Too Many Categories, Too Much Structure

The key to learning, according to Descartes, is to take large problems and separate them into smaller, more easily solved problems.

Not surprisingly, this method is often applied to artistic ventures.

After all, making something new –something that never existed before– is difficult. That’s why people often look for formulas for success.  A whole industry of “how-to” books emerged on this basis.

But does any one believe this approach works?  I used to.  Now, not so much.

In the age of information, knowledge of structure and categorization is the dominant mode of thinking.  You can see it in the titles of so many click-baity posts: “3 Ways to Improve your Marriage,” “6 Secrets to Making Money,” “Top Ten ways to get that Beach Bod.”

These titles suggest that success in any of these domains is essentially structural.  That is, if you break up the problem of your “dad bod” into smaller sub-categories (e.g. diet, exercise, mental health) that you can achieve the ideal.

Of course, no one really thinks that anything is that simple. Somehow sub-categories of success do not alleviate most dad’s of their body issues.  Yet we fall for it over and over.  Why?

Perhaps the problem is one of ethics.

Jordan Peterson often argues that categorization (structure) forces us to see what we choose to see. That is, our system of describing the world objectively/categorically is nothing more that an extension of our subjective aim.

If we suggest that there are 5 secrets to sex, we are ignoring the very real and complicated issue of sexual love with our unique and individual partner.  Our aim is to quickly “level up” in the bedroom. We are impatient.  The structure of our thinking is derived from that impatience.

In short, you will fail to be a better lover, for you ignored the human individual in the bedroom and instead looked to the structure imposed on the act of love-making.

Alternatively, we may look at the problem of structure and categorization as an epistemological problem.  That is, not a problem of right or wrong, but rather a problem of how knowledge has evolved.

The Evolutionary Biologist,  Dr. Robert Sapolsky, often discusses the limitation of categorical thinking.  Namely, how we apply categorical thinking to that which is not categorical.

I have a friend who is a painter. He’s such a great painter that he paints with 11 different colors!

This nonsensical example shows how categorical thinking can be deeply flawed.  Great painting is complicated. It is both categorical and super-categorical.

In my own life, the question of how to be a better writer intersects with this philosophical issue. For example:  How does one write a screenplay?

Opinions vary, but some would say: Read X book. Make a beat sheet. Write an step outline.  Separate the whole movie into a collection of acts, sequences, scenes, beats.

But what do you have then? Merely a series of unmotivated events.

But when we watch a film, where are these Acts?  they are invisible.  If we happen to see the turns of a story, doesn’t that mean it is a terrible movie?  Moreover, to what degree are we superimposing structure on that which is essentially structureless?  As Craig Mazin once said:

Structure is the effect of a story, not the cause.

Now, does it make it easier to write a script if you know something about story structure?  Yes.  But will knowledge of structure make a great screenplay. No.  And that is a major discovery for me.

So what is the proper approach?  I’ll leave that for Part 2 of this discussion.

Note:

This post is inspired by Episode #403 of Scriptnotes.  Listen to it here: