KCard : The more reflex
|
The more reflex
It seems to be a common reflex in many situations
where something isn't satisfactory to try to figure out what needs doing to
make things work better. While it isn't surprising that people try to find
ways to make unsatisfactory situations improve it is noticeable that people
generally try to change things by adding something or doing more of
something. It seems that changing something or removing something come after. This 'more' reflex has many effects. Of course in
some situations it might have as primary result the actually wanted effect,
that is changing the situation in a way which was desired. The problem is
that it also often has many side effects which might only be noticed later
and will require change again, and the reflex being 'more' again a vicious circle
is started where more is added to more in a never ending cycle to try to
improve a degrading situation. Overcoming this requires considering other
orientations to modify the situation. The two most natural options are
'change' and 'less'. The first is about changing something without adding or
removing and the second is about removing something. Example : asthma
Let's give an example of all this in order to
illustrate how far these concepts can be pushed. NOTE: We are not specialist
at all of the following but we thought it was a quite relevant illustration,
so although some specifics might be neglected here the overall idea remains. Asthmatics suffer from their airways closing from
time to time (up to a few times a day in bad cases). People can suffocate
when this happens if they don't stop the process. This is caused by a number
of circumstances, which include genetic factors, allergens, physiology, state
of mind, ... Most asthmatics have bronchodilatators (like ventoline)
in order to stop the crisis when it happens. These are very efficient and
stop the closing process almost instantaneously, but the side effect (in some
cases) is that people get somewhat addicted to them and use them more and
more (the vicious circle). In addition to this crisis medication, they also
usually follow an ongoing treatment in order to prevent the crisis to appear
at all (more again). Now, this is pretty much the more reflex: people
have a problem (airways closing at occasions) and to address this they add
taking medication. This in turn has side effects and requires taking more
medication. If you search the web you'll find many descriptions
of greater value and detail than the above. Also, if you add 'Buteyko' to your searches, you'll
find some other interesting information. You'll find that a Russian doctor
named 'Buteyko' did some research into asthma and he came up with a very
different idea: he states that asthma (in part at least) is caused by over
breathing. He measured breathing volumes of both asthmatics and healthy
people to find that asthmatics breath much more and furthermore preceding
their crisis breath even more. He's set up a program to re-educate these people to
breath less and better. Many independent asthmatics testify on internet that
this is efficient, many of which just about never used a bronchodilatators
again! This is an example where less (less breathing) is
better than more (more medication). Again we aren't asthma specialist so you
can find explanation and details on the web, this example is just to show how
what we call the more reflex translates in various fields, as we could easily
list many examples in information technology for example. |
Ideas to develop
|