Life must be lived forward to be understood backwards, as Kierkegaard pointed out, and with good reason. A rich, varied sense of lived experience is key in conjuring up worthwhile insight, which in turn, if comprehended effectively, can be applied productively in meaningful ways for future posterity.

This graph should help illustrate my point

Which is why today’s words of wisdom are Venerating Venn Diagrammables, a new methodology of exploring the blending of different ideas and disciplines to yield radical new results. In the past on Words of Wisdom, I’ve always attempted to predicate my shared insights and advice on personally lived experience I saw some confident results with. Combine this with my love of philosophy, admiration of thinking, fixation on personal identity, and desire to help people, and the whole methodological approach to writing my Words of Wisdom comes from what is an obvious place of evidential concern and merit. It helps a lot that on several occasions, some of the articles or ideas I’ve shared with others, have prompted appreciation from said individuals towards the wisdom shared, and gratitude towards their content and contributions in helping them improve on their own road of self-improvement, showing there has been some ratifiable results to cite in terms of real world feedback, too.

So, to the point of Venerating Venn Diagrammables, we are essentially synthesizing at least two different ideas or disciplines, to produce new results, An easy example I can provide is how Active Time Event (ATE) ended up developing, as I enjoyed the act of writing, playing video games, while also enjoying philosophy. I wanted to help broadcast to society at large the value gaming did bring as a medium, showcase myself as a writer, but didn’t like the way regular game journalism predicated itself in such shallow ways, while also simultaneously enjoying the approach deconstructionism provided, in analyzing and breaking down concepts, which hails from the realm of philosophy, with Derrida being the big name who popularized the whole practice. Thusly, the centralized approach of blending multiple ideas and disciplines together, yielded that new sweet spot in the middle I desired to inhabit, which was the context ATE grew out of. A voila moment, to be sure, and with it, a new stylized approach in thinking and writing about video games immerged.

What’s great about the Venn Diagrammables, is that it in and of itself, it is kind of a product of its own design, combining different elements from prior words of wisdom, in its own generation, which is honestly a hilariously effective self-evident way to reinforce its own efficacy. The past words of wisdom I drew upon, in utilizing drawing upon my own Venn Diagrammable sensibilities managed to produce the very notion of Venn Diagrammables itself, involving Framework Thinking, Refining Your Range Game, and Appreciating the Spectrum(s), as they all provided key points in the synthesis of today’s wisdom. The framework thinking reinforces the notion that the concept we are constructing is mostly a one size fits all, and can therefore be applied in a near endless variety of ways and formats, our allowance from refining range game puts into focus the tiered goal variance approach, in being able to maintain different disciplines and focuses that one is improving over time and working towards collectively, and Appreciating the Spectrum(s) helps to put into perspective that it’s spectrums all the way down, spectrums upon spectrums, even, in helping to showcase that the definitive standards for any given idea or moment can extend considerably in any direction, providing a much richer context then just a binary, black and white notion of most elements of graspable reality. Synthesize them all together, and what do you get? Venn Diagrammables, and all of the venerating glory.

So, there you have it, another excellent conceptual tool for your proverbial toolbox, in all of its Swiss army knife glory. As mentioned, Venn Diagrammables have such a radically large contingency of possible outputs, I could be here for days attempting to generate possible examples to inspire, but instead of hoisting myself into such a vapid enterprise, I’ve instead just handed you the keys to a near infinite genesis machine of ideas, and letting you go nuts with it, as I’m sure you already have a few ideas and disciplines you enjoy that you could synthesize together to create a new approach of engaging with or producing new ideas and results, and share your findings with the world. So sally forth, and find new value in your own Venn Diagrammable kind of future.

And as always, take care of yourself, and others.

~Pashford