Problems, Problem Solving, and Education: An Inquiry into “Convention” as a Problem and What We Might Do About It

Abstract

Adequately responding to our deteriorating environmental and social situation is a matter of increasing urgency. An obstacle to achieving a concerted response is the way that we have normalized “convention,” or as some authors claim “thoughtless convention.” The author takes on this obstacle (i.e., convention, thoughtlessness) as the primary subject of this paper. We all live in the everyday, averaged-off way things are done, understood, and thought about in our respective cultures (this is convention). Problems are typically framed, embodied, and emplaced from within convention using a “metaphysics of control and mastery or dominance” over the biophysical world. Conventionally, this is the doctrine of scientific positivism mixed with neoliberal capitalistic economics. It plays out in complex ways with consequences. Too often, this approach blocks what should count as our appropriate relationship (“sustainability,” coexistence) with the world, including nonhuman life.

Accepting convention (status quo), which is very widely accepted, absolves us from thinking too deeply or looking at ourselves and our problems. This doctrine keeps us in a certain kind of dialectic of the “practical,” concrete, and literal. In turn, this translates into the present social and political organization of our culture, problem-solving heuristics, and academic curriculums. As a deeply rooted psychological mindset and way to frame problems, convention serves as an existential coping mechanism to avoid examination of self and culture, actual problems, and a way to reject promising alternatives, especially integrative functional approaches. Perhaps convention is so widespread because of these evolutionary/psychological dynamics and because there are so many problems—personal to global—that we do not understand or know how to address. Consequently, it is extremely hard to even question the pervasive conventional framing of our situation and current entrenched thought and operations. Fortunately, some people move beyond convention integrating conventional and functional understandings to address problems. An integrative standpoint looks for connections, relationships, and systems properties across social processes and decision-making. It offers a way to orient to problems more reliably than convention allows.

Frameworks exist for integration that have proven helpful. As an inquiry into convention, the author looks at our contemporary problems, our evolutionary history, problem-solving, the academy, and education, and offers a brief overview. Recommendations are about (1) helping people, leaders, and institutions, (2) learning integrative concepts and operations for effectively orienting to problems, functionally in realistic and pragmatic ways, and, (3) developing education in the academy to upskill students and address problems. The future, our global solidarity, and any global movements to address problems will depend on the learning and transformations we can bring about.

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