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 17 Feb 2005 @ 15:28, by ming. Systems Thinking
Article in Wired, Revenge of the Right Brain, by Daniel H. Pink, talks about how Right Brain qualities seem to be more and more what we need.Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.
Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.
To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding.
OK. To convince you, I'll explain the reasons for this shift, using the mechanistic language of cause and effect.
The effect: the scales tilting in favor of right brain-style thinking. The causes: Asia, automation, and abundance.
And he goes on to explain that. I don't know if he makes a great case for it, or if The Conceptual Age is the best term. But, I agree, a different age is emerging, where it doesn't do it just to be rational and to have the right information. More dimensions are needed. And there's too much information, and not time enough to analyze it all rationally. So we have to resort to more effective methods of dealing with complexity. Which, interestingly, to a large degree is intuition, feelings, exploring patterns in artistic or playful ways, rather than just logically.
The plus side could be that we'll tend to deal with the whole thing, rather than fragmented pieces of information. The minus side could be that we're more easily fooled, because we act on appearances and emotions, and don't get around to analyzing the facts at hand.
So, different qualities than before become critical. Being able to know right from wrong, without analyzing the data. I.e. being in touch with your own intuition, your inherent abilities to know things, even in the absence of facts. Sometimes you can make better decisions if you don't let yourself be distracted by facts. But lots of people are very bad at it, and get distracted by superficial signs, to make decisions they wouldn't have if either they knew the facts or they were in sync with their own senses.
And the Information Age isn't exactly going away, but rather transforming into something else. It won't be so much about having an edge by having access to better information than your competitors, as most information will be generally available. It will be more about what you do with masses of information than what you do with little chunks of it. More about the forest than the trees, more about the landscape of information than about the facts.
Anyway, back to the guy's article, which ends like this: Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right.
Cool. So, we could say it is a change of focus. What before was to look outside for work and jobs and positions, maybe becomes to go inside and be inspired to do what you're here to do. Which becomes successful if one at the same time connects up with the heartbeat of the bigger, complex society. Plugging into the zeitgeist, the desires, the ebbs and flows of human attention. Where before, what you did had rather little to do with neither YOU nor with what the world needed - that now becomes all important. That *I* am in it, and that it rides on some kind of wave within the state of the world. Don't know if I can come up with a better word for it. Integral Age. Complex Age. Or Virtual Age, but that gets into another angle. Or maybe Conceptual Age is actually pretty good, as it encompasses several of those aspects. What a concept. More >
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 18 Nov 2004 @ 17:16, by jhs. Systems Thinking
New archetypes are born from mutations of existing ones. This is following the ‘Prime Directive’ as specified in the Genesis of the Torah as ‘Copulate and Multiply’.
As such, this is less a dramatic event as one might think. It happens routinely every day around us. Some dramatic examples are the archetype of the ‘lonesome cowboy’, the ‘sadistic Nazi’, the various forms of punks, Hell’s Angels, to name a few. Essentially, every movie or TV star represents a new archetype, a new Orisha. In this sense, becoming a ‘star’ is an ascension to God-like dimensions while still on Earth.
A delicate question arises here: who really created the new archetype?
The person itself, it’s PR machinery, the masses who make the star their idol? Or, did the archetype already exist and just found an incarnation, or better manifestation, of itself at a given opportunity?
The people around President Bush believe firmly that ... More >
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 20 Oct 2004 @ 20:44, by jhs. Systems Thinking
[note: my computer broke down last Friday. I am using Valerio's laptop (mille grazie!). I received all my NEW e-mail be now, but I lost the e-mail that was on my old laptop. Pls e-mail again, if needed. Thanks mucho!]
Well, three (3!) mad days and nights of doing a little translation... Actually I started out many years ago but I never dared formulating it...
For this translation, I worked like this: first I threw away all copies of exisiting translations I had (they were in German, 3 different English ones, and in Italian). Then, after every translation, I removed the text of the new translation from my computer (after backing up, just in case). Then I meditated until I was sure I forgot everything I thought I knew (quite painful). Then I made me a fresh coffee and translated from scratch to a point where I was sure I had made a serious mistake in the prior sections. I restarted the way I described it for 53 times until I arrived at the last sentence (which contains quite a paradox!).
The first day I listened to 2 audio recitations of the text in an audio loop. But I found that some of it was leading me to a bias in separating the words and I stopped listening.
