We Need To Play Each

Most New Movements Start This Way: Hundreds Or Thousands Of Individuals And Groups, Working In Different Fields And Different Locations, Start Thinking About Change Using A Common Language, Without Necessarily Recognizing Those Shared Values. You Just Start Following Your Own Vector, Propelled Along By People In Your Immediate Vicinity. And Then One Day, You Look Up And Realize That All Those Individual Trajectories Have Turned Into A Wave.

When It's A Sharing And Improvisational Meeting, Where You're Riffing Off Other People's Ideas, That Actually Can Be Productive.

This Is How Great Intellectual Breakthroughs Usually Happen In Practice. It Is Rarely The Isolated Genius Having A Eureka Moment Alone In The Lab. Nor Is It Merely A Question Of Building On Precedent, Of Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants, In Newton's Famous Phrase. Great Breakthroughs Are Closer To What Happens In A Flood Plain: A Dozen Separate Tributaries Converge, And The Rising Waters Lift The Genius High Enough That He Or She Can See Around The Conceptual Obstructions Of The Age.

We Are Strangely Biased, As Individuals And Media Institutions, To Focus On Big Sudden Changes, Whether Good Or Bad - Amazing Breakthroughs, Such As A New Gadget That Gets Released, Or Catastrophic Failures, Like A Plane Crash.

Those That Regularly Come Into Contact With People Having Diverse Interests And Viewpoints Are More Likely To Come Up With Innovative Ideas.