Selected paragraphs from the introduction to How to Do Things Right by L. Rust Hills (wotta name!):
Now it may seem to some of you as you first get into this that the answers are harder than the questions, that the solutions in fact turn out to be far worse than the problems ever even thought of being. But that's because you don't yet understand the problems-and-solutions relationship. Anyone interested in doing something right, really right, is necessarily going to be much more intrigued by a problem than he is by a solution. If you are only interested in a solution—just any old simple solution—then the best thing to do is not even think about the problem. Most problems just go away—poof!—if you stop thinking about them.
Difference in degree of interest-in-the-problem creates the fundamental division of all mankind: between those who believe in getting things done, on the one hand, and those who believe in doing things right, on the other. Most of the complex problems we've got in this country today are the result of slap-dash, "can-do" men attempting to solve once-simple problems in careless ways that left a mess, left vicious half-solved problems, like wounded lions, in all our streets. …
Problems have their pride, you know, as well as a strong sense of self-preservation, and they quite naturally resist yielding up their existence to an inferior solution. But when a problem is confronted with a solution that demonstrates full appreciation and entire comprehension—matches it intricacy for intricacy, complexity for complexity, even absurdity for absurdity—then it gives way utterly to this flattery and understanding.
Since the "perfect" solution to a problem, the exact match-up, is unlikely to occur to anyone, a certain amount of overkill in problem-solving is quite obviously necessary. Thus what I present in this book (proudly) is a sequence of apparently complicated solutions to apparently simple problems. The fact that they may not work either is completely irrelevant. It's a whole new approach!
Having read his advice on "how to be kindly", in the first book of this three-book compilation, I am not quite sure what to expect in the third book, How to Be Good.
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