The podcast, “The Problem with the Solution,” explains the issue of men always having had been looking for problems to solve within their communities and among themselves. From trying to solve issues that were as simple as fixing clogged up drains to mental illnesses of fellow beings, people always used each other’s knowledge and intelligence to make oneself comfortable and their surroundings, expedient. Ellen Baxter explains her journey of finding the truth in problem-solving. Baxter wanted to know the goodness of mental hospitals and how she could make the system better for the recovery of the patients. During her research, she discovered a place in Belgium, Geel. In Geel, a system of foster care is present to host “boarders,” strangers who are or were diagnosed with a mental illness throughout their lifetime. Boarders were placed in homes and they were left to do anything they wished to do, anything that their brains signaled them to do. This tradition of hosting boarders have given less stress to the host and the mental patients because the problem was not addressed and there was no form of normality to being a human.
A question, “To what extent are emotions the key catalysts to problems?” was derived from this reading. In order to support the answers to this question, two readings were found: “What is a Problem?” and “Norms for Experiencing Emotions in Different Cultures: Inter- and Intranational Differences.”
Thomas Osborne describes the possible origins of a problem in his article, “What is a Problem?”. Osborne explains Bergson’s theory of problems, which state that the problems occur the same path as science. Problems were caused by the priorities that humans made for what was visible to them in certain situations that had not occurred before. Evolution happened due to organisms being involved in the necessity to solve problems, which made humans want to fix some things that went against science and nature. According to Osborne’s summary of Bergson, local solutions to an issue was given and history had to repeat itself in order for other generations to solve similar problems. It was certain types of “humanism” because animals doubted themselves to form new ways of living. However, Canguilhem, in contrast, believed that when disorders were analyzed, there were no problems to be found. There was no disorder in general. Problems led to being philosophical, phenomena, but proved to be nothing but concepts. To him, normality was having an “open end” for solutions to adapt, an “ethical injunction, not an outlook.” A solution is an “ethical injunction” because without, freedom has a possibility to lead to corruption, thus becoming anything authority demands. Freedom was made to keep an order, which is for the people to decide from science, ethics, and morals, which are flowing the same direction. Enlightenment led to a belief in liberalism, which states that endless work of freedom should be favored instead of assimilation.
Eid and Diener explain the cultural norms of those that follow the “cultural syndrome,” which states that individuals “[share the same sets of beliefs], attitudes, norms, values, and behavior organized around a central theme and found among speakers of one language, in one time period, and in one geographic region.” An experiment was done to find the social norms and expectations that could affect a long/ short term goals of individuals and how their emotions related to each other. Independent cultures tend to focus on their self-emotions and did not react to their surroundings very well. However, interdependent cultures depended on each other to feel emotions, for example, in events. An individual does not feel the positivity of the event, it is the positive evaluation of their surroundings that allows them to feel certain emotions. The participants’ cell signals were measured and pride was the most relevant source of being in a group though it was the most undesirable component of emotion as a whole. Emotions were different based on different cultures and traditions, which meant that some were more conforming/ individual than the other. People distinguished between “undesirable” and “inappropriate.” In China, guilt was almost 1, while it varied in other regions of the world. Normality in different regions showed the importance of communication.

Works Cited:

Diener, Ed, and Eid, Michael. “Norms for Experiencing Emotions in Different Cultures: Inter- and Intranational Differences.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 81, Iss. 5, 2001, https://search.proquest.com/docview/614418486/fulltextPDF/1580EAAA36CD437FPQ/1?accountid=13567. Accessed 23 October 2017.

Osborne, Thomas. “What is a Problem?” Sage Journals, 2003, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0952695103164001. Accessed 23 October 2017.