While common sense is considered conventional wisdom, uncommon sense is a re-examination of that conventional wisdom. In our business life and personal life, following common sense is usually the safe way to go.
Common sense is not so common, Voltaire once wrote. There is always that one bad-mannered person in class who sneezes without covering their mouth. Or the person who takes up two seats on the train just because they like to sit with their legs spread out.
As I ponder the back and forth and up and down in my surroundings and the whole world, a book from my library falls into my hand: Peter Cochrane’s Uncommon Sense with the subtitle Out of the box thinking for an in the box world.
“Peter Cochrane is one of our most far-sighted visionaries, and brings brilliant clarity and focus to our understanding of ourselves and our technologies, and of how profoundly each is transforming the other.” describes Douglas Adams, author of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
In Uncommon Sense, Peter Cochrane’s follow up to the radical 108 Tips for Time Traveller. Peter explains how very simple analysis allows the prediction of such debacles as the 3G auction and the subsequent collapse of an industry, whilst simple-minded thinking is dangerous in the context of a world that is predominantly chaotic and out of control.
People balked when Peter suggested a wholesale move to eWorking, the rise of email and text messaging, and the dotcom regime mirroring the boom and bust cycle of the industrial revolution. His predictions of the use and growth of mobile devices and communication, or use of chip implants for humans to replace ID cards, passports, and medical records, or iris scanners and fingerprint readers – were all seen as unlikely. Today they are a reality.
I don’t know how you feel nowadays, my dear readers. As christian the bible -and here especially Proverbs help me a lot. As I mentioned in one of my previous write ups, Proverbs is probably the most down-to-earth book in the bible. Its education prepares you for the street and the market place – somehow out of the box thinking for an in the box world, too.
Proverbs offers the warm advice you get by growing up in a good family and for successfully making your way in the world. It covers small questions as well as large ones: talking too much, visiting friends and neighbors too often or being unbearably cheerful too early in the morning. Proverbs simply tell how life works most of the time.
People, and count me in, I love to quote Proverbs, which often express the truth about life in an elegant, witty kernel. You’ll find more humor in Proverbs than anywhere else in the bible. And humor often seems to have passed in this day and age.
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