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?