FLOW Theory

The Greek “theoria” originally referred to a way of seeing the world.  Although “theory” in the modern sense often has connotations of abstract and unrealistic, we use it in the ancient Greek sense of seeing the world in a particular manner.  Ideas are tools to help us understand reality more effectively. If they do not support us to understand reality more effectively, they are worthless.

"People only see what they are prepared to see."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many people, when they first see a developing world slum, are, quite rightly, aghast at the poverty.  But there is a different way of seeing this same slum:  The most basic “theory” of population growth is that fewer children die than used to be the case.  Thus this vast urban poverty is the direct result of billions of children living instead of dying due to improved health and nutrition.

Throughout the history of the human race, most mothers have lost most of their children to death.  Dramatic improvements in health and nutrition around the world are directly responsible for the “population explosion.”  On the very most human level, the “over-populated” Brazilian favela pictured above exists in such a crowded state because millions of mothers had millions of children live to adult-hood instead of dying.

One can learn to look at the above photo and “see” millions of mothers grateful that their child did not die.  One can also “see” millions of mothers who hope that their living children can have better lives.  Yes, it is a good thing to be able to look at a favela and “see” millions of children who survived rather than died, and it is a good thing to “see” a favela and urgently desire to help these people to live far safer, healthier, happier lives.

If ideas, including the ideas included in FLOW theory, do not enhance the way you see the world, then they are of no value.  We should all develop the habit of “trying ideas on,” much as we might try on a pair of glasses, and see how the world looks through those ideas.