Why Decision Making Frameworks + Meaning = Nope
Quantum Platonism: a metaphysical framework that is compatible with meaning.
Why Decision Making Frameworks + Meaning = Nope
You start projects because you want to have an impact.
You want to bring something meaningful to the world.
And in the process, there are decisions to make.
What at first looked like a straight path from start to finish soon looks more like a tree diagram with a million branches, new ones popping out every day.
Endless possibilities
And somehow, you need to find the right ones.
What most people miss, is that almost all decision making frameworks are utilitarian.
They are made to optimise for hard, measurable values like revenue.
They are made to navigate the material world.
But they're notably inefficient at navigating meaning.
Because these methods deal with overwhelming complexity by simplifying the context.
They remove the "fluff".
Replacing complex reality with neat representations
Pro's and con's lists
Spreadsheets
SWAT analysis
While these can be handy tools, they work by reducing the amount of information you are dealing with.
And the first to go out the window are the "soft" values.
The ones that actually matter.
The reason for this is that you are applying a method based in a materialistic worldview onto problems that are inherently idealistic in nature.
Materialism doesn't even agree that meaning EXISTS, so how could it ever help you deal with it?
In order to navigate meaning, you need a framework that is based on a metaphysics that is compatible with meaning.
Which most business tools aren't.
Metaphysics of Meaning
From a Quantum Platonic perspective, we can understand the meaningful value that we want to bring into the world as an Archetypal Form.
A Noble Ideal.
It's a subtle reality which, just like beauty, can express itself in the material world.
While beauty takes the shape of a rose, the Ideal that you're working with takes the shape of a product, content and a way of being that inspires and uplifts everyone you're dealing with in your activities.
It's something much, much bigger than you and your role is essentially to be a conduit for this Noble Ideal to manifest.
This is, after all, how the Demiurge created our world, according to Plato.
And if we agree that he did an OK job with that, we might want to look at the principles he used for his act of creation.
Collapse of the Quantum Cave
We can clearly see a correlation here to Quantum Mechanic's concept of "the collapse of the wave function".
The idea is that reality is made up of vibratory Quantum Fields.
Subtle landscapes that are extremely complex and chock-full of meaning that the ordinary mind cannot grasp.
Partly, because they are contradictory and paradoxical in nature.
Schrödingers cat for example is BOTH dead and alive at the same time, until we open the box and make sure.
This complexity is obviously impossible to put down on a spreadsheet, which is why we need to represent it in more manageable data sets.
As a graceful gesture, the Quantum Fields collapses into neat little particles, hard matter that we can touch, move around and that normally stays where we put them.
They even give us a say in which parts of the complexity we wish to see, since our consciousness seems to participate in this collapse.
To connect this to your own experience: the way you interpret events in your life are obviously subjective.
Each situation can be read in a million ways and your unique perspective, which is dictated by cognitive conditioning, determines how the complexity of whatever it is you're experiencing show up in your version of it.
There's no objectivity to that, no real claim on truth.
Predictability or Meaning?
What we get is a world we can slap on a spreadsheet, think about in mental concepts and decide what's "true" in using simple logic.
But this convenience comes with 2 major trade offs:
It's a HEAVILY reduced version of reality, which is highly sensitive to confirmation bias.
The materialistic world is almost entirely void of meaning.
So while the material world is more manageable, we pay for that predictability with ignorance and meaninglessness.
Which is why most leaders feel empty even if they win.
This is how almost everyone lives their entire lives.
Also our leaders.
And it sucks.
No wonder our world is going the direction it is.
When there is no ability to navigate meaning in an objective way.
Let The Seer Lead the Blind
For Plato, the key to decision making is to look BEYOND the representations, and perceive and participate directly in the archetypal Forms themselves.
The Landscape of Meaning.
According to him, the ability to do so is what characterises the Philosophers Kings.
They are the captains who's eyes can pierce the clouds and navigate the seas by the stars above.
They are seeing things as they are, and have Absolute Reference Points in the Archetypal Forms.
Subtle SIGNALS that they can follow through the noise.
Knowing which of the endless possibilities are coherent to their Noble Ideal.
Which ones are meaningful.
Human Technology
While this is a framework that is compatible with meaning, it's different from other business tools in that it's not something you can just adopt like that.
It's not a new kind of radar you install on the ship.
It's a training of the captains own ability to use his consciousness in a way that he can perceive and participate in the subtle, energetic reality itself.
Without mediating the experience.
Without the crutch of representation.
It's a technology that is not dominantly EXTERNAL.
But INTERNAL.
And by developing this inherently HUMAN technology, you gradually become a native in the Landscape of Meaning, the world above the clouds, capable of finding the way to what truly matters.
Unearthing treasures that are of true and lasting value.
Enriching both yourself and everyone your project touches.
Which, after all, is why you started it in the first place.