Conceptual Blocks and How They Inhibit Creative Analysis - Essay Example

This essay discusses conceptual blocks and how they inhibit creative analysis and critical thinking. In compression blocks, people create their realities using their imaginations around a problem (Bhaskar, 1), which eventually results in the inability to resolve the problems.
Constancy
Constancy block occurs when a person looks at a problem only through a certain way, which makes the individual narrow-minded and ineffectual in the decision-making process.
Commitment
In commitment blocks, an individual commits themselves to a certain idea, without questioning the current realities about it.

Complacency
In complacency blocking, an individual decides, because of prior experience, not to question a certain situation as they think that would make them appear stupid.
Conceptual blocks in film segments of Gandhi
The film starts with the assassination of Gandhi by a religious bigot when he was meeting with his admirers and followers.
Gandhi and conceptual blocks
Gandhi was committed to one course of action, truth, and love (John, 1). In a way, it is presumable that Gandhi was inclined to a commitment block, which made him blind to the realities of religious animosity, a notion that eventually led to his demise through an assassin’s bullet.

Although his message of love truth and non-violence worked against the colonial government, a strategy would not help the citizenry come together, as each segment held strongly to their own religious belief. Even though violence based on religion dissipated, Gandhi experienced a constancy block by relying on a previous strategy to resolve issues in the Indian social milieu, which annoyed many dissidents on either side and culminated in his sudden assassination.
Gandhi’s popularity had made him increasingly vulnerable to the limitations of the complacency block, and he did not realize the increasingly controversial aspect his campaign was taking for the religious issues in the country. Therefore, his shooting was completely unexpected, as the movie portrays in his final words, ‘Oh God!’ (John, 1).

Kimmel and conceptual blocks

Commitment block is one of the major challenges that led to the failure at Pearl Harbor following the dismissal by Admiral Kimmel of warnings of an imminent attack on the Harbor by the Japanese.
Admiral Kimmel was a casualty of constancy blocking. Through experience, Kimmel strongly believed that Japan would never attack Pearl Harbor, a viewpoint that made the harbor highly vulnerable to attacks by Japanese forces (MSU Billings, 1).
Through complacency blocking, Admiral Kimmel was convinced that Pearl Harbor would not fall under enemy fire.
Using compression blocking it is apparent that Admiral Kimmel was basing his decisions on his creations of realities, where he imagined that war with Japan would never get as close to American soil as Pearl Harbor.

Comparison of Gandhi and Kimmel
Both Kimmel and Gandhi were subject to conceptual blocking. Kimmel’s vulnerability to commitment block made him oblivious to the possibility of an attack at Pearl Harbor, and Gandhi’s constancy block made him adhere to a similar stance for resolving religious issues in his country, resulting in his assassination.
In a way, Gandhi was able to break through the compression block. At a time when resistance was synonymous with violence, Gandhi single-handedly inspired millions to oppose colonial rule and win the country's independence. Kimmel’s assumptions that attacks would succeed only in one way led to his neglect of the imminent attack points in the American defense at Pearl Harbor.

Conclusion
Conceptual blocks impede human judgments, and plague even the highest echelons of leadership. Through sweeping presumptions of a situation, many viewpoints go unheeded,d and wrong strategies are adopted, leading to mistakes and failures, as illustrated by the cases of Gandhi and Kimmel. However, some of the actions display the ultimate in the fight against the dwarfing influences of conceptual blocks. Read More