For a few names of classes of Superbeings there are just no English names that I know of and I left them untranslated. For some I know the Ifa names but it doesn't make sense to replace one strange name with yet another strange name. I used some words that are sure to confuse the reader, for example 'earth' for 'aretz'. It is meant to refer to the 'element of earth', not to our planet but it is too clumsy to use it every time. There are many other formulations for which better names can be found. For example: the mechanism to 'copy oneself' is called 'seeds' like in most other translations. It could be translated as 'DNA' but somehow I felt this is not appropriate because then one should translate the other items with names of modern Science as well, using the names from the 'particle/wave' model 'frequency/modulation', 'clones', etc. Perhaps a nice project for the future???
Just in case to not come too close to the actual truth of it, I deliberately introduced 3 errors and omitted 3 verses in the center. These three, although holding the key, cannot be possibly understood without understanding the rest first. I was advised that, for my own protection, it would not be good to publish it. That I publish this at all, may not seem to be a smart idea. But I was so advised and I honor the source of this advice.
My sincere gratitudes go to the Rabbi who opened this chapter for me many years ago. I am very, very sure that he does not want his name mentioned in this context.
Thanks also to Francesco, Luciano, Valerio and Matej who called me on the cellular! You cheered me up considerably!!!
So, here it is, my humble gift to mankind, to quote yet another madman, and then I have to seriously catch up on my sleep:
'The Unfolding' (The 53. Attempt of a Translation) More >
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 20 Sep 2004 @ 23:59, by ming. Systems Thinking
Strange, there's only two pages of matches right now in Google on the term "Evolutionary Triggers". I didn't think it was such a well-kept secret. Anyway, it is a term that appears in evolutionary biology, like here talking about the surprising explosion in complex lifeforms in the Cambrian era, a little more than 500 million years ago: The appearance of such a large range of body plans and life strategies at the base of the Cambrian in an apparently short space of geological time has intrigued palaeontologists for many years. There is still a great deal of speculation as to what caused or triggered the metazoan 'explosion', and why it happened when it did after 3 billion years of potential evolutionary time. It seems obvious that something must have changed or reached a critical level favorable for the building of large, complex bodies and the construction of hard skeletal material. The theories of what such evolutionary triggers may have been can be split into extrinsic or external environment factors, and intrinsic or internal biotic factors. So, something happens which maybe breaks a previous equilibrium, and suddenly it becomes advantageous for new things to develop. Of course something needs to be present in the first place which is capable of evolving. But then a trigger event or circumstance might inspire or influence it into suddenly evolving a whole lot.
I'm not sure if it is an idea that is necessarily popular with the kind of evolutionary biologists who believe that evolution is blind and random. But I don't really care. What I find most fascinating is the use of the meme in systems in general, including human systems.
I've noticed it time and again with people. If we're stuck in the same familiar routine, in the same familiar circumstances, in the same self-consistent worldview, we have a hard time changing. But if we're pulled out of those circumstances, or something drastically changes around us, or something goes over a threshold, change is suddenly much easier. And that is often what at first glance seems unpleasant circumstances that facilitate it. We get thrown out on deep water, or our world falls apart, and suddenly we might discover that we can change quickly, and sometimes for the much better. But we wouldn't have chosen it consciously from within our familiar old frame of reference. It takes a trigger. Sometimes that's somebody yelling at us. Sometimes it is a wise person who doesn't buy into our worldview who knows exactly where to put their finger. Sometimes it is something unexpectedly wonderful that happens that shakes us out of our skull.
Some systems thinking stuff from a page by Paul Herbig:Systems evolve when they reach a sufficient level of complexity, have flexible feedbacks between their components, are exposed to a sufficiently rich and constant energy flow, and when their normal functioning is disturbed. ( Laszlo 1985)
It is this factor of disturbance that is the evolutionary trigger for systems. If it is below the critical level, the systems normal feedback buffers it out and a return to stability with no evolutionary change occurring. If it surpasses the critical level, the feedback cycles are disrupted and the previous system vanishes and decomposes to more strongly bound components to another stable level. But just at that critical level, it is moved out of normal flow to another level. When that critical level is reached, a freedom of choice occurs, a bifurcation, and a new system diverges from the old. The evolutionary change I'd be most interested in would be some rapid positive changes in the collective consciousness of humankind. You know, the kind of changes that might make us suddenly realize we can live in peace and work together and have a great time at it. The kind of change that would henceforth make it impossible for a few misguided wackos to mess things up globally. Because the rest of us would actually be working together. Doing what is needed, what we're inspired to do, what is fun to do, and what works.
