All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. Blaise Pascal

I've got myself into more trouble just wanting to sit quietly than I care to remember.

A remarkable video showing a 1974 speech in which Carter challenged the legal establishment, Carter's recollection of the speech years later, and the effect of the speech on Hunter Thompson (and the nation). Carter made really effective use of a Bob Dylan lyric to make his point, and shows us how to challenge an audience and make a point.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914) American Journalist and Editorialist

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” – Ambrose Bierce

How true (and how important to remember)

It's that time of year again! And it's time for one of my very favorite creative thinking strategies:

Think Like A Fool

Image from the Creative Whack Pack

Carrying the strategy of "looking at things differently" to extremes brings us to the realm of the fool, the being for whom everyday ways of understanding have little meaning.

It's the fool's job to extol the trivial, trifle with the exalted, and parody the common perception of a situation. In doing so, the fool makes us conscious of the habits we take for granted and rarely question. A good fool needs to be part actor and part poet, part philosopher and part psychologist.

And throughout history, the fool has been consulted by Egyptian pharaohs and Babylonian kings, Chinese emperors, Greeks tyrants, and Hopi Indian chiefs.

The fool will reverse our standard assumptions. He'll say, "If a man is sitting on a horse facing the rear, why do we assume that it is the man who is backwards, and not the horse?"

The fool notices things that other people overlook. He might ask, "Why do people who pour cream into their coffee do so after the coffee is already in the cup, rather than pouring the cream in first and saving themselves the trouble of stirring?"

The fool can also be irreverent. He'll pose riddles such as,

"What does a rich man put in his pocket that the poor man throws away?" When he answers, "Snot," he forces us to re-examine the sanctity of our everyday rituals.

The fool can be cryptic. He'll say the best way to see something is with your ears. Initially, this may seem weird, but after you've thought about it, you might agree that listening to a story conjures up more images than watching television.

The fool can be absurd. Having lost his donkey, a fool got down on his knees and began thanking God. A passerby saw him and asked, "Your donkey is missing; why are you thanking God?" The fool replied, "I'm thanking Him for seeing to it that I wasn't riding him at the time. Otherwise, I would be missing as well."

The fool will take the contrary position in most conversations. Whereas many people would agree that, "If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing well," The fool might say,

"You don't have to do things well! Indeed, it's okay to do them poorly; otherwise you'll never let yourself be a beginner at a new activity."

The great benefit of the fool's antics and observations is that they stimulate our thinking. They jolt us in the same way that a splash of cold water awakens us when we are drowsy.

Question: Where has "thinking like a fool" helped you look at a problem in a helpful way?

Or maybe, why today is important. It's good to remember and take advantage.

We in this country need to take more of a global view. My friends and colleagues from other countries are baffled by our nation's extreme behavior. One friend wrote: "How is it that going to war in Iraq generated less ire and angst than these healthcare reforms?" This is a valid question that is hard to answer, but his assessment feels pretty close to the bone. Another colleague, one who lives in Africa, put things into even greater perspective for me: "America still doesn't 'get it' that you live in a world of extreme privilege and luxury if the most anger you can muster is over a healthcare bill while many of the rest of us in the world deal with things like pervasive poverty, terrorist attacks, and dictatorships on a regular basis." All our rhetoric about Armageddon, doomsday, and government takeovers feels overbuilt and overblown when we step back to realize that many other parts of the world live that chaos as a daily reality--that "government takeover" has a qualitatively different meaning in a place like Uganda. Methinks we doth protest way too much!

 

We also need to take the long view of things. This healthcare reform effort is older than most of us--older than most of our grandparents--with roots going back to Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 campaign, if not before. This is not the first bill, nor the last, to deal with healthcare reform. But it is the first major bill in a very long time on the topic, after Presidents of all political stripes have failed to get something passed for almost 100 years. That is the sense in which this bill passing is "historic," not because it magically solves all of our problems (as some proponents overly celebrate!) but because it begins to break the century-long log jam of political taboo around healthcare reform that has plagued White Houses and Congresses for far too many generations.

...

In our perspective taking, we need to strive to learn what is really in the legislation and what is not, and to evaluate how those things will impact each and every one of us personally. We need to stop letting Parties and Pundits and Politicians use the media megaphone to tell us how to think and feel about these bills and do our own homework. This will take time as summaries of so many thousands of pages get written, as myths and misperceptions get corrected, as our nation finds balance again from the extremes that play upon and fuel our emotions. With 9/11 and other world conflicts, we've been through some terrible times as a nation. This is not one of them. The sky is not falling. And we cheapen those historical moments--and ourselves--if we let our reactions to this healthcare reform bill supersede the more serious problems we face.

Click through to read all of Dishman's thoughtful take. We all need to take a deep breath and read more analysis like this. And then roll up our sleeves.