Flummoxed

adjective: so confused that you do not know what to do

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While offering to write posts for certain words on request seemed a good idea at the time, when confronted with the reality of writing on “flummoxed” I seem to find myself… flummoxed.

It seems quite ironic that a word which sounds so appealing means something so problematic. To be paralysed by confusion is far from productive, and also quite disconcerting. It’s the mind’s equivalent of when a computer crashes. How could we consider an error message playing across the brain as anything other than downright disturbing? Yet, we create a word to describe this which carries a note of levity, frivolity, even ridiculosity. Nothing serious. Why? It leaves me flummoxed…

Perhaps it is simple irony. Or maybe we wanted to lighten it, to make a temporary mental absence seem less of a problem. Maybe it’s actually helpful that “flummoxed” sounds as it does. After all, there’s no cause for embarrassment when saying you’re flummoxed, is there? It may sound a little silly, but it’s also quite endearing, and trivialising the situation can help the individual relax. Perhaps we called being flummoxed being flummoxed to try and make us less flummoxed!

Then again, we seem to use “flummoxed” primarily when something seemingly trivial flummoxes us, don’t we? That’s certainly my most frequent experience of the word. Is that because we associate a silly sounding word with silliness and use it accordingly? Or does the subject seem lighter when it’s described in such a way? The more I think about this, the more flummoxed I become! See why I keep saying too much thinking is a bad idea?

Earlier, I compared being flummoxed to a computer short-circuiting, if you recall. Brains can actually be kind of similar to computers, can’t they? They like patterns and rules, even if the person whose brain it is doesn’t like them at all! It’s how we make sense of the world. And we need to make sense of it. It’s a compulsion: like when someone can’t stop biting their nails. And, like a computer, information overload is something we just can’t handle. It’s too much. And, like a computer, when something’s too much our mind shuts down, if only for a short time. We made computers in our own image without even realising! At least, I don’t think we realised. Maybe somebody did. But that makes our growing reliance on technology even more perplexing…

We try to take too much information onboard at once and we become flummoxed: so confused that we don’t know what to do. What do a growing number of people now do when they’re flummoxed? They ask a robot – their preferred AI program – to help them figure it out. In a way, that’s a really good idea. It gives you a quick overview of some key points to help break things down before we overload. So, we’re asking something that famously suffers far more greatly from the problem we’re experiencing than we do to solve that very problem? I’m flummoxed again. What about when the computer gets flummoxed? Does it hide the fact and direct us to any old rubbish? Or does it just stop working? And how do our pattern-loving brains – which are already at critical overload – handle our most trusted and relied upon solution letting us down?

To err is human. We don’t expect it from a machine. But as we make machines more human, to err becomes more common among machines. Yet, we still perceive the program as infallible, as it stubbornly follows its pre-programmed pattern. Its beautiful, beloved, perfect pattern. Our minds love patterns. We understand them. They don’t leave us flummoxed. Until they do, of course. Then, we simply devise a new pattern to explain the anomaly. Chaos does not exist. It cannot exist. We can’t accept it: it leaves us flummoxed. Except in art. Anything’s ok if it’s art. Except thinking too much. That’s just dangerous!

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