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Amirhosein Shirani

There is no Divider, Only a Perception

Philosophy2 min read

The Philosophy


People try to segment the world into categories. Sometimes it might help. But sometimes it's dangerous.

You constantly attain new knowledge about how everything works throughout your experience. So sticking to categories and models may cause not benefiting from these experiences, and as a consequent, drowning in repetitive failures in the life.

The Perception


As I mentioned, sometimes categorizations and modelings help us understand how things work. But it's only a perception. The map is not the territory [1]. Think about Newton Law; it's only a perception of how things work, not what exactly is. in quantum size, it's not helpful. But in the Newton era, it helped.

In human-related knowledge these frameworks is worse. I remember that when I was younger, I enjoyed psychology. I tried to analyze people around myself and fit them into psychological frameworks like 'Ennegram' or 'MBTI'. As a result, I underestimated the complexity of human nature. I was wrong. Although these models were helpful for better understanding of psychology, but they aren't fact, they aren't divine judgements. They are just frameworks.

When Problems Occur


In business, and in my country specifically, I've seen people who were really interested in titles, rather than descriptions. They're obsessed with job titles. But it's only a perception.

I've seen many start-ups struggling with their job positions which result in company downfall. Tech guys do not involve in marketing jobs, designers do not think strategically, to name but a few.

What give rise to problems is the perception. Titles give you the delusion of who you are, not who you exactly are. People love titles. But it's not important. The output and success of your company is what truly is cherished.

The Solution


When I was trying to gathering a great team for my start-up, I realized that job descriptions are more important than titles. In other words, titles does not even have any worth and they just help the people outside of your company perceive the position of a person. So I introduce my teammate with a changing position title. But everyone in the team has a great understanding of how she or he should work and what should be done.

It's the problem of the language. In fact, it's problem of perception of the language. When you say 'I Love you', every person has his own view of this statement. Sometimes it is okay, but sometimes, as may perceptions differ, it would cause problems. But when you describe, or experience the sentence, it gives you very helpful insights. When you experience Love, it's totally different with just a word of 'Love'.

At least, Descriptions give better insight of how things work, rather than Titles.









Footnotes:
[1]: For more information, read here

Thanks to Niloofar Ghasemzadeh, Nazanin Bayati for reading drafts of this.
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