Do things sometimes happen in your life where you ask yourself: How could I not see this coming? Perhaps the Sorites effect provides the explanation.
Suddenly everything is too much. The to-dos at work for which we are not adequately rewarded. The chaos in the apartment, which we can no longer get a grip on with the usual 15 minutes of housework per day. The uncomfortable feeling that a relationship costs us significantly more strength than it gives.
In truth, it is often creeping developments that bring us into such situations. But mostly we only notice the mess when it is too big to clear it up with a small movement of the hand. We realize that the barrel has overflowed while we are already standing in a puddle.
Sorites Paradox: One grain of sand doesn’t make a pile
One reason for this may be that we don’t see the world as it is, but rather categorize it. Light, dark, high, low, good, bad. In between we can see gradations, for example twilight, medium inclination, well rested, okay. Not all of them, however. This phenomenon can be illustrated and brought to the point with the Sorites effect.
The Sorites effect, actually the Sorites paradox (soros is Greek for heap), the philosopher Eubulides, a contemporary of Aristotle, described as follows: We can all recognize a pile of sand as a pile of sand and we agree that a grain of sand is not a pile. Even if we add a second grain of sand to a grain of sand, we still don’t have a pile. A single grain of sand that we add makes no difference between a pile and a non-pile. But if we start adding more and more individual grains of sand, at some point we will have a heap. How can that be when adding a grain of sand doesn’t make any difference?
The subtleties and small changes remain hidden from us until …
We are unable to discern the subtle changes that turn a grain into a pile of sand. We don’t see the bunch until it’s there, some maybe a little earlier than the others. But we don’t see him coming.
It is similar in many areas of our life.
For example, if we get a task on top in our job, most of us will probably say: Always bring it on, I’ll get it done. The second somehow fits and the third is so tiny that it takes practically no time. One day, however, we will reach the point where we will find that, if not overwhelmed, we are at least grossly underpaid for what we have on the table every day. Corresponding examples can be found in our relationships (“I don’t have to open a shop because of an unintentional injury”), everyday concerns (“one more letter doesn’t make my filing much more chaotic”) and other areas.
What to do?
Now it’s just that we can’t do too much about it. The world is too complex for us to grasp in all its intricacies and details. We have to put it into categories so that we can find our way around it. The price we pay for it – that life is sometimes one step ahead of us – is less than the price we would pay for giving up our imagined order. It would be possible not even to be able to recognize in retrospect that we were overtaken. And not knowing what being overtaken actually means.
Nevertheless, we can draw conclusions from the Sorites paradox that are valuable for our lives. On the one hand, it is important to be clear that what we perceive is not reality, but a simplified picture of it. This awareness may not immediately change something about this picture, but it can increase our openness and willingness to correct it if necessary. For example, just because we see a person smile doesn’t mean they are happy. A woman with dark skin could just as easily come from Hanover as from Stockholm, Singapore or Detroit. Issues are seldom as simple and clear as they appear to us.
On the other hand, as far as the head start in life is concerned, thanks to the knowledge from the Sorites paradox, we can at least try to look as closely as possible when it comes to important matters such as our happiness in life, our health, our loved ones, our close relationships, our job. We can regularly take time to reflect on our lives, to understand the changes that are going on in it, to recognize trends, to feel what they are doing to us and whether we want to let things go or intervene. Because even if we will never notice the difference that a single grain of sand can make: with a little luck and practice, we may recognize the pile of sand in time. That is, before it is too big to flatten it, it should block our way.
Source used: Kevin Dutton. Black. White. Think! Why we tick, how we tick, and how evolution makes us manipulable. dtv