Chip and Dan Heath wrote in Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work that we “spotlight” information that supports our existing beliefs. They think we should instead ask ourselves “disconfirming” questions. By doing that, we will be less likely to let our visceral emotions and narrow focusing lead us into mistakes.
Their advice brings to mind how I fish. I‘ll use the wrong bait or fish in the wrong spot. When I don’t catch any fish, I’ll recall the advertiser’s claims made about their sure-fire lure I bought. I don’t want to think that I’ve wasted so much time in the wrong place. I’ll double down and stay even longer. I’ll tell myself I’m not patient enough and need to cast my line out more skillfully. Instead, I should look for a “disconfirming” question. I should ask myself why all those other anglers keep buzzing back and forth across the lake in front of me instead of sitting in one place. How about you, do you fish (think) like this or do you buzz back and forth rethinking all your possibilities?
The last post talked about engineering change as though it were difficult to bring about but uniformly a good thing. In this post, I would like to talk about change as if it were a force with a life of its own and often collateral damage. It can be a source of both hope and suffering.
Joseph Schumpeter, said by Wikipedia to be an Austrian American economist, used the term creative destruction to describe the “process of industrial mutation” which is always changing the current economic structure to create a new one. We have all seen that one man’s progress is another man’s joblessness. It is also not news that the pace of creative destruction is exponentially faster because of the speed of communication of discovery, the number of players in this global economy, the technological improvements in the tools used to make discovery, and the use of artificial intelligence.
When you cannot feed your kids because you have lost your job in an outdated company, it is hard to embrace creative destruction. It becomes easier to embrace philosophies that endorse a belief that things must be a certain way and not change.
How has creative destruction affected you? Are you surviving economic Darwinism?
I ‘ve always liked that quote from Harry Stack Sullivan, who accepted his own humanity and used his understanding of it to help others. I would invite you to join me in using our humanity to help each other brainstorm about some of the important issues we face as people living on a common planet and sharing common hopes for our lives and for those of the ones we love.While we experience our lives individually and have individual problems, I mean for this site to be about our problems as social issues. I see what we say here 
as on the order of brain-storming ideas and opinions that others might want to consider at their own risk.
I had a hard time finding a name for my publishing company because so many of the names were already taken. I settled on Cairde, Karuna & Hedd. As I understand it, the words mean Friendship, Compassion, and Peace. That is the approach I want to take to this site. Jeff
P.S., I need to make a disclaimer here that I cannot give you medical advice and I urge you to consult your physician before you make any decisions regarding a pregnancy or any other health related matters. I don’t warrant that anything I say or others say here is accurate or complete. Even though I hope you do not have any problems from reading the things here, I take no responsibility for how this affects you.
An invitation to brain-storm about college and the human condition
Simply Human Conversations 