What Is Wrong With Being A Pragmatic?

From the perspective of a pragmatic, there is nothing wrong with being pragmatic... and that is the exact problem of being pragmatic!

Here's an explanation of why is that.

One problem of being pragmatic is learning through doing.

Without a set of abstract ideas, there is an inefficient process of passing knowledge from one person to another - the learning is instead done through a collection of recipes and procedures.

Another problem is that pragmatics can also be highly goal-oriented without letting emotions distract them.

Of course, to a pragmatic, there is nothing wrong with that — if it wasn't the fact that more important than goals are systems. And more important than repressing emotions is to listen to them.

Pragmatist: "a person who is guided more by practical considerations than by ideals." —Oxford Dictionary

A pragmatic holds a collection of knowledge without necessarily having wisdom.

The focus is on the functional, the operational, without holding abstract concepts such as universal principles — and consequently, unable to connect the dots between different problems.

The Pragmatic Principle Approach

Take the example of an engineer responsible for building software.

A pragmatic approach is adding code on top of code on top of code, fixing immediate needs as they come... resulting in bigger problems (bugs & silos) in the process.

Had the pragmatic take time to contemplate instead of jumping into action, the result would have been more reliable and the process more productive.

Pragmatism was born out of reaction to idealism, hence its nature of utilitarianism & materialism.

But in truth, none of them works in isolation.

Pragmatism is guided by 'what works'.

But what 'works' depends on how the problem is addressed in the first place.

The Mayan civilisation had a complex system to predict the solar eclipses that 'worked'... without ever considering the simpler approach of the Copernicus model.

We see instances where software and businesses are builds using similar concepts adopted by the Mayans.

It 'works'.

Fig 1: A model of the motions of the planets where Earth is at the centre. It 'works' in the sense that it can predict solar eclipses.

Fig 2: A spaghetti code with loops, repetitions and nested if's. It 'works' in the sense that it produces the desired outputs.

Hidden Consequences Of The Pragmatic Principle

To a pragmatic, there is always plenty of work to be done.

As soon a problem is fixed, they move to the next problem, and the next and the next... working harder and harder till all problems are sorted.

That is, without ever connecting the dots and building an understanding of the problem behind all problems.

Fig 3: There is plenty of 'hard work' when climbing a Penrose staircase. Moving 'forward' is going nowhere. Stop and contemplate the problem, and you may find the 'problem behind the problem'.

A Sense Of Beauty

Because to do so, one needs to stop and contemplate to create a model able to connect all the dots.

And models are more than an aggregation of knowledge

As systems are more than an aggregation of goals or architectures more than an aggregation of functionalities.

In all of them, there is a sense of beauty within.

And in such emotion of wonder, we listen to it and able to find true innovation.