Marketplace of Ideas

Transcript

Let’s talk about the marketplace of ideas. I was thinking about this the other day, my friend Georgia started telling us a story about how she had a student and the student asked “Do you think the earth is a spheroid?”

And she was like “Yeah. That’s a fact isn’t it?”

And this fellow started launching into a rant and he said “Wow, I’m sorry to break it to you. I don’t want to break your illusions or heart on something you have believed all your life but the world is a flat plane.”

He goes on to explain various aspects of his worldview and how he sees things and Georgia was kind of fascinated but perhaps a lot of people in this situation would be very resistant.

It’s very interesting to think about because supposedly in the western culture and English speaking culture, cultures affected by the renaissance, we value individualism and we think about these things with value of ideas.

We don’t value individualism.

It’s interesting my monk friend tells this story where a lot of people come into martial arts class and there will be some western people come in. There will be a certain technique, you need exactly the right amount of force and there is a very narrow range in the amount of force you need. Consistently people from English speaking societies give too much force where people from eastern areas, its a wide range, some give too much. Some give too little. Some give hardly anything.

This whole range. There’s this underlying assumption that we value individualism but perhaps people aren’t that willing to explore what that really might mean. People get very angry, extremely angry about ideas like is the earth flat.

I guess I won’t tell you if I believe if its round, flat, hollow or concave. That’s not the point.

The point is there are different ways of thinking and I think so many of the others have been subjected to public schooling and semi public schooling. Private schools that base work on a government curriculum.

We might not have our own ways of thinking. We might think we do but when somebody comes up with an idea that is very strange to us we might flip out, we might think this person should be silence and I think we have seen that more than ever in the last year.

People getting silenced or swept out of the conversation. I see it so often, I see stores that have gone out of business and new stores are opening up. Sometimes the ideas are very different things I haven’t seen before.

Maybe those businesses are going to be very successful, maybe not but the fact that those businesses are willing to try that is a symbol of a healthy economy.

Likewise in the marketplace of ideas when people are willing to experiment with different ideas and perhaps even have convictions about different ideas, that is not a symbol that an economy or society is descending into madness or people don’t value science. Often it is a symbol that people are willing to explore and push the bounds and even have the courage to say what they believe even if it might appear absurd.

It is important to have that variety and I appreciate it even if it seems strange or bizzare or offensive.

You’ll have to be a little offensive if you put yourself out there and dare to challenge ideas that are established. There is no reason we all need to think the same. It is fine, even healthy that we have different ideas and we are willing to explore and discuss them.

As I mentioned before there is that famous refrain it takes all kinds to make a world.

Ha de haber de todo en este mundo

There must be all kinds of people in this world, all kinds of ideas, all kinds of strange an unusual things. That is what makes life interesting, wonderful and bizarre world even though people might want to think its a normal standard world where we know what to expect from it. We don’t necessarily. We don’t necessarily understand this world and though the process of asking questions and coming with new ideas we begin to understand it more.

Even if as Edward de Bono talks about there are certain kinds of ideas, like a propositional idea. What if I propose this idea, it might bizarre, practical or unrealistic or perhaps by proposing this you will make it to a new idea which is practical like a bridging idea.

We don’t know what ideas are bridging ideas or actually ideas that will end up being practical. We don’t have the skills to assess the idea as being truly impossible.

We don’t know what’s impossible. Edward de Bono gives an example about trying to reduce pollution in a river. One person proposes this propositional idea like what if there is a factory down the river from itself. Then they lean on to a practical idea.

What if their intake is lower in the river from the output so they have to limit the amount of pollution they put out so they don’t pollute their own water they take in.

These are the sorts of things that can happen, we can explore ideas and yes like I said we don’t know which idea will bloom into something wonderful.

It is healthy for us to explore ideas even strange ones.