Session - 1

 

I thought about areas which I would be covering here as part of my teachings. I would like to use the platform as feedback mechanism for my presentations, teachings when I am not teaching in person. I request here to all those who come here, to please provide me with their comments, views and opinions on range of things. This can be for the topics that I am covering, my own writings, asking about how would I cover certain topics in person to telling me what should I cover next as my exercise here.

Logic:

The first topic that I would like to develop in an individual is logical thinking. Before we go in details of various topics, it is pragmatic to define the logical structure for the ‘logic’ itself. Once you have the working model for the logic itself, you can always go back and check yourself for the missing connections, if you are stuck at some point.

The most important thing for any discussion, writing, forum session or anything related to non-gossip conversation, is that you contribute every time you get an opportunity to. If you have your basics right, you are paying attention to whatever is being said by the other participants, and you are equally open to listen, assimilate and then draw the short term conclusion to start your turn, you are perfectly the part of that sensible discussion and your contribution is visible for the entire duration.

The three important ingredients, to have a breakout in the start and some conclusive results in the end of it, are: Topic to ponder over, People to get the diverse opinions and hence the contribution and the third one is the limitation in terms of timings and boundary for the discussions.

The Structure:

· The first thing is your current knowledge about the topic. When you start thinking about something, you would start with some preset for yourself. That is your present knowledge.

· You should have clear understanding and surety in terms of reliable information about your current knowledge else the non-gossip discussion would turn out to be a gossip one. Thus, the result would not help in the real sense as the basic ground realities of that discussion would be enough questionable.

· Based upon current knowledge you have, you would get to know about certain missing connections and questions for the completeness of the topic. Also, there would be cases where you know about the topic as the fact only. You might not be having the correct clarity as in ‘why’ something is done or ‘how’ the certain process was implemented. Without the clarity of the three questions: What, Why and How, any knowledge is not full proof.

· Any topic in the world cannot be understood in isolation. It is related to other topics, getting affected by them and also affecting them in every sense. So, once the topic starts we should try to find out the possible other related topics which are also to be discussed to get the more clarity of our topic. This gives us the task to define the boundaries, i.e., which all topics we would like to cover or which all topics have got highest relevance to be discussed first.

· Now once the current structure is clear and we know the possible directions to go about, it is time to go back and look for the ‘big picture’. The ‘big picture’ is one of the most debatable and confusing of all topics in general. What I mean is that you cannot look and dig out every detail on earth. Moreover, not everything should be discussed in detail if the effect of those would be too small for our conclusion. So, it requires us to look the ‘big picture’ where we would identify the topics, related topics, missing information, missing facts which are the most important ones for us. This gives us another option to define the boundary for the entire discussion.

· We can start building upon the topic now. We have the links, information, people and views. So once we start clubbing everything based upon our ‘the three questions’, we would be getting more clarity of the topic. At every point, we would do short conclusive discussion as to draw more paths for the ongoing journey, also to make sure that every participant is at the same understanding level at every point.

· Within the time limit provided, we can discuss all the short conclusions we take on our way. The sum of short conclusions would give the way to our final conclusion. The final conclusion could be of two ways: one, related to what we learn from the topic; two, what is the roadmap to give more clarity in terms of plan of action to be done.

There are many things which we would learn as we start talking about some of the topics. I would try to cover some topics within the structure provided here in my subsequent posts.