What If We Never Complained?

What if, instead of writing, or complaining, about problems – whether societal, technical, psychological, medical – we used a different method of reacting to unanswered and seemingly unsolvable situations?

To achieve solutions to serious societal, economical, and technical problems, almost every individual on the planet would need to become independent thinkers. Maybe you can’t tell, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this.

A person cannot simply be an individual who has the freedom for independent thought, people must be creators, as well. They do not need to be highly educated independent thinkers, creators and solvers. People need to have the basic knowledge and brain capacity to work their way through solving problems with a non-biased mindset, combined with a standard education. This sort of thinking would have to be encouraged, and then, possibly, enforced on a global scale in order to make it normal. People need to be taught the process of experimentation from a very young age, to be able to understand its use as an evolving tool. Experiments would have to be guided in a healthy, ethical manner using everyday situations as a challenge, until everyone did this. Solutions could begin to arise through simple problem-solving techniques. What if everyone did this, to such an abundance, that solutions were more common than complaints?

As an example, imagine that we all accept that eating an unhealthy diet leads to an unhealthy body. After experimenting independently, encouraged as a societal norm, it was determined that people who consumed sugar in large quantities throughout the day were discovered to have a disproportionate level of anger issues compared to people who consumed very small amounts of sugar. As a free and independent human being, we all have the independence to choose to consume less sugar in order to balance our emotions in a healthier manner.

To support this new knowledge, a person would have to have the empowerment of facts achieved through personal experimentation to make a rational decision based on one’s own observation. In today's society, many of these processes are already engrained in us. Some of us look at the news, judge the advice on the competency of the author, experiment and research for ourselves and then conclude whether or not the information was valuable enough to be accepted as a standard.

Except, we fail in the final step, for several reasons. We do not have a standard method of experimentation, that is taught to us, to independently solve our own problems; It is not a social norm to keep records of our self-conducted sociological and psychological experimentations; We lack the emotional strength to agree with, or to accept the advice from other persons experiences and perspectives, especially if they are not a “professional” in that field. And last, everything is considered an assumption, until we, as individuals, and as a society, have surpassed the need to lie.

An educational system that teaches a person only one form of learning, through one type of institution, is not adequate enough to move people forward with learning to grow as independent critical thinkers. Standardized testing is not standardized learning, and neither work to teach a standard education. Now, an educational system based on adrenaline and dopamine rushes, such as you can achieve with real life situations is a more functioning system of education. Some educational supply companies have figured this out and have capitalized on technological educational games and tablets for students to learn with. These are good in someways, but they lack realism and don’t prepare students for the actual world of making money, keeping house, raising children and paying bills. Video games are certainly not functional for helping kids to solve hands on problems within realistic time limits and other restraints.

Video games can be addictive enough to keep people from living a fully functioning life. However, the idea of video games as an educational tool shouldn’t be tossed to the side as a complete failure, it should be used as a tool for educators to learn from. Experimenting with video game adrenaline rushes may lead to clues as to the way to go when it comes to teaching life skills and critical thinking. If you were to experiment with the impact of video games on a child’s mindset, you can easily conclude that staying static creates frustration and boredom. You can observe the same behavior in adults. Therefore, conclusively, a successful method of teaching and for growth is a non-static life style. The next phase of the game is to experiment with the solutions to teaching in a non-static environment, and that is how everything should be taught.

If a critical thinker were to read this article, they might refer to this information as a no-brainer, I understand that. When I read articles that talk about how human industrial activities are damaging our planet’s fragile eco-systems, my response is “Yada, yada, yada. That’s a complaint, where’s the solution?” Thus, my next steps are to experiment with solutions, advocate for my contemporaries to challenge me, and then put my efforts towards teaching people in a more proper manner; A non-static manner.