The Essential Origin

I'll probably come up with a better label later but this is something I've been thinking about lately.  Another label that came to mind was "the fundamental reason" but I thought "the essential origin" sounds more general.  This is a sort of synthesis that I had about a unifying concept which applies to things I am interested in.

The premise is that to enable any process of creation, one must "take hold" of "the essential origin."  I use the term "creation" to mean anything (physical, mental, spiritual activity or process) that leads to the accomplishment of a goal.

Now, let me take you through examples of how the essential origin concept can be applied to some things close to my heart.

Marketing.  In marketing, basically what you want to do is sell something.  To be able to effectively sell something (a product, an idea in the case of propaganda, etc.) to a specified group of people (the target market), you must have a deep and clear (and preferably intuitive) understanding of the needs and wants, the pains and aspirations of your target market.  Having a clear understanding means being able to articulate and express these needs and wants in a way that's as good as or even better than how your target market would articulate these needs and wants themselves.  So in this case, taking hold of the essential origin means understanding and articulating the pains and aspirations of your target market.  From this, you'd come up with a brilliant insight which would lead to a chain reaction towards the creation of a solid and highly effective marketing campaign.

Problem Solving.  In any kind of problem solving, the key step is always to determine the root cause of the problem.  Thus, taking hold of the essential origin means knowing what the root cause is.  It is only pin-pointing the root cause and systemically addressing it that a problem is truly solved.

Poetry.  I believe that the key for every poet is to find his or her distinct poetic voice.  It is by finding this distinct voice that a poet creates poems that are authentic and eternal.

Philosophy.  Now I have an interest in postmodern philosophy which primary premise is that everything is a struggle for meaning (and consequently, there is no absolute truth).  Some people think of this as a problematic premise since how can you assert that there is no absolute truth if the assertion of the absence of an absolute truth is not absolute in itself.  But then again, I have no problem accepting this apparent contradiction because if I am to fully embrace the primary premise of postmodernism, I should look at the labels or thought structures of "contradictions," "logic," etc. also as non-absolute and merely as products of the mind's struggle for meaning.  Thus, logic is just a way of labelling and structuring things to generate meaning out of a meaningless (or meaning-less) collective.  Thus, postmodermisn does not have to make logical sense.  To me, postmodernism is just an effort (probably futile) to go beyond, or at least recognize the existence of "beyond," what the human mind is cognitivelly capable of.
Okay I strayed a bit from the point there so back to the essential origin.  I think that any kind of philosophy, or school of thought, or body of knowledge (theory, etc.), always has that most basic premise from where everything else (through the processes of ideation, knowledge creation, research, speculation, thought experiments, etc.) comes from.  Some examples:
1. The central dogma of molecular biology
2. The two postulates that formed the foundation of Einstein's special theory of relativity: that light travels at a constant speed in all frames of reference, and that the laws of motion applies for all frames of reference
3. The basic premise of string theory (not sure what it is but I think it is something about the existence of four (or five, or whatever) types of fundamental strings
4. For language, it is the phonemes.  For languages, it is the basic rules of grammar.
5. Political ideologies also draw from a basic premise/postulate.
Thus, to start a new school of thought or body of knowledge or a breakthrough idea, you need to take hold of the essential origin by creating the fundamental premise.

Teaching.  I think teaching is very similar to marketing because in teaching what you're trying to accomplish is to sell knowledge (lots of them) and ensure that your students "buy" them.  Therefore, to be an effective teacher, you must take hold of the essential origin by recognizing your student's "learning appetizers" from which you will design your teaching style against.

Leadership.  I believe teaching is also a leadership role but to talk about how the concept of essential origin applies to leadership in general, let us look at three aspects of leadership (which I learned about at work):
1. Personal Leadership.  Taking hold of the essential origin simply means knowing yourself: your personality, your own motivations, your sense of purpose, your values, your body, things that make you energized, excited, and angry, things that make you healthy and make you sick.  From knowing yourself, you get to create and solidify yourself as a personal leader who inspires people.
2. Strategic Leadership.  Taking hold of the essential origin means understanding your goals and priorities to make sure you come up with the right strategies and execution plan.
3. Organizational Leadership.  Taking hold of the essential origin means knowing your people in the same way I described knowing yourself for personal leadership and likewise knowing your organization (because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts) - understanding the different cultural elements, understanding collective sentiments, etc.  Only through knowing your people or your organization will you be an effective organizational leader.

So there, this entry is quite lengthy already so to close, I'd like to talk a little about the effort that physicists (and other scientists as well) are putting on coming up with a "theory of everything" meaning a model that would represent the fundamentals of existence and would explain every single thing and event in the universe.  Right now the popular theory is the string theory (look it up) but a lot of people are skeptical about its viability mainly because of problems on testability.  But then again, at this point I wouldn't expect the theory of everything to be testable through experiments.
Anyway, imagine the possibilities if we actually get to know the true "theory of everything."  This would be the ultimate in taking hold of the essential origin.  There is a reason why I especially chose the words "taking hold."  Taking hold means possessing control and I think possessing control is the first requisite for creation.  And if we get to take hold of the ultimate essential origin, that is the "theory of everything," then we would then have the capability for limitless creation and limitless destruction.  I'd like to look at destruction as a creative process as well.  Imagine the possibilities.

So anyway, back to the ground, in closing, the next time you set out to accomplish anything, first take hold of the essential origin.  Can't think of a closing that's more lame.

Gosh, I'm loving this blog already.