In this episode, we explore how to find viable ways out of the current mess - and perhaps even find some fun whilst we’re at it!
Okay, I admit it: I’ve been diving down deeper and deeper into the same old downward-spiral again. Not A Good Idea…
Time back off for a while, slow down a bit, and just let myself see a better way.
So, yeah, the world is in a mess right now, we don’t have much time to fix it, and those paediarchal parasites and the rest are still doing everything they can to make it even worse than it already is. Doom and gloom, doom and gloom, down and down and down we go…
But that’s the mistake, isn’t it? Trying to tackle a big change like that, all in one go, well, it just doesn’t work. We know that. All it does is get us stuck, unable to face the sheer scale of the challenge.
Yet no, it’s not all doom-and-gloom. We now know that a post-possessionist world is possible, and will provide a way out of the current mess. We will find a way past the covert crybabies and their ilk. And although everything is already screamingly urgent right now, we also know that what does work is festina lente: ‘make haste slowly’.
Small-changes, small changes: step by step, one small change at a time.
How to do this? Well, let’s make one small change, and see what it brings us. It’s called ‘Inverse Murphy’…
Murphy.
Yeah, that guy.
The one who has that nasty habit of bursting our bubble, just when we start to think that things might just possibly maybe may be going right at last.
Murphy’s Law and all that. The one that makes everything go wrong. Just what we don’t need, right?
Actually, no. That isn’t it at all. In fact once we understand how Murphy really works. we’ll start to realise that it’s perhaps our greatest friend of all.
But to get there, there’s first one small change that we’ll need to make.
How would you describe Murphy’s Law? Well, probably the most common way would be some phrase such as “If something can go wrong, it will”.
Yet that makes the law seem too certain, doesn’t it? The key point about Murphy is that it isn’t certain: yes, things go wrong, but they go wrong in unexpected ways.
Probably.
Yet that’s the real key-word right there: probably. Mostly-certain, maybe, but sort-of just a bit uncertain, too. Uncertain even about how uncertain it is. Or isn’t. Probably.
And that’s the change that we need.
From “If something can go wrong, it will”.
To “If something can go wrong, it probably will”.
Why does that matter?
It’s because Murphy’s Law isn’t a joke: it’s a real law. Maybe the only real law that we know.
In fact Murphy’s Law is so much of a law that it has to apply to everything. Everything - including itself.
So if Murphy’s Law can go wrong, it probably will. Which is why, most of the time, most things probably don’t go wrong. Probably.
And that’s why Murphy is so much our real friend: Murphy’s Law is why most things do work, Most of the time, anyway. Probably.
Yet there’s a further twist to this - and it’s probably the one twist that we need most right now.
What Murphy’s Law really tells us is that things can work - if we let them work. Especially if we let them work in their own way, rather than solely to our expectations.
Or, to frame it more directly:
Things can work, if we let them - but if we only allow them to work in expected ways, we’re limiting out chances…
Right now, the possessionists and the crybabies dominate our world, and insist that there is no other way than theirs that the world could ever be. Yet if we open our eyes and awareness to what Murphy shows us, we can indeed turn this world upside-down, to create a better and more sustainable world for us all.
Things can work, if we let them. But if we only allow things to work in expected ways, we’re limiting our chances.
And that’s the Law.
So let’s let Murphy show us how to find some better chances?
Murphy, inverted.
yip, but we may need to mirror the result to view potential outcomes
Tom, on the inverted scale of probability, it is probable that there is a probability that this could occur. Probably.