|
| |
The Act of
Choosing
A
Context-Matching Theory, and Its Practical Implications
Russell Rhyne
Choosing:
Selecting a path when reason can’t show which way would be best |
|
Choosing pervades out lives, nourished by roots
that stretch back through 4,000,000 years of pre-verbal (and therefore
pre-rational) evolution. It activates freedom and indexes social openness,
and only the person who chooses can mature. One who chooses not to choose
ignobly shuns responsibility; s/he rarely has use for the pronoun, “I”.
Choosing, central to initiative, sparks the economy that feeds our swollen
population.
Choosing works on policy issues that
dispassionate reason cannot handle, and nothing less than good choosing will
see us through these “interesting times”. However, the melding of reason
with choosing gave our species its edge over all the other hominids |
|
Context matching theory helps us (voters, CEOs,
legislators) choose well, by telling us the nature of the act of choosing.
It exposes the prerequisites to good choosing. CM theory directly opposes
DA’s rational models, painting choosing as a swift, natural happening,
basically intuitive and non-mystical, but this definitely is not a diatribe
against reason. Choosing and reasoned determination work as a pair. They
first seem to have been combined about 50,000 years ago, when speech became
common and reasoning in terms of symbols thus became possible. At that
point, Homo sapiens took off, introducing more technological innovations per
generation than had been common per millennium before that. |
|
Does “theoretical” imply “impractical”? No way.
Kurt Lewin told us truly that a theorist in this era should attend to
matters that truly make a difference and that, therefore, “There is
nothing so practical as a good theory”.
Dr. Rhyne spends two thirds of this book exploring
the practical and often revolutionary implications of his “good theory”.
Available at
www.iUniverse.com ,
|
|
