INSIGHTFUL VS INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM-SOLVING

The standard intellectual way of problem-solving usually involves the following stages:

1. Recognize and define the problem.
2. Look for all relevant information about the problem.
3. Generate possible solutions.
4. Analyze and choose the best possible solution.
5. Take action to implement it.

However, in the 21st Century, problems that had hitherto been unsolvable are often too complex to be solved by the above intellectual method.  So, I have chosen to solve all identified national problems by using an insightful problem-solving method.

INSIGHTFUL PROBLEM-SOLVING

Insights are spontaneous new thoughts that provide sudden moments of clarity and understanding of a problem; often arriving when you are not actively thinking about it. Yet, the solution that arises would appear to be so simple and natural that it will make you wonder why you did not see it earlier.

Insights into various national problems can be encouraged to appear by adopting a particular strategy as follows:

Step 1: Keep your mind relaxed, but with an expectation that an insight about the problem at hand is soon forthcoming.
Step 2: Open your eyes and keep them focussed on the connection between our purpose and our objectives.
Step 3: Listen carefully to what's being said by people around you and read news, websites and blogs on any topic as widely as possible.
Step 4: Boldly think thoughts that deliberately contradict conventional wisdom.
Step 5: At this point, one central idea will emerge.
Step 6: Ensure that the idea is in line with our purpose.
Step 7: Confirm that the idea will achieve our objectives.
Step 8: Build a narrative that flows from our purpose to our actions; from our actions to our objectives and on to all positive or negative consequences. This is to ensure the workability of the idea.

FIRST REQUISITE TO FINDING SOLUTIONS

Most of the stubborn problems that still exist in society today are persistent mainly because of a lack of courage.  Often, there is fear of rocking the boat, fear of aggravation, fear of the unfamiliar, fear of the obvious, fear of oversimplification, fear of political incorrectness, fear of novelty, fear of ridicule and fear of not leaving well-enough alone.

It is always safer to do nothing; carry on business as usual or make token small modifications to existing policies. That way, there is no chance of failing more miserably than the present failure.

When we open any newspaper today, we see many enthusiastic letters from ordinary people with bright ideas to solve many societal problems. Sometimes, people talk about them for a while.  If you are lucky, sometimes, people rubbished them and pronounced them impractical and not viable. But, more often than not, these letters are ignored.  So, after a while, these altruistic people get a little disillusioned and stopped writing.

Modern societies depend on experts to provide solutions to many of life's problems. Unfortunately, by the very definition of expertise, experts can only provide classical or proven answers and the very fact that problems still persist prove that experts can no longer be relied upon to save us anymore.

So, the solutions in this blog create an opportunity to really have a no-holds-barred knocking-around of strange and revolutionary ideas.  I believe it is somewhere in these types of ideas that solutions can be found for seemingly unsolvable problems.

I would recommend that the first step in this new direction is to be brave and be generous enough to perhaps entertain in our minds the novel, the weird and the unthinkable.  But, we must submit these to a consistent and systematic way of analysis and evaluation to make this whole exercise worth doing.

WHAT IS MAI-KIASI ABOUT?

"Kiasi" is a Hokkien phrase which alludes to an attitude of extreme caution or a deep fear of risk-taking. It is my contention that it is because of kiasi that a lot of problems in society are allowed to fester and eventually become intractable.

"Mai" is a Hokkien word meaning "do not have" or "reject".

So, put together, "mai-kiasi" literally means "have no fear".

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear."

                                      - Ambrose Redmoon 

It is in the very spirit of Mr Redmoon's "judgement that something else is more important", that I have created this blog with the intention of encouraging everyone to find his courage to speak up and help solve the problems we face as a society.

Hence, the tagline: Managing Adversity Insightfully - Knocking Ideas Around Singaporean Issues, which incidentally is what MAI-KIASI as an acronym spells for!  It is the task of this blog to record and publicize my solutions to many of our national problems.