Humans, like the Earth, are the centre of the universe, until they’re not. We rule… until we don’t. Capitalism, socialism, democracy, religious fanaticism, rote learning, racial superiority, gender roles, buggy whips, the internal combustion engine, DDT, rock and roll, TikTok, and so on, are the best… until they’re not. Everything, as they say, is relative to your contextual perspective.
Immune from challenge, invested thinking has proven time and again to be weak in the face of new ideas and discoveries. Why is this so? Why do we invest in what worked yesterday?
Because change is stressful.
Because it’s convenient to accept some things as fixed while we focus our energies on things that are, in our minds at least, not fixed.
Because we’re lazy.
Because we crave simplicity.
And, finally, because there are those whose ideas, beliefs, views of the world, and – to be blunt – back pockets are comforted by our continued investment in thinking that may be flawed.
Narratives are created by us and by others, fuelled by our laziness and needs for simplicity, convenience, and stress reduction.
The world is painted in black and white. Opposing viewpoints are demonized. Nuance in conversation is discarded.
Binary thinking has served us well as a path to functional outcomes. Left versus right. Dark versus light. If you aren’t with us, you’re against us. In the short term, such thinking is useful in setting aside unwanted noise in our efforts to keep moving forward.
What we too often forget, however, is that these binary choices were not immaculate at the outset but merely functional. Over time, our twig-drawn sketches in the sand become monuments of worship. With the passage of time, winds blow, and tides rise and fall. And yet even so, our investment remains fixed, and our confidence rides high based on yesterday’s successes… until one day, before our very eyes, Shelley’s Ozymandias has crumbled and:
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
We tell ourselves stories that are helpful in navigating our way through each day and from one day to the next. Most of these stories, our own and those presented to us, are based on categorical notions, because it’s easier to articulate and easier to sell. Functionality aside, we don’t really live in a binary world, do we? Our world is rich in diversity… diversity with the very real potential, for example, to make the pie bigger, leaving our zero-sum paradigm in Ozymandian dust.
Should I abandon binary decision making? By no means. In the end, there must always be the go or no go decision. En route to that decision, though, I need to ask more questions. Decisions I’ve made repeatedly for decades must be re-visited and challenged. Too much has changed to do otherwise.
Much of our thinking in education has been carved in Ozymandian stone for 200 years.
Free markets, in the absence of oversight, are not free.
Democracy remains, as always, aspirational, not real.
And yet we persist in buying into narratives that create, promote, and sustain false sensations of stability in our lives. The foundations and frameworks for these narratives may no longer exist, but undeterred, they march onward.
I’m not asking enough questions about my beliefs, my habits, or the very thinking on which I choose to act. My entire career has been built by asking questions. And still, I’m an abject failure. I don’t challenge my own thinking nearly enough to claim any level of success.
At the heart of it, if I am to become intellectually honest, I must ask:
Why do I think this?
Why do I believe this?
Why do I do this?
Am I working in a vacuum? Spinning around my own navel?
Are there other domains of thinking I should consider?
Am I purposefully ignoring input that makes me uncomfortable?
Is someone making money by my continued investment in this thinking? Follow the money.
Have new technical developments presented an alternative worthy of consideration?
Have societal changes created new threats to my thinking? New opportunities?
In short, am I true to my mission, always to be on the lookout? Or am I just another doomed Ozymandias?
Indeed, everything is relative. Case in point: Humans are rulers of the planet… until they’re identified as parasites… as they were in this nine-minute animated short from the National Film Board of Mars (nominated for an Oscar in 1968).
Kevin Graham
Comments