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Outside the Box

Entry 2122, on 2021-04-20 at 21:39:15 (Rating 3, Politics)

I often hear the opinion that we need more people thinking outside the box. This means that we need to have thinkers who are not constrained by existing conventions and who want to create change by doing something different. After all, according to Einstein himself: "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

Actually, there is no good reason to think that he did say that, but it is often attributed to him, and it must be tempting to attribute your favourite aphorism to Einstein, who is the one person many people see as being the greatest genius ever.

There's another, similar saying used in Apple's advertising a few years back, which portrays the same thought: "think different". While on that subject, many people have debated the grammatical validity of that phrase because "different" is not normally thought of as an adverb (modifying the verb "think") and many think it should be "differently". However, it is correct because in this context "different" is a flat adverb, a form which was once more popular than it is now, but is still considered technically correct.

So the idea here is that we should encourage people to think in new ways to solve problems which might not have been resolved by existing ways of thinking. Two questions naturally arise from this idea: first, is it true; and second, if it is true, what chance is there of the idea (thinking differently) actually happening?

First, is it true? Well it seems self-evident that if we have a problem which is not getting better through the application of conventional ideas then we should try thinking about it differently (note that I prefer real adverbs).

Naturally, it is possible that the new ideas will actually be worse than the current ones, so that possibility needs to be taken seriously. But that is a risk which might need to be accepted. If we try new ideas we should monitor their consequences carefully and return to the status quo if they don't work.

Second, how likely is it that new ideas can be used? It seems to me that the answer to that is "not very likely". This is because there is a natural conservatism amongst most people which results in a hesitancy to try new things, and in addition to this the people who are doing well out of the current system have an interest in maintaining it and are unlikely to make real change easy.

In fact, currently the box we are being asked to think outside of seems to be getting smaller, but maybe not in the way we might expect. Most of the repression of free speech around the world is being imposed by the so-called progressive left, and their backers in the "woke" community.

Uneven censorship of conservative views is a well-known phenomenon on-line, and here in New Zealand the government is currently formulating oppressive new hate-speech laws. So, ironically, it is the left who are being most conservative in their failure to accept alternative ideas. That's why I avoid using the word "progressive" to describe them.

Let's have a look at a few areas where we do need to "think different" or "outside the box"...

Poverty.

The primary response here from the left seems to be to increase benefits. Unfortunately, according to their own data, this rarely results in anything useful because the economy just adjusts itself, usually at the expense of the people who the increase was intended to help.

The response from the right might be equally ineffective though. They generally support helping business which theoretically encourages more employment and better wages. But giving business more power often results in a race to the bottom since there is usually no reason they would want to offer higher pay.

Climate change.

Here the left want to make what I would consider symbolic changes rather than anything that is really going to help. For example, it will make no difference at all if our whole country converts to electric cars, because China is releasing a thousand times as much carbon in coal-fired power plants alone. Note, I made that number up, but it could easily be a lot higher.

But again, the right is no better. Their approach is often to simply ignore or deny the problem, and hope that technology, economics, or politics find a solution in the future. In fact, I believe this idea isn't as ignorant as it sounds, although some action in preparing for the future climate might be sensible.

Social unrest.

I have ranted enough about the absurdity of many social movements in the past in this blog. I believe that modern activism is often based on real issues but is hopelessly out of touch with both the reality of the situation, and the likely effectiveness of their proposed solutions.

For example, I am extremely critical of the "Black Lives Matter" movement. Not only are their fundamental assumptions wrong, because there is no real evidence of consistent systemic racism or police brutality against blacks, but their demands of defunding or abolishing the police are unbelievably stupid and destructive.

You can see from my comments above that I think that we really do need new ways to think about all of these issues, and probably a lot of others as well. The weakness in my argument is that I haven't actually listed any proposed alternatives. I will leave that as an exercise for the reader. But remember: think different, and outside the box!

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