Throughout History we have imprisoned our brightest stars and thinkers. In modern periods we force them into works of fiction and disallow those Thoughts, which make us question our perceived or created realities by those who rule over us. We attack the innovators, entrepreneurs, personalities and thinkers in our civilizations in every country in the world. Occassionally we allow a few to come forth with ideas in works of fiction; because we as a people would shun their thoughts if they were not brought out in any other way. Let's use Ayn Rand, Bertrand Russell, Arthur C Clark, John Gresham, Ben Bova, Isaac Asimov, Tom Clancy as examples for this point. When brought forth as a fictional work it makes you think and brings out a point of contention. If brought forth as an idea, it would quickly be squashed as not Politically Correct or used to discredit the person for original thought.
In the days of Galileo, Copernicus, Plato, you would be imprisoned or killed, therefore they were forced to put them forth in dialogues instead of actual formulated ideas and in the dialogues the strongest point still had to be the prevailing view that matched the politically correct thought. Today the PC police might call them the controllers of thought, would character assassinate them even if their point of contention contained a high degree of relative truth. In Iraq you may have been killed if it went against the former Saddam's views or in contrary to the Qur'an.
Cultures, which allow for free thought and those individuals in the culture with freedom to the flow of thought will innovate faster. Thus here in the United States we have the greatest benefits of the flow of thought. But are we really fully living up to this lofty goal? Or are we simply the best so far? And if we are able to free the restrictions of the flow of thought and refuse to teach our children barriers to thought, we may just find that the next giant leap of mankind comes from within our countries boundaries.
If we allow children to be bombarded with the "That's a dumb idea" syndrome, then they will be taught to not think, instead of to think. This will foster itself as they go through life and it will be passed onto their children and in the work place. "That's a dumb idea" why? Because the boss did not think of it; and instead of defending their position, they will simply forget about any new ideas, stop volunteering ideas and the company will go stagnant. Tom Peters talked about this in his management idea books. Stating that the person on the assembly line is full of ideas to speed up the process. Ray Kroc use to be more concerned about what was happening at the counter than the reports from high executives and would become furious if an executive missed the once a month assignment of working behind the counter.
How many Innovators are we still holding down, how many have stopped thinking or stopped talking or sharing? If the United States gets passed by as the number one nation in the world it will not be because 1.3 Billion Chinese or folks from India were smarter, it will be because we failed to harvest our greatest asset. Please think about it.
"Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs