Outward in vs. Inward out thinking

It’s incredible how much insight or even “enlightenment” can come out of one healthy debate. I lately had a tendency to call everything an “organism” thus emphasizing the collective, procedural and evolutionary properties of all things in the universe, albeit by a perhaps very imprecise definition of an “organism” (as I further realized during this discussion). My motive for doing so is to basically motivate myself and others to think of ourselves as part of a bigger whole which we can actually affect, in which we can make a difference, that whole being an organism in which there are many other “cells” like us which have the same kinds of powers.

In doing so I didn’t necessarily negate the importance of individualism and what makes each of us different and unique, as I’ve indeed been pointing out (especially lately), that by being well rounded full individuals who know who they are and what they want can we actually make most of the difference in the world. Yet the classification of human societies as organisms might sometimes have an effect of actually over emphasizing collectivism over individualism, which is not what I support. I support a balance between the two with starting point being inward out, acting based on who you are rather than based on who you think the society wants you to be (albeit you do first have to know what kind of a society it is you are living in before you can have a reference point for what role you want to play in it).

Ultimately, and as it often happens, we ended up coming to pretty much same conclusions, but from different, almost directly opposing directions. He views the world inward out, from the perspective of an observed set of objects, seeing what makes them different from each other rather than what makes them same. I on the other hand do exactly the opposite, I first see what is common between them and then what makes them different from each other. His equation is essentially addition, mine is substraction.

It is probably just the way we are “wired” so to speak and I would be hard pressed to call either of the two approaches as more right or wrong relative to the other. But it is true that both approaches have also their disadvantages and advantages, in fact probably in the same amount. The debate helped me see more clearly the disadvantage of my approach and hence allowed me to take greater care of it.

Interestingly, after having this moment of clarity, I’ve further recognized this trait of mine in a lot of what I do and in ways that I think. For example, I tend to couple all of my online projects in a “network” and these days the ideas I’m having call for even further consolidation and “unitedness” of some of these projects under a single brand. Doing this gives me a sense of having more power, which in turn gives me the satisfactory feeling of achieving something that is big enough to put me higher up whatever ladder I perceive. United we are strong. My projects united through networking under a single banner make me more strong. That seems to be my philosophy.

But I think there’s not much wrong in this. It’s just that by seeing this tendency more clearly I am urged to take care that this way of thinking doesn’t go out of control, turning me into a power hungry monopolist, because that seems to be the extreme end of such tendencies. You know how it goes. One single entity acquiring more and more and more under its one single brand run by a single “board of directors” presided over the man himself, the executive director or the president, the emperor of the empire that devours everything in its way.

Of course, I don’t want to reach that extreme end, hence the expressed concern. On the other side of the coin, inward out thinking, the thinking that sees differences first and commonalities second, has its extreme end too. It is one where you become oblivious and uncaring towards the “outside”, the society. Interestingly, that too can lead an entrepreneur falling to that extreme end into the desire of position of a monopoly, not by way of consolidation, but by way of first ignoring and then extinguishing the outside as if it was an enemy..

Well.. every position has its extreme ends. I guess we just have to keep our eyes on the balancing point, rather than be caught by the gravity of the extreme ends.

Tags: Personal, Philosophy, Uncategorized