JohnDarrin Think 12

Number Nineteen - A Mime Is A Terrible Thing To Waste.

Nobody likes a mime. Why would anyone pursue this particular branch of entertainment, other than some masochistic urge to humiliate oneself, or the mistaken belief that whiteface and black leotards is a disguise. Like the invisible box, it’s something that I can’t see.

The invisible box is the metaphor for this rant. I’m not going to encourage you to think outside this box; you’ve heard that from ineffective trainers and copycat authors. No, contrarian that I am, I’m going to tell you why it doesn’t work.

There are three prerequisites to the effectiveness of out-of-the-box thinking.

1. The ability to actually do it.
2. A willingness to risk acting on it.
3. And the killer - the authority to implement it.

The ability to actually do it is severely limited. I’m not sure why. It might be some rare genetic trait, like Jennifer Anniston’s looks. More likely it is the product of a culture and an education system that actively discourages it. Now I’ll get an argument about this last one. Just this past week there was a big turmoil about some high school geography teacher saying the President Bush’s State of the Union Speech was “eerily reminiscent” of Adolph Hitler. This is the kind of education that people will point to and say “See, free speech and challenging convention.”

Bull. This is just a different box. I know this for one simple reason. What the hell is a geography teacher parsing Bush’s and Hitler’s speeches for? I’ll bet neither ever mentioned geography except in the context of conquest. So if he is, it’s with an ulterior motive, and it ain’t outside-the-box-thinking. It is a political agenda.

Our popular culture, pervading our lives from constant electronic immersion, takes peer pressure to previously unimaginable levels. Now your peers are the same as everyone else’s peers, and they’re everywhere, all the time, instantly. There are no social boundaries between peer pressure groups anymore. How else do you explain “It’s Hard Out There For A Pimp” getting the Academy Award for best song?

However, even with the genetic and environmental obstacles, there are still many who are capable of doing this. I do it, and I’m not that special. A little special at best. Thinking outside the box gets us ideas like the Segway. Oops, bad example. Uh, WebTV. No, wait, that didn’t work either. Google! That’s the one I was trying to remember.

Anyway, these thinking-outside-the-box-people are found in virtually every professional, cultural, and social environment. So why aren’t they more successful? Why don’t we see outside-the-box thinking all around us? Risk aversion.

People don’t like risk. Never have. And for many of the same reasons as cited for educational and cultural homogeneity, taking a risk is seen as too risky. More so today than ever before. (Give me a break - I majored in history, so I can make some sweeping generalizations with totally undeserved credibility.) Risk today not only opens one up to failure, but to instant, universal documentation of that failure. It’s one thing to screw up. It’s another altogether to see it reprised on cable news without respite.

That brings us to the killer of any vestige that survives the first two - authority. Those who have it, like it, and are unlikely to be willing to risk losing it. Those who don’t have it want it, and most are eager to take the safe road to get it, even if it means it will take longer and the scenery will be dull.

Thinking outside the box without the authority to implement the conclusion is at best an intellectual exercise, and at worst a waste of time.