Could happen. Not terribly utopian either. Incremental change isn't going very well. The world, however off kilter it is, is trying hard to continue on the course it is on, and will tend to resist reasonable gradual attempts of changing it. There's just too much invested in the status quo, and so many reasons why it can't be any different. What is needed is a whack that is hard enough that it knocks us into a different space, where we actually notice we have the freedom to choose something different. Hopefully it can be a whack that isn't too devastating. It could very well be something obviously wonderful. No reason it shouldn't be. But it has to be a trigger that tips a lot of scales, and makes it impossible to remain the same. More >
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 4 Sep 2004 @ 11:15, by jazzolog. Systems Thinking
The seeker is that which is being sought.
---The Buddha
A cool breeze,
the grasshopper singing
with all his might
---Issa
By three methods may we learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is bitterest.
---Confucius
Hitler used the greatest artistic minds he could attract to his administration---filmmakers and architects---to build not only platforms and sets on and in which to speak, but to create an entire Reality in which his followers could live. I hate to be obvious and crass with such a comparison, but the Bush Republicans have done exactly the same thing. Art can create reality, and there's nothing wrong with both parties doing it...but it's vital to know it's being done! The President has used television producers at high undersecretary-of-this-and-that posts to present him heroically. Everyone thinks of the aircraft carrier thing, but remember too the Statue of Liberty speech, the Twin Towers site performance, and of course the Thanksgiving turkey. The major portion of the Reagan book Bush uses, it seems, is the acting---although, as a theatre guy of some years, I'm here to tell you it ain't acting, so much as a lifetime of lying experience that's kept George in the American spotlight. So who writes his material and how is it done? More >
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1 Sep 2004 @ 02:48, by vaxen. Systems Thinking
The New Civilization Game DEFINITION: A CIVILIZATION is an economic engine that runs on ideas and whose products are: More >
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20 Jun 2004 @ 16:38, by fleer. Systems Thinking
This weekend a new european constitition was finalised. Problem for the european politicians is that the voters don´t want it. 12 years ago Denmark voted surprisingly No to the Maastrich treaty, but with a combination of threats, lies by the media and manipulation it was adopted in a referendum a year later in Denmark. More >
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 12 Jun 2004 @ 18:17, by ming. Systems Thinking
There are several kinds of magic. There's of course what a stage magician does to fool the audience into partially believing he's doing something impossible, and entertaining them in the process. Then there's the magic of wonderous moments, where the universe moves and reveals its mysteries in surprising and wonderful ways. Communing with nature, experiencing an artistic performance, or being part of a synchronistic event where things just come together in the exactly right, but completely unexpected way.
And then there's the deliberate practice of Magick, usually spelled with a 'k' at the end. It is something that is widely misunderstood, and very often shrouded in or lost in a lot of mysterious mumbo-jumbo symbolism that might or might not make sense to anybody. In the past that has been in part because masters of magick wanted to confuse and mislead the competition, or at least make sure that only the most dedicated and clever students would do the necessary work to figure out what it is. As its practice requires significant dedication and focused work. Many principles of the universe are involved, but mostly it adds up to something that is largely a discipline of the mind. One could say that it is:To train the mind to move with the maximum speed and energy, with the utmost possible accuracy in the chosen direction, and with the minimum of disturbance or friction. That is from Aleister Crowley. He managed, more than just about anyone, to explain magick in clear language and reveal most of its secrets. Strangely, he also became a very misunderstood and hated man. Maybe not so strange - a lot of people felt threatened by what he had to teach and what he stood for, and he didn't hesitate in being as provocative as he could when he had a chance.
Many of the things to understand are in rather paradoxical forms. Thus the above aim goes hand in hand with the aim:To stop the mind altogether. Which is what meditation or yoga or many other practices are about. It is quite logical, really. Most people's minds are full of a lot of uncontrolled, undisciplined junk, running on automatic. To focus in any effective manner on anything, one needs to be able to stop the flurry of random data. The better, the more completely one can do that, the more well poised one is for subsequent acts of great clarity and focus.
One of Crowley's basic tenets, which, again, is largely misunderstood and misquoted is:Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Love is the law, love under will. Unscrupulous people usually quote just the first line, and misinterpret it to give a license to do whatever the hell one wants, no matter it does to anybody else. And, well, there are unfortunately too many people who live by such a principle. That's not what's meant here. The Will referred to is closer to what some people would call "Divine Will". But not in the fundamentalist understanding where, again, it is an excuse for doing things there is no excuse for. Rather, the most integruous and constructive thing is the thing to do. The most honest and authentic thing to do. The most loving. Not a human whim, but a connection with the universal mind. In a state of freedom. Hard to explain in words, as one has misunderstood it the moment one just takes the words literally. Anyway, here are some more excerpted basics on magick from Crowley, The Beast, 666 himself: Definition: Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.
