Heuristic reasoning

Subject: FW: Heuristic reasoning.

The intuitive mind or the heuristic way of reasoning is with us all through our lives. It influences who we are and who we become by providing the soil in which we grow and sometimes prosper.
Ask any gardener the route to a pretty garden is the preparation you put in, the choice of plant relative to the sunshine and the wind, the soil into which you place the plant, the nutrients and the water are all the constituents of a flourishing garden.  But the idea of a garden, what it should look like, what flowers should be allowed to grow is pretty much based on the style and common agreement amongst gardeners. They are the experts, they generate the norms - which are not a matter for discussion.
In my garden, perhaps because I am lazy, the influence of wild flowers and what gardeners refer to as weeds, I find attractive. For the weed, the soil is not a problem, clay or rich in humus it grows well, drought or flood, pestilence or perfect pollination the plants prosper. The colours of wild flowers are as vibrant as the most invested hybrid and pop up each year unannounced like good friends.
The reasoned mind has its bias, its inarticulate assumption that others are right to set the standards and that we must follow. The sense that colour and prettiness, which is often the driver behind my sense of having a functioning garden is obscured by the cant of the seed manufactures and the gardening magazine writers who's aim in life is to make gardening as difficult and time consuming as can be. It's the antithesis of heuristic thought, "enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves", it's the profile of modern life where everything has to be pre-thought and agreed for it to have any chance of acceptance.

Our lack of individuality of following the herd is evident all around us. In for instance the stark sameness of the candidates for the position of becoming the UKs new Prime Minister (with the exception of my favorite Rory Stewart). One can't put cigarette paper between them in their unwillingness to look outside the box for solutions. They have been conditioned by their need to speak the language of the tight knit cabal who will vote for them, the Conservative Party members. It limits their actions and makes them, to a man, (other than Stewart) trail down the cul-de-sac of renegotiation with the EU, who have made it plain that there is no renegotiation. The appeal of jingoistic hubris to the pink rinse brigade and the colonel blimps of the Tory heartlands is the cry of yesteryear and the nostalgia of our history books but which has little to do with the practice of life as it is today, or the importance of common sense, of an optimal way rather than the perfect solution, sufficiency for reaching an intermediate goal which allows us to move on.