…lay the first stone.

Dear Reader,

I stumbled upon an interesting article regarding the construction of Stonehenge. After reading it, I urge you to watch the accompanying video:

Besides noticing the stunning ingenuity and tenacity of Mr Wallington, I tried to infer some useful lessons from the mistery of Stonhenge’s construction.

A Lesson in Humility

Pause for a moment and think about all the terms you frequently use that bring an underlaying negative or judgemental connotation, even if only at the subconscious level. Some examples I came up with: childlike, ancient, primitive, developing, amateur. In principle, they are just descriptive; in practice, there is a peculiar halo surrounding them, one that can influence our line of thought (it’s no coincidence that a Halo effect exists, accompanied by the reciprocal Horn effect. Give them a look).

In the case of the Stonehenge affair, the matter hinges on the connotation given to the word “primitive”. What often happens, to me at least, is that in dealing with the astounding result of ancient populations, instead of asking the “efficient” (in a sense we will soon see) question “How could I do that if I were in their shoes?”, I mentally go through “How could they build that?”, and then I get stuck in finding a solution. The phantom of impossibility haunts my thoughts, and I try to think more about how the builders could “hack the system” they lived in, instead of how to directly solve the matter at hand. I want to stress that’s what happens to me, but I think many of you will relate.

I find it to be a rather annoying bias of our brains to firmly tie accomplishments to the kind of people achieving them. That makes the reverse engineering needed in the Stonehenge case more complicated and, in general, it can lead to time wasted in useless discussions based only on opinions (e.g. “I cannot believe that child was able to come up with that idea, so I think so and so…”). Worse, it can lure us into coming up with shortcut theories that can harm our development (“It must have been the aliens that created Stonehenge!” I googled “Stonehenge aliens” to have some fun while writing this post…).

The psychological effect is often used by magicians all around the world to enhance the impact of their performance or in movies and shows like Columbo. The more the artist/protagonist seems clumsy, inadequate, or rude, the bigger the surprise effect when the “impossible” trick springs.

The bottom line: I should stop thinking that my ways of thinking and acting are the best ones because I live in the third millennium, or I am a grown-up man, or I went to the university or whatever my narcissistic mind can come up with. Stay humble and shut up!

“If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude.”

Johnny Mnemonic – William Gibson

A couple of lessons in problem-solving

Let’s now consider the mystery of Stonehenge from a direct point of view. Instead of asking “How could they build that?” ask the more straightforward “I need to build a circle of raised stone. How do I do that with limited tools?”.

Focus on the “limited tools” part. What limits your choices makes the puzzle more interesting and challenging, and can open the doors to new insights and innovations. Let me draw some examples.

Limit yourself

In one mystery book by Agatha Christie, the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot asks his friend (I can’t remember his name, neither the book) what he considers to be an exciting mystery. His sidekick then goes into a long story of old stolen idols, poisoned blowgun darts and other Indiana-Jonesy elements. Poirot replies with another situation (not an exact quote, I’m reconstructing from memory): “Imagine two chess player sitting on a table playing their games. A common friend is sitting in an armchair silently watching the game. The door is locked from inside, no one can come in without being noticed. At the end of the game, the third friend is thought to be sleeping, but he’s actually dead. This, in my opinion, is an interesting situation.” I cannot but agree with the francophone detective: the story is thrilling, and solving it would be a real challenge.

Limited options, greater challenge and interest.

One exercise that guitar players often do is the so-called “string skipping”: playing your guitar as if one of the strings were missing. That is great both for developing technique for executing written pieces and for enhancing creativity if you are trying to compose something new: you are forced to travel new roads. As a bonus, you will never fear to break a string on stage anymore!

Limited options, a greater boost to come up with creative solutions.

Painters sometimes draw in black-and-white to better focus on shapes and colour values. They don’t have colour to rely upon to convey visual and emotional information, so they have to come up with new strategies, enhancing their overall skills.

Limited options, greater focus on training and development

“Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want—that just kills creativity.”
Jack White

Believe a solution is out there

In the Stonehenge affair, and in many other instances, the answer has to be there, like in crosswords or jigsaw puzzles: no matter how much complicated it seems, it is not impossible. You have all the pieces that compose the picture. You know that every crossword can present only one of 26 letters inside every box. What you need to do is to slug through the pain and find what works. When you are frustrated, you need to try out one more thing you have not tried. Question every assumption you have not yet questioned. Even start from scratch, if no other expedient works. Intelligence and tech level have not much to do with it: hard work and trying out different things have more.

In some sense, I already wrote about this approach in my post Everything I learned from Mathematics. Try and try until you either solve the problem, or you demonstrate that it is impossible. However, in the case of Stonehenge, you must believe that a solution is out there!

After all, the stones speak for themselves, they are the testimony of their own existence.

They lived and they died, they prayed to their gods
But the stone gods did not make a sound

All This Time – Sting

Until next time, I’ll keep trying to derive lessons from my experiences and share them with you.