Postulate: ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.
Theorems:
Every intentional act is a Magical Act.
Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.
Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled.
The first requisite for causing any change is thorough qualitative and quantitative understanding of the condition.
The second requisite of causing any change is the practical ability to set in right motion the necessary forces.
"Every man and every woman is a star." That is to say, every human being is intrinsically an independent individual with his own proper character and proper motion.
Every man and every woman has a course, depending partly on the self, and partly on the environment which is natural and necessary for each. Anyone who is forced from his own course, either through not understanding himself, or through external opposition, comes into conflict with the order of the Universe, and suffers accordingly.
A man whose conscious will is at odds with his True Will is wasting his strength. He cannot hope to influence his environment efficiently.
A man who is doing his True Will has the inertia of the Universe to assist him.
Nature is a continuous phenomenon, though we do not know in all cases how things are connected.
Science enables us to take advantage of the continuity of Nature by the empirical application of certain principles whose interplay involves different orders of idea, connected with each other in a way beyond our present comprehension.
Man is ignorant of the nature of his own being and powers. Even his idea of his limitations is based on experience of the past. and every step in his progress extends his empire. There is, therefore, no reason to assign theoretical limits§ to what he may be, or to what he may do.
Man's sense of himself as separate from, and opposed to, the Universe is a bar to his conducting its currents. It insulates him.
Man can only attract and employ the forces for which he is really fitted.
Now, that is pretty down-to-earth, really. To make anything happen that you'd like to happen, you need to get certain forces into motion. And if what you're trying to make happen isn't in harmony with who you are and where you are, or with the universe for that matter, it won't work very well.
If you want pure water to drink, you'll dig a well in a place where there is underground water; you'll prevent it from leaking away; and you'll arrange to take advantage of water's accordance with the laws of hydrostatics to fill it. That's an example of magick. Decide to do something, and do what's necessary to make it happen. You could also go buy a bottle of water in 7-11 if there's one close by. But you can't do that if there's no 7-11, just as you can't dig a well if there's no underground water. Duh. There's a right place and time for many things, and in other settings they might not be right. Magick is when you're able to be in tune with that rightness, so you can make the right thing happen with the right tools at the right time.
That doesn't have to have anything with voodoo to do. If mostly doesn't. If you want to bake a cake, you get the ingredients and put them together the right way. You don't just sit down and do affirmations and prayers about cakes. You don't try to bake it on the freeway either. You do it in a kitchen.
If your calling is to be a carpenter, it might not work to try to be rock star. But if you really got a rock star in you, that's probably what you should do, even if everybody thinks you're a carpenter. And if you do it, you should really do it, not just half-heartedly.
Of course you'll notice that most people in the world are spending most of their time doing things that aren't really right for them, and which aren't working well, and they don't use the right tools. And it isn't what they really want.
So, obviously, there's a great need for ways to help people get clear on what they actually want and what is right for them, and able to stay on the same course for long enough to actually get there.
And there's a need for getting effective tools into people's hands and enabling them to use them. Nowadays, of course, information technology is part of the tools available. If you want to reach many people and make big things happen, you'd probably be shooting yourself in the foot if you don't use the Internet to the hilt.
Big things can be made to happen with small means, if it all gets lined up right, and the right tools are used, by the right people. That's magick. More >
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 2 Jan 2004 @ 13:07, by ming. Systems Thinking
Here's a couple of patterns that might be useful for various things. First of all, you can divide life into various spheres that encompass more and more, but that each work according to different rules. You could see them as somewhat concentric circles, starting with you as an individual as the innermost circle. So, like this, for example:
Personal domain - One individual person and everything that pertains to maintaining an individual existence. This includes one's body, one's name, one's belongings, one's personal interests and preferences.
Relationship domain - The interactions between two or more individuals close to each other. That includes friendships, marriages, family, but also temporary connections and interchanges between individuals.
Group domain - Several people associating to form group activities. That can be a company or club or cause, or any other association, permanent or temporary. A group tends to take on a life of its own, beyond the dynamics of the participating individuals.
Society or Culture domain - Larger groups of people co-exist in adjacent space to form societies or cultures or movements. A society can consist of many diverse groups and interests, but something ties them together. Maybe it is shared history or traditions, or maybe it is just geographical boundaries. A country would fit in there, as would a religion, or a social movement.
