Whirl

I think about our business heroes a lot. Mainly because they have so much influence on our culture. Not only do they help mold the products and services we consume, they also influence the policies of our government in a very direct manner. Today, many celebrity CEO’s complete directly with authors, TV commentators, etc, in an attempt to influence our values, votes, and of course our pocketbook.

When I look at recent corporate leaders such as Welch, Fiorina, Murdoch, Buffet, Bezos, and Jobs. I see some people I admire and others I detest. On balance I know that some of these leaders are leaving the world better off than they came into it. They are net creators of jobs, wealth and opportunity for the rest of us. And even though there are some among this crowd that I feel are misguided, short-term thinkers, I also understand that at the deepest level each of them are just like me—people with friends, families and even nations they love and want so very much to protect. And to do this I know that each of them is exerting their understanding of this world through what they perceive as intellect and common sense.

Common sense is good, but it’s hard to put a specific definition to it. One of the best I’ve seen is: “Sound judgment not based on specialized knowledge”. In essence it is the collected wisdom of our species. We’ve woven it into our parenting, our religions, schools, and government. To the human mind common sense seems mostly instinctual. It’s a known ‘good’ in a bad and hard world. A form of teaching which gives us comfort in its simplicity and familiarity.

Yes common sense is good, but uncommon sense is often better.

If you come to me with a ridged mindset and a notion that the whole of our existence can be summed up in black or white, then I would say that you are missing the essential element of uncommon sense. Uncommon sense means moving to the edge of your philosophical comfort zone. It is an acceptance that—no matter the subject—mingling opposing viewpoints will likely takes us forward, while wallowing in the comfort of like voices will likely hold us in place.

I call it uncommon sense because it does not seem instinctual for our tribal species. Long ago we found comfort in our family caves and jungle nooks. We ventured out because of necessity and we only did so in the safety of numbers. Outsiders were never trusted. Somehow, we learned that cultural homogeneity is good.

Today, we have access to so many options: in products, opinions, media, and culture. Yet it seems to me that most of us use these levers to narrow our exposure to new ideas, rather maximize it. We choose our news source based on ideology; listen to music stations geared for a specific generation or genre; visit the same chain stores and eat the same food no matter our geography. I once traveled with a guy who insisted on eating at McDonalds in Paris. Not Paris Texas, mind you, the real Paris!

The essence of uncommon sense is understanding that diversity, experimentation, and compromise are far better than homogeneity. In my view, the 227 year old struggle to realize the true vision of our U.S. Constitution has been a steady process of cultural diversification—from the abolition of slavery, to suffrage, to genuine civil rights. The main mechanism for this progress has been our willingness to respect each other’s humanity and learn from our differences.

Curiously, at the most basic of levels we learn there are no differences. In his excellent book, “Three Cups of Tea” humanitarian Greg Mortenson shows us how the simple act of building a $12,000 school in rural Pakistan can transform the local standard of living. He demonstrates how educating girls can make a fundamental difference to the health and safety of a community and do far more to discourage terrorism than a hundred half million dollar bombs.

Many Americans may read that and think “Duh! Education is just common sense”. I would encourage them to look back a few generations into their own family history. One of my grandmothers was illiterate, born in a time and place when most men didn’t see a need to educate their farmer sons, much less their daughters. But something happened. Somewhere along the way my grandma decided that her children would be educated. For a sharecropper’s wife, that was a pretty strong measure of uncommon sense.

© 2010 by Rodney Gleghorn. All rights reserved.