The Problem with Writing: The Myanmar Syndrome–Part I

By Bill Drew - Jul 24 , 2008

Visualize a wall of water 250 feet high, light green, frothing at the top, speeding right at you. That’s what struck on December 26, 2004, when a series of deadly tsunamis hit Southeast Asia, killing 225,000 people in eleven countries.

But one nation of people in the direct path of the tsunamis weren’t harmed at all, not even their children or their little babies. A nation of boatpeople just off Southern Myanmar (Burma), a people called the Moken or the Sea Gypsies, knew a tsunami was coming, even before scientists and their techy instruments knew it. The Sea Gypsies on land headed to higher ground, while those at sea headed to deeper waters. All the Sea Gypsies survived, both on land and at sea.

Yet many experienced Myanmar fishermen were at sea, too, and they all died, as well as many of them on land. Why? A Sea Gypsy was asked that question, and he sagely replied,

• “They were looking at squid. They were not looking at anything.
  They saw nothing, they looked at nothing. They don’t know how to look.”

The main point was that the Myanmar were looking only at parts of their whole environment and thereby missed something vital to their survival. And they paid with their lives for their inadequate habits of thinking.

The Sea Gypsies realized that the Myanmar were not looking at large patterns, that the Myanmar did not see important processes, that they were not looking with any particular purpose, and that they didn’t know how to look in a way of seeing the big perspective of their changing environment.

What a subtly implied, perfect pattern for seeing the problems and understanding the solutions for just about anything, even writing (with a few small insertions, here):

• “They were looking at parts. They were not looking at patterns.
  They saw nothing of processes, they looked at nothing with the right purpose.
  They don’t know how to look in perspective.”

Like the fabled six blind men—each trying to understand what an elephant is by feeling only one part of the elephant—and like the Myanmar, teachers of writing have traditionally emphasized only one part or another in writing instead of seeing the whole picture of how all the parts work together under a simple First Principle.

Elusive though it has been, there is such a simple First Principle, and I call it NewView.

More about the simple First Principle of NewView in The Myanmar Syndrome — Part II, my post for next week.

Copyright ( C ) 2008 by William R. Drew Jr. All Rights Reserved.