A couple of weeks ago I came across the following brilliant quote: "I don't know whether the world is full of smart men bluffing or imbeciles who mean it". From these words speaks a genuine sense of shock and surprise with the person who thought it up, Morrie Brickman. It is the eloquent, wittier sibling of another popular saying: is it me being so smart, or you being so dumb? And it's one of those simple aphorisms especially cartoon artists are so good at thinking up.
In relation to this, I was made to think about all those smart men and their ambition. So many people thinking up clever things, more people than ever having ideas considering just about everything, and everybody up to their neck in platforms to release all those ideas. I should know since, as a student of public administation, we come across some new concept or policy innovation around every year (or more often?). In public administration, in your place, there are always ten people eager to launch their new ideas. Good governance, liquid government, public participation platforms, post-bureaucracy - the one more revolutionary than the other. So the thought that I then quietly had with myself was: wouldn't it behove us to tone it down a bit, show a little bit less innovative drive and ambition for change? Wouldn't it be better to occassionally "count our sheep" (my own innovative concoction of "count our blessings" and "have our sheep on the dry", how ironic) and see what we can do with those? Overly enthusiastic entrepreneurs, innovators, and new revolutionary ideas make me at once disspirited and every time less impressed. As in medicine, overdose leads either to blockade of the functions, or immunisation.
So I thought for one moment that I might have the last Great Innovative Thought in my hands. "Innovation fetishism: how too many ideas will kill you". I considered writing a textbook on it, reworking it into podcasts, organising a subsequent lecture tour around the country, then possibly across the continent. People would find it such a good idea and then stop thinking up new ideas for a while to focus on fleshing out the many superficial ideas that are already there. Quite a few would end up in the dustbin of history, and that would not be so bad at all.
But then I figured I couldn't be bothered. The very idea made me weary. The summer edition of the Groene Amsterdammer [Dutch opinion magazine] managed to explain me to myself. In an essay on anti-ambition theory, Aart Brouwer lays the finger on the paradox of my kind of thinker. "The true theoreticians of laziness do not get past their first commandment: just leave it". Laisez-faire, but only by nature.
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