Global domain - A whole planetary system is a global domain. That includes societies and whatever else exists on a planetary sphere, like other life forms. This includes concern for ecology and whatever else is needed to manage co-existence of diverse groups and species and resources within a closed system. Ours is planet Earth.
And we could continue and describe domains of a solar system, a galaxy, a universe, a multi-verse, and All-that-is. Which is interesting too, and gets a bit more meta-physical. And it could be done in various kinds of ways.
But the point I wanted to stress is that each of such domains or spheres of influence will work according to different rules. And there's a key principle there:
A problem that can't be solved in a certain domain can often be solved if we move up to a higher domain, with more degrees of freedom
It makes sense if you think about dimensions. These areas don't exactly match physical dimensions, but the principle is similar. If you live in a two-dimensional world, certain things can much better be sorted out in three dimensions. Like, two dimensional beings can't see what's inside two-dimensional constructs. But that's no problem at all for three-dimensional beings. E.g. you can easily look at a piece of paper and see everything on it, even stuff that's inside spheres or rectangles with no openings in them. Sounds elementary, but it wouldn't be for a flatlander living in the plane of the page. Same thing if you live in 3D. A 4D person who came along could very easily see and deal with things that you'd have trouble with. If you had swallowed a ballpoint pen, he could just grab it for you, without having to go through your skin. Just as easily as you could go and erase some of the contents written on the paper inside a circle, without breaching the outer rim of the circle. Elementary if you operate in a higher dimension.
OK, that was a little digression to explain that it works a little similar with the domains of life outlined above. If you add more degrees of freedom, often found in the next higher domain, things can be resolved that couldn't be resolved in the lower domain.
Take an individual. There are lots of things one might figure out all by oneself, by sitting thinking about it, by noticing what one feels like, or by putting order in one's stuff. But when one really gets stuck, one often can't. And the answer is usually to ask somebody else about it. Somebody else you know might come along, and have a very different perspective, or a skill or piece of knowledge you don't have. And you talk a little with them, or they help you, and your problem gets sorted out. Many problems that are unsolvable for an individual all by himself get easily solved by relations with other people.
There are certain mechanics that exist in any relation of two people. They can, for example, agree on something. They can listen to each other's views and wishes and then decide on a common agreement between them. And, most of the time, two reasonably sane people can work out something between them that is mutually satisfying. Even if they agree to disagree on some particular subject. These mechanics are, however, very different from the mechanics of what an individual all by himself would do. So if any of the two parties don't notice the different rules, and try to continue acting as only an individual, they might have difficulties getting along with other people.
Whereas a unit of two people will pretty much have to agree in order to get anywhere, a bigger group does not. A bigger group might have a shared agreement, but it is more like a framework and general intention, and it isn't usually required that everybody in the group agree with everybody else on everything. On the contrary, a group works in part because it has internal diversity, and different people take on different functions. Like in a company or in a family. Somebody does the dishes, somebody does the accounting, and it wouldn't really be desirable that we all do the same thing at the same time.
So, some of the problems of a two-person relationship can be sorted out with the help of a group. If I like sports and you don't, I can just go to a soccer match with my buddies and you can go to a dance class. Or, amongst the diverse abilities available in a group, we might find some that might help us out in various situations. If two people in the accounting department don't get along, one of them might go and work in another department instead.
If individuals or relationships or groups have serious problems doing the right thing or getting along, it falls upon a next higher sphere or a society or culture to sort it out. An individual will be assisted by people who know them. A couple might be assisted by people around them. If that fails, it might come to society. Legal recourse is a crude form of that. Somebody can come along and apply some general moral principles and cut through and decide matters. More generally, a higher domain offers more variety of constellations of people, some of which will transcend the problem at hand.
A group might have clear rules of how one becomes a member, and whether one belongs to the group or not. A society typically doesn't. If you're born in a certain country, you can't just be thrown out. So, the rules are different. Deciding who's in or out is no longer part of the tools of that domain.
If somebody tries to run a country like it is just a group, it won't work well. If you just try to make sure the right people are inside the country, and they all get with the program, and the bad people stay outside - it won't work well, because it is the wrong level, the wrong domain to operate in.
On the planetary domain, again, it is different rules. Quite obviously there, nobody can just be kicked out. There needs to be room for everybody, even for the people you don't like, even for the people and plants and animals that don't have economic value. And you can't just make a uniform culture that everybody must belong to. That's the wrong level. A mono-culture might work for a smallish group, but works badly for a large group or a society or a planet.
