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?
Was it Louis Pasteur who’s CVS was a mouldy sandwich, but his Ecape to the BVS led him to the discovery of Penicillin?
Some of the old time examples of escape from CVS are incredible when you think how generally uneducated or uninformed they were.
Michael’s Columbus story or man on the moon were just amazing leaps in thinking – probably driven by guesses, dreams and high risk ambitions.
But as a modern day example, the internet has made many breakthroughs from a CVS possible. None more so than in the publishing and marketing world.
It really has change the way we live and communicate. As we are together now as SISOTs.
Publishing of information has gone through centralised and de-centralised stages through history.
The big players like Newscorp seek to dominate the control of information. Now with the internet, the little person working from home can influence the way the world thinks. Even create a best selling book as an author.
Where will the big publishers go from here?
During the Black Plague in the 14th century the Church was found to be stricken with the plague as much as the Population as a whole which resulted in a BVS, of other thoughts which transfered money from the Church to research in other avenues of life including arts and science. It also brought an end to serfdom! Without the revealing of a flaw in the cvs there is little to induce a person to consider a bvs. Stagnant water and minds soon grow fetid and unfit for drinking or thinking! Once a barrier is broken and the Emperor in fact is seen to have no clothing we are able to think again without the blinders of knowing the answer before we spark a neuron! Thinking must become quite convoluted to reach the forgone conclusion as to what is “right” when evidence points to a different “truth”. For mental health I believe there is a minimum threshold of perceiving one’s views as “right” to maintain sanity and any comfort in this crazy world. It takes great courage to cvs2bvs but it yields great rewards!
The pulling down of the Berlin wall that divided communist ideaology in the east, [their cvs] to allow cvs of the west,[people power democracy],to become available to the east as new bvs [what the people wanted,many died trying to escape the east cvs to live in a western civilization seen as worth the risk.
With the wall down, began the rise of more than a billion new members
becomeing apart of democracy,western ideaology goverments elected by the power of its people,given the freedom to speak or protest without fear of the past,
History in the makeing or evoloution by design
Mahatma Gandi’s strategy to figth for independece from the british with non-violence. By escaping from the CVS of strength made it possible to beat the “superior” force.
A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still. Galileo never changed his opinion but the current view of his personal safety required a shift to a better view. The opposition who had The Truth, were unbeatable and life threatening. A better view, for the moment, was Galileo back off. He did and survived. Alive and still with the same opinions, on the quiet.
Over the next 300 years his opposition had lost a lot of their clientele and realised more were, ‘swaying’. That was the current view of their situation. A better view ? Make an apology and consolidate the ‘swaying’. So they did. And it paid off, to some extent. Cvs to Bvs isn’t always a first step in a positive direction. We often hear of one step forward and two steps back. But in the above cvs’s they demonstrated one step back and two steps forward. Result positive but not X10, really X100.
With thanks to historical info supplied By Mary Bellis
The history of penicillin..Ernest Duchesne, in 1896 first observed penicillin, followed by by bacteriologist Alexander Fleming working at St. Mary’s Hospital in London in 1928. Slightly later, Dorothy Hodgkin used x-rays to find the structural layouts of atoms and the overall molecular shape of over 100 molecules including penicillin. Dorothy’s discovery of the molecular layout of penicillin helped lead scientists to develop other antibiotics. In 1939 that Dr. Howard Florey, a future Nobel Laureate, and three colleagues at Oxford University began intensive research and were able to demonstrate penicillin’s ability to kill infectious bacteria…the diufficulty was in producing enough quantity of the drug. By November 26, 1941, Andrew J. Moyer, the lab’s expert on the nutrition of molds, had succeeded, with the assistance of Dr. Heatley, in increasing the yields of penicillin 10 times. In 1943, the required clinical trials were performed and penicillin was shown to be the most effective antibacterial agent to date. Penicillin production was quickly scaled up and available in quantity to treat Allied soldiers wounded on D-Day. As production was increased, the price dropped from nearly priceless in 1940, to $20 per dose in July 1943, to $0.55 per dose by 1946.
This “team” of scientists over time, changed the face of treatment of many diseases for mankind..rewriting the future history of health of mankind.
Yes. This is a very interesting discussion that is about escape or defend cvs. My personal observations span 10 years. Our educational reforms in Ghana. First why should we reform our educational system? Some will say its outdated and so on. We need a better system that will help us to develop our society.
A committee was set up to look at it. All the committee members are most of the time educationist and highly educated elites. They come out only to present the same educational system so in real terms they only go to committee meeting arguing by defending the old western educational system. Defending what they know. This approach is all over every where that an educated man or woman is to make any meaningful decision. They some time do not even make any decision.
For ten we cannot make a meaningful serious agenda to move our people out of poverty always those who are in decision position only defend here old thinking or what someone wants them to say they cannot think and decide from their own God given right as human beings.
I seriously think if Universal Brain Software – cvs2bvs is introduce it will help our planners to escape from cvs to find bvs in the process we can move faster in our development efforts. How can’t our leader go out begging for aids every day.
I also think that the western educational system was put in place to do just that to limit others from doing something better even if its good or against their very best interest. Plato truth virus as the pillar of the western educational is something very deep. its something that one needs to observe more critically for it root in every weakness in man wherever you find him. historically we are all witness to wars at over the world.
Universal Brain Software – cvs2bvs will some day embolden and empower humanity.
My studies show many famous worldwide products, including Kleenex, Kotex, Wrigley Gum, Vaseline, Life Savers Candies, Tupperware, Jello, Post-it Notes, even Timex watches, were abject failures when first introduced, but after re-thinking and re-marketing they all went on to become succesful products. It is estimated that as high as 95 out of 100 new food products – even with the ingenuity, enthusiasm, and determination of their creators, fail. However with open minds and re-thinking many of product failures can be re-birthed and experience dramatic transformations.
More than 500 years ago Christopher Columbus set sail. The Talavera Commission reported to Queen Isabella on Columbus’ idea – to reach Japan in the East by sailing West and to discover other lands en route – that the adventure was “uncertain and impossible to any educated person.”
They told the queen that the proposed voyage would take three years. Even if the ships could return, which was highly unlikely, the commission reported Columbus’ idea would be a wasted expedition, “for God would surely not have allowed any uninhabited land of real value to be concealed from His people for so many centuries.”
The experts scorned his project. But Columbus did set sail. Thirty-three days later he discovered half the world!
I have always thought that Columbus cvs2bvs was one of the classic examples from history.
http://www.schoolofthinking.org/about/cvstobvs-universal-brain-software/13-dfq/