This post is regarding this video, which has been posted on here before.
So here’s why I think that, for the woman in this video, it’s not about the nail.
First, my wife eventually saw this video and her reaction to it was that she hated it because “when women do that, it’s never something that simple to fix. Clearly she needs to have the nail taken out of her head.”
She’s not interested in storytelling and problem solving the way I’ve been over the last several years, so I didn’t say, “No, that’s the brilliance of the skit. It was clearly written by a man with a male…ahem, sorry, Linear Problem Solver’s sensibilities. That’s what makes it funny. If a wom…I mean Holistic Problem Solver had written that skit, it probably wouldn’t have been as funny to the men (and the majority of women) in the audience that laughed when we saw it, at least not for the same reasons. When women do that, to a man it usually is pretty close to being that clear of an answer. But it’s because he and I are solving the problem in a very different way than you and the woman in the video are.”
I didn’t say any of that because she wouldn’t have cared and wouldn’t have gotten what I was talking about. And at the time I knew I couldn’t have really explained it all that well anyway other than to recite the basic Dramatica info I knew only by rote memorization, but that I didn’t understand at all at the time. And that wouldn’t have done any good.
But that’s been a while and I think I’m finally getting at least the theoretical concept of Holistic Problem-Solving if not ability to actually practice it. So, with that said, I’d like to offer a view (keep in mind, this is a theoretical view from an LPS and explained in an LPS’ terms) on why I think that it’s not about the nail.
First, what the guy in the video is seeing. He clearly represents the Linear Problem Solver. According to the theory of Mental Relativity, Linear Problem Solvers are spatial thinkers. Basically that means that as the processes of the mind move around, LPS align themselves with the Space/Ability quad so that Space/Ability, relative to an LPS, appears motionless while the other processes are all bouncing around (I can go more into that if anyone would like). Because of that, LPS find it easiest to tackle problems through dealing with space. They see the journey of problem solving as a linear path from problem to solution and they try to take the shortest, least resistant path. Achieving a goal looks like the end of a problem, the return of equity. So they deal with the space of things by dealing only with the bit of space that’s imbalanced…only they’re linear so they wouldn’t call it imbalanced. They’d probably say broken, or something along those lines. In the video, the problem appears very spatial to the LPS. The nail is stuck in the woman’s forehead. That’s an inequity. Something is wrong with that space because that’s not where the nail belongs and it’s obviously causing conflict by being there. So the simple solution to the LPS is to remove the nail.
Now what the woman in the video is seeing. She clearly represents the Holistic Problem Solver. According to the theory of Mental Relativity, HPS are temporal thinkers. That means that, just as the LPS align themselves with the Space/Ability quad, HPS will align themselves with the Time/Desire quad. Because of that, they don’t see space as motionless the way an LPS would. Instead, they look at space and see the way it evolves over time. Instead of seeing the state of things as an LPS would, they see the processes behind things. Where an LPS changes space as time moves along, an HPS carries space with her through time (I almost wanted to say that she moves through time as space moves along, but that seems strange. I want to think that it’s not wrong, just too Holistic for me to get it, but who knows).
That’s why she doesn’t look for paths from the problem directly to the solution. To an HPS, Space is changing and moving and may not even look the same when she gets there. And she’s trying to carry this space through time. So instead of solving a problem by dealing with the broken space, she tries to adjust the processes as she sees them. Because she is looking at processes, she sees not paths but relationships. And because she is carrying her entire space through time, the easiest way to solve problems is through balance.
For the woman in the video, it’s not the nail in her head that is throwing things off balance, but the processes at work. It’s the process of having a nail in her head, but it’s also the process of getting headaches and having snagged sweaters and a boyfriend or husband that keeps nagging her about the spatial problem that she’s not even looking at. It’s easy for him to go and change his space, but she can’t just go and change her time. That’s already happened, is still happening, and having the nail removed won’t fix the processes she’s already had to deal with because they’re already there. So, in other words, for the woman in the video, it really isn’t about the nail. It’s all about the processes.
Okay, so that turned into a much longer post than I meant for it to be. For those that made it this far, thanks for reading a whole essay. Hopefully there’s something accurate in all that, though I’m sure it’s not entirely so.
) I gave my defense of the Holistic side of that video in the original post, so I won’t go too in-depth on that. It’s interesting that your wife took the Linear side, but I think she’s also right that the video is somewhat skewed to that perspective. It’s meant to be a humorous representation of stereotypical fights of this nature, and making it seem like a very simple solution is what makes it funny.