Perfection Vs Optimisation

RM mails
Most choices we face in life are not between a "good" and a "bad" option. Often, there is no good choice available. In fact, most of the time one can find flaws in every available option. The choice must be a pragmatic one, among those that are available in a given situation.

It is important to be able to choose among the "bad" choices available, or one might say, among the sub-optimal options before us. Some choices are worse than others. I find too often that individuals are quick to reject every available choice, citing valid reasons for each rejection, and they become frozen in their problem-solving. Life is not about making good choices. Life is about the optimization of outcome based on the context one faces. BD explains how/why dharma is context-sensitive, and hence pragmatic.

For instance, when I am writing, I must choose between expediency and perfection. There is no end to perfection one might strive for, and the more reviews of drafts and feedback I go one soliciting, the better the quality becomes. But then I also go on losing time and the potential window to make impact. Yet, when people find inconsequential errors, they love to shout "gotcha", as if this is some kind of fatal error. In hindsight, I wish I has published my UTurn and digestion multiple volumes many years back even though they are in an imperfect state, because the impact these will bring is so huge. I regret delaying in order to achieve perfection for the sake of being able to defend my work on pedantic issues.

I must also choose between one type of target reader and another. What works best for casual readers will not suffice for game changing impact at a deep level. Conversely, a long-term impact book will not easily be read by the masses.

So how is one to decide what to optimize, and in which context? My overall principles for optimization must be anchored in my sva-dharma. My personal sva-dharma is something nobody here knows fully. Hence, all sorts of advice I get is often foolish and counter productive. How do these over-opinionated people know what I want to optimize and why? Have they had prior experience doing what they advise me to do, and if not, why should I bother listening to every wise-ass that comes along? If they are so smart, why do they not get out of their comfort zones and do something, get the experience, become accountable, and then pontificate?

Aditi recently quoted Donald Rumsfeld saying that we must fight a war with the army we got, not the army we wish we had. This is a very sharp statement of what Americans call pragmaticism. (My unpublished book on the Buddhist influences on the West (now a draft of 1,000 pages), shows that the philosophy of pragmaticism attributed to Charles Pierce and William James was in fact borrowed by them from Buddhism. Ironically, that book will wait for another day, because of my failure to have published it years back when I could have, in order to try and "perfect" it!) In other words, dharma is very pragmatic. Roddam Narasimha shows this pragmatism in many areas of Indian thought - calling it heuristic thinking of the very sophisticated kind.

Unfortunately, many of our traditional scholars have got stuck in narrow silos of pedantic and petty level thinking. They have lost sight of the big picture. Westerners control the big picture. They have squeezed Indians to find comfort in tiny roles, gleefully making trivial points. This is the Indological equivalent of coolie work. Refer to my 4-tier model in a previous thread, and this is level/tier-4 work where some scholar points out isolated/fragmented issues here and there. To be a macro-level optimizer one must be a strategic mind.

IKs must learn to study the multiple levels of a situation. Figure out what matters most, where the priorities are. What can be compromised and what should not. Be open to tactical alignments even with opponents (just as in forming a coalition government, or in foreign alliances, or in business joint ventures). This is why memory-based information lacks common sense. How many traditional scholars can you name who have adequate experience of the kurukshetra of today, detailed knowledge of the top players today, insights into the inner workings of institutional mechanisms? How many of them can successfully apply their old knowledge to address real-world problem solving for today? How many even know what the cutting edge issues are right now?