I saw myself from two irreconcilable angles in this quote:

[an individual, I’m paraphrasing here], in order to say anything significant, is “forced to generalize.” The true measure of a theory is not that it accounts for all the relevant facts but that it accounts for those facts “better than any other theory.” Without abstraction and simplification there can be no understanding, Huntington maintained. Those who concentrate on the imperfections of a theory, without coming up with a better alternative, are helping no one.

On the one hand I’m incapable of precision when I try and describe things. I can never remember dates, sizes, places, names, anything specific. On the other hand I feel I’m quite good at synthesizing meaning from a complex mess of data and expressing a well constructed opinion about it. So on the one hand the first half of the quote seems to apply directly to me (and I do agree with Huntington’s supposition). On the other, my former coworkers used to hate the fact that I was a deconstructionist – they would come to me with business plans or new product lines and I would rip them to shreds in short order. Yet when asked to come up with better alternatives, I was usually unable to. So which one is me? The deconstructionist or the able synthesizer of ideas? Here lies the irony because in the end I think it’s both.