Tip 42 – Finding the right level
Have you ever been stuck in a negotiation or argument and not been able to find common areas of agreement? Have you ever needed to quickly and easily think laterally? Perhaps you have felt overwhelmed by an activity, or needed to get something done, but didn’t feel enthusiastic about it
An NLP technique called ‘Chunking’ can help you get past these obstacles...
This is the great question of why you and I exist. According to The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, pan-dimensional beings, or mice as we see them, build Deep Thought - a gigantic mega computer designed to divulge the answer to life, the universe and everything. After 7.5 million years of calculation, it states the answer: 42. Here is the actual quote. (Loonquawl is a hyper dimensional being):
'"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said Deep Thought, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the precise question is."
Later on in the books, after another ten million years of work by an even more complex computer called ‘the Earth’, the question is found. It is revealed as:
“What is six times nine?”
Another part of the joke is that an error in the original components of the Earth computer meant that the result could never have been found correctly.
Speculation has been rife as to what was meant by this joke. The following section is taken from a BBC article:
“The answer can be interpreted in two ways. One is that it is a bad joke, implying that there simply is no answer, no meaning, no sense in the universe, and you would be no worse off if you jumped into the nearest black hole.
But the other interpretation is that the joke was wise. It shows that seeking numerical answers to questions of meaning is itself the problem. Digits, like a four and a two, can no more do it than a string of digits could represent the poetry of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's work was the product of a life, and a life lived to the full. Meaning too might only emerge from such fulsome engagement.
‘To put it another way, life is a gift. It is good. It flourishes in experiences like love,’ explains John Cottingham, professor of philosophy at the University of Reading, and author of On the Meaning of Life. He believes that philosophy can no more provide meaning than science can.
This is because life's giftedness, its goodness and its loveliness are essentially spiritual qualities. They can be assessed by rational enquiry. But they cannot be accessed by the cool calculations of reason. They must be experienced.”