If humanity can not figure out how to operate well, somewhat harmoniously with the rest of life on the planet, the next higher domain will sort things out by itself. I.e. humankind might go extinct and life will go on without us. Because the mechanics of how life works is of a higher order than how politicians might choose to manage foreign relations and environmental policy.
So, to summarize, different domains in life work by different rules. If what is going on isn't working, it might be because somebody's applying rules from too low a level. Or it might be necessary to involve a higher level in getting things sorted out. If a problem can't be solved, you usually need more degrees of freedom, not fewer. More >
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9 Dec 2003 @ 10:18, by ming. Systems Thinking
One could say that there are several different kinds of logic, which are differentiated by the number of possibilities one is considering at any one time.
 You know, of course, two-valued logic. That is black and white thinking. It is when one considers that there are only two options, and one needs to choose between them. You're either for or against. You either support freedom, or you're a terrorist. You're either a christian or a heathen. You're either for or against abortion. A person who uses two-valued logic does merely need to decide whether to pick the 'good' option or the 'bad' option, and the only other thinking involved is to try to match the options with previously known 'good' or 'bad' labels. "Aha, he uses bad words, so what he's saying is of course bad".
 There can also be three-valued logic. That's when there is Yes, No and Maybe. That is, the answer is either a clear Yes (good), a clear No (bad), or we just don't have enough information to decide yet, which is a Maybe. That can of course be considered a little more advanced than two-valued logic, as everything doesn't just get categorized at first glance. But not much better.
 More simple than either of those is one-valued logic. That is when there's not even any need for or faculty for evaluating things. Things are just the way they are, usually because The Big Book says so, or The Big Guru, or The Big Government. And if they didn't mention it, it of course doesn't exist. Generally it is if you consider yourself so powerless that you just have to accept whatever comes along, from the only direction you're looking in. Like, if you've latched on to a literal interpretation of some kind of religion, and you believe that the decision making process is entirely out of your hands. Oh, nothing wrong in believing in bigger things, but here we're talking about whether you think or not.
If you predominantly use any of those three approaches in your life, you're somewhat less than sane. Or, more kindly, you are likely to make decisions that don't work very well for you, and you might not be able to figure out why.
 Another, undeniably more effective, kind of thinking is what we can call infinite valued logic. Essentially that means that any situation, any problem, consists of many different factors. And each of those factors might be pegged on a scale with an infinite number of gradations, in relation to some particular measure or outcome. And to make a good decision, you'd need to relate and weight all these factors together.
Infinite valued logic will maybe appear less slick and convenient and forceful at first. Essentially it implies that the answer is "It depends" until you've examined all the factors involved. Including who do they apply to, and what are the exact circumstances.
Is smoking bad for me? Is extra-marital sex wrong? What is the Republican Party good for? Should I become a buddhist? Should I eat less cheese?
If you had the answer ready for any of those, without having to think about it, chances are you didn't really examine the factors involved in the questions, and you probably didn't look at how these questions related to me and my particular circumstances.
Take smoking. There are certain negative health influences. And there are certain positive things smoking might do for a person. Both of those are different for different people. What exactly are they, specifically for this person? And how much smoking are we talking about? A cigar every evening, or 3 packs of unfiltered cigarettes per day? And who are we talking about? A soldier in war who's being shot at every day, or an accountant sitting by a desk? What would he replace smoking with if he didn't have that? And what else does that person consume on a daily basis? Is he happy about it or not? All of those are factors that have a whole range of possible answers. Some of them will support the person's decision to smoke, and some represent reasons not to. You'd have to add all of it up to make the most rational decision.
You could do that very mechanically. Write down all the factors involved and peg each one on a scale between 0 and 10, or between -10 and +10, in relation to a particular outcome. And then you add the numbers up and see what you get. However, it doesn't at all have to be done that way. It doesn't even have to be done terribly explicitly. Good decision makers naturally do this internally. They are conscious of most of the factors involved, they rule out their own preconceived biases, they pay attention to the exact circumstances, and they might come up with an answer that just seems or feels or sounds right, without necessarily having articulated exactly why.
In brief, it is about avoiding categorizing things in advance. Avoiding making decisions based on abstract generalizations one carries around. It is about noticing what is actually going on right here and now, what the actual components and influences are, and responding rationally to what is in front of you.
For more on infinite-valued logic, check out Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics. See, for example, here, here, or here More >
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