simple to build new idea inside an existing idea. As in medicine, it is very important to diagnose first that there is a problem. Many times we continue to invest efforts in a certain direction without noticing that we have encountered an obstacle. In that case, the right action is to stop and think. We need to define our status, what we've got from the original solution and what we haven't, and just then we can try to define the problem and ask for a solution. If we succeed to do all these steps so we build a new idea, who has a definition of a problem and a definition of a solution. If our new idea is good and connected to the ground (The problem defined well, come from the reality, and the solution sound reliable enough), we should feel how the energy coming back to us, our belief get stronger.
I found this process very interesting because we can do this forever. We can always think of a solution which sounds reliable for us and feels great about it, until we'll find some cracks, but then we can suggest a new idea to solve the new problem. As long as we manage to maintain the energy in a high state - we can keep on moving. We never know that our idea will work for sure, but we believe in it enough to be pushed by it.
Do you remember the difference between machines and human (from the 1st episode)? This is the benefit to be a human, you believe in things although you don't check it for the tiny details. That's why the idea can work even it's not perfect. It seems to us as perfect, its description is detailed enough for our mind so we feel a good energy and going to make it, until the next obstacle...
The snowflake
So here we are getting to the snowflake. When we find that our secondary idea is also getting problematic, we can do the same process (Stop, Do an appreciation of the situation, Diagnose the Problem, Suggest a solution, Refill our energy) again. Then we'll have an n idea within an idea within an idea within an idea and so on...
This is recursive pattern because we solve the first problem just when we find a solution to the last problem. When the model is perfect in our mind, and all the wires are connected - We can be driven by it. When something gets wrong we can stop and reconnect it, and so on.
How can we illustrate this situation when our idea build from a lot of ideas one within the other? It can be illustrated as a tree with a lot of branches, so every branch splits into more branches. It can also be illustrated as a snowflake because snowflake has it recursive pattern too. In mathematics, when the same shape is appearing again and again, it calls a fractal.
A snowflake is also a fractal. I like the snowflake metaphor because snowflakes are beautiful, and ideas, specially complexed ones, are beautiful too. They can make us happy, they can give us hope. Just like soft snowflakes that falling to the ground.
Goood Morning :)