The Speculist

Navigating Possibility Space

This photo (source: Yahoo! news) perfectly exemplifies the strategy that I recommend for approaching the future.

Picture this...

Several Cubans are sitting around one evening talking about life. They're exhausted from another day's backbreaking labor in the heat of the sun. They've had dinner, but most of them are still pretty hungry. It seems there's never enough to eat. Maybe they've had some wine; maybe they haven't. The only thing they have in abundance is dissatisfaction. The only thing that never runs out is complaints. And they have every reason to complain, more than most of us can imagine. Poverty. Hunger. A lack of basic freedoms. Hopelessness.

One of them (we'll call him Diego*) grows restless as he endures this litany yet again. He's tired of talking about how miserable they all are. He wants to do something about it. And he has an idea, one that's been growing in the back of his mind for many weeks now.

Tonight, for the first time, decides to speak his idea out loud.

"So why do we stay here?" he asks. "It's only a short distance to Florida. Many others have gone there. We could, too."

There is some laughter, and perhaps a few murmurs of agreement.

"Don't be stupid, Diego," says one of the older men. "We'd be caught, and then we would all rot in prison. And be tortured. Does anyone here want to be tortured? And if we're not caught, the trip is dangerous. We would all most likely drown or be eaten by sharks."

"No," Diego insists, "if we plan it carefully, if we get a boat--"

"What boat?" says the older man, now angry. "Look around you, Diego. We have no boat. All we have is this old truck. Can you take us to America in this truck?"

Everyone laughs, someone changes the subject, and the matter is considered closed.

But the matter is not closed. Not by a long shot.

In considering the possibility of escape, Diego has already taken the first step in fashioning his own future. He has expanded his thought space. While the others are fixed on their day-to-day problems, Diego has asked the most fundamental of questions: what are the alternatives? And he has come up with one: we could get a boat and go to Florida.

Expanding your thought space is a tremendous step forward, but it leads to nowhere without the next step.

As the conversation shifts to other subjects, Diego sits there staring at the truck. That old green American truck, parked over there by that stack of oil drums. It runs just barely well enough to haul the occasional load of brick or stone. Of course, there's no way that truck could take them all to America. It's a joke.

And now Diego takes that second, crucial step: he expands his possibility space.

Now wait a minute, he thinks. Maybe it's not a joke. It sounds crazy, but maybe there is a way for this old truck to take us all to Florida...

Several weeks pass before Diego brings the subject up again. By the time he does, he has more than an idea. He has a sketch of how the barrels can be attached to the truck to make a boat; he has another sketch showing how a propeller can be fixed to the truck's drive shaft; he has a map; he has a tide chart; he has notes on what he's learned about where and when the patrol boats make their rounds. Diego has already expanded his thought space and his possibility space, and now he's taken the third step: he has specified an outcome.

By the time he finishes talking, everyone (even the older man) is persuaded. So Diego and his friends put this crazy plan of driving a truck from Cuba to Florida in motion, and the rest is history.

Unfortunately, this story doesn't have a happy ending. The people shown in the photo were stopped by US authorities. They were returned to Cuba; their makeshift vessel was sunk. They took a chance on freedom, and it didn't work out. Does this mean they were wrong to try?

On the contrary.

We can expand our thought space, we can expand our possibility space, we can specify an outcome, we can do everything in our power to make that outcome happen and, in the end, we are still subject to the other side of the reality that creates opportunity in the first place: there are no guarantees.But we can't know what we can do, how much is possible, what outcomes we can create, unless we try.

I think the biggest mistake these brave individuals made was that yellow canopy over the truck bed. That's probably what got the Coast Guard's attention. They may or may not have known about the US government's horrible and imbecilic "wet foot/dry foot" policy. My guess is they didn't, or that canopy would have been a different color. But all that aside, I salute Diego and his friends for their courage and their inventiveness. I hope they weather whatever unpleasant consequences of their actions they encounter back in Cuba. I hope they persist, and one day find themselves in the future they were trying to create: a future in which they are all free.

* "Diego" is not really, as far as I know, the name of any of the twelve people who were aboard the truck. Nor do I claim to have any knowledge as to how these folks actually came up with this idea. I'm just speculating, here. (See name of website.)

UPDATE: Bigwig concurs that it might be time to rethink Wet Foot/Dry Foot. Jerry over at Dean Esmay's blog has also chimed in with some thoughts.

Posted by Phil at July 25, 2003 12:09 PM | TrackBack