Don’t Put Your Trust in Buckets

Humans are full of themselves as a species

Human beings are a perverse species. We know we are at the top of the food chain but we misunderstand what gets us there. We think it is because we are smart and can out think the competition. But it’s not that simple. Humans use their superior intelligence to build tools and weapons that give them an overwhelming advantage over animals. But take away those weapons and tools and that advantage quickly fall away. Pit a naked unarmed man against a tiger. The man may be more intelligent than the tiger but not in any way that matters in the immediate situation. It is only when the man has tools and uses them that he will prevail over the tiger. We rely on those tools but sometimes they can lead us down the wrong path.

We classify things

One of our important tools is our ability to categorize similar items into buckets. Because of our intelligence, we like to think that the things that we do with that intelligence add value to life. We are great at categorizing things which means that we put them into buckets. We select some characteristic which our intelligence suggests is important and lump together all the items that have that characteristic. This is a useful activity for humans because it makes life seem simple. It fools us into thinking that we are in control. Instead of keeping track of many items and developing a way to interact with them individually we can simplify by putting things in a bucket with all the other items having that characteristic. Now we only have to know one way of responding to every item in the bucket. That is the way filing systems work. We put things into the file based upon some characteristic that we think is the most important.

One bucket – good.  Two buckets – bad.

In simpler times, putting items into buckets was helpful. There were only a few criteria to study and the risk of a wrong classification was small. Today the problem of misclassification is much bigger. I have always been miserable at filing. As soon as I put something away (file it), it is as good as lost because I can think of so many ways that I might have used to file it but not the one I actually used. I am forever looking through my files to find important documents because I can’t remember what classification I thought was important when I filed it.

Classification destroys valuable information or at least renders it invisible

Today, categorization can be a great handicap for two reasons. The first is that the complexity of life today makes it much harder to pick one category for an item of information. If we pick only one then we risk missing the connection to another category. We have no way of identifying the risk of misclassification. When we decide that something is X and put it in the appropriate bucker, it means that we will never look at it in any other way. Our simplification means that we will never consider any other way of dealing with that item. Perhaps it could belong in multiple buckets but that makes life complicated so we resist. Because we restricted our classification to one category, we will never look at that item from another perspective. We make life simple but lose the ability to see what is important at the moment. We are blind to the other possibilities.

What about you?

This is certainly true in my life and these days I struggle to see all the possibilities that might be attached to an action or event. My natural, human tendency to simplify makes this hard. Does anybody relate to this problem. If so ,please share in the comments. How are you able to get past buckets in your life?