Insight Four of the 59 Second Course in Thinking is:
Two cvs options are:
defend the cvs, or escape the cvs
DEFEND the cvs
The history of Western thinking is dominated by Platonic thinking, the search for certainty. The search for THE truth.
This has led to the notorious I-am-right-and-you-are-wrong thinking. Or, my cvs is right and your cvs is wrong. Dialectic thinking. Two-sided thinking. Black vs White thinking. The Westminster system in politics – debating between one side and the other – government vs opposition. In the legal system it’s The Crown vs The Defendent.
There is much value in this strategy. The main value of this system is the strengthening of positions. The feeling of certainty. A feeling of righteousness. God is on OUR side. It is less complex. It is less risky. It is familiar. It is ‘tried and true’. It is logical and ‘common sense’.We have the truth and you do not. I have ‘that feeling inside my head’ that I am right.
This is the option: defend the cvs.
While most of the time we probably do need to defend our cvs the main weakness of this strategy is that it is so slow and costly. Changes come late. Long after the need for change. In extreme cases, it can take hundreds of years of conflict and the loss of many human lives before a change is achieved. The main disadvantage is that most of the thinking effort is devoted to defending a historical position (because it is The Truth) and very little is devoted to designing a new, evolved or innovative position.
The more effort that is devoted to defending the past the less effort that is devoted to designing the future.
ESCAPE the cvs
The other option is: escape the cvs.
This is much easier said than done. Because most Western thinkers have thousands of hours of practise and skill in defending a cvs it is no surprise that they find it so difficult to let go of a cvs. But it is possible to do so.
The whole history of science and innovation is the history of escaping from one cvs and moving to a better one. Sometimes this happens by mistake, mutation or accident as in darwinian evolution. Sometimes by experiment or intuition or curiosity or inspiration or design.
The Universal Brain Software – cvs2bvs – is a tool for doing it by experiment, by curiosity or by design.
DFQ:
What is one of your favourite examples from history of the ESCAPE from a cvs? In 100 words or so describe what, when, where, who, how etc?
Hi Michael! I’ve been following SOT off and on for many years – I did a lot of your content in the late 2000s when you were sending out email lessons such as Peel The Orange, going into the tunnel and suchlike. There were some really good concepts in there. I’m increasingly teaching about innovation and technology management myself these days and I’d like to be able to signpost people to some of the same great content that I found useful, but it seems you arent doing that any more. is there anywhere i can find it? thanks!
One of my favourite moment to break a cvs was when I tried to break my routines. I was 15 when I did so. To do it, I quit playing videos games (the story is a bit long, but I don’t say that videos games are good or bad) and breaking routine. I was stuck in a cvs, I sucked at school and I didn’t applied anything. I knew what were the best mindsets to have, how to study… but If I don’t apply anything, it’s worthless. But whatever, my point is that now, my situation changed and I try to break the routine when it try to appear. I search for a hammer and break this f****g glass whenever each time it appears.
My favourite escape has got be the invention of the automobile or horseless carriage. Back in the late 1880’s Karl Benz produces the first car and then in 1908 the production was streamlined by Henry Ford, resulting in mass production of the Model T. Thereby providing the masses with personal automated transport
The Ben Carson story. Its been a while since I read the story but Ben’s mother didn’t like the cvs her son was in by 5th grade and guided him into a bvs: she grounded his reading skills and in about a year he’d moved from the bottom of the class to the top using the appropriate ladder of personal development and strong study skills. Ben Carson then went on to become one of the leading neuro-surgeons in the whole. When his story was published after the surgery on the German twins, American high school kids rated him above pop stars and other celebrities as a model personality.
Einstein’s theory of relativity is perhaps the greatest example of an escape from a cvs to a bvs. At the time he came up with the theory, the cvs in physics was very far removed from his insights. The consequences of this shift in thinking is still being felt to this day.
I think that the cvs is usual by the majority it is the public follow each other in fact the scientist investigator or even innovator think using more from his brain like creative thinking and the vastest area of good possibilities ,this is logical make things easier ,smarter and search in a new erea which never went before ignored in the directions
example where; England under a tree of apple
who: Ishac Neoton
how : he asked the question why the apple drop t his had and not to the sky. and fined solution to his question
and proved the the existance of the gravitation and latter gived the humanity a new theory.
People thought it would never be possible to put a man on the moon (cvs), but the Americans with the help of a former Nazi devised the technology that got the job done. They must have come up with many different bvs’s to achieve their goal.
I admire most inventors and their creations. I love looking at DaVinci’s drawings and seeing the thought process that went into a design. I often forget that these men have a multitude of failures before they achieve success.
The greatest of these inventors are the one’s that have escaped from a cvs and created something that would have been so far left of centre for the time.
From the Wright brothers and their leap of faith to Steve Jobs, a man who was fired from Apple, his own company, only to create two fantastic and innovative companies in Next and Pixar, which were subsequently bought by Apple. This latter situation certainly my favourite escape.