We will run out of ideas when we put too much faith in a comfortable extrapolation of the past, as the supposed source of unprecedented foresight that breaks the norm. A false and much-practiced premonition.
You see, there are two types of ideas. Upstream and downstream. Downstream ideas take an existing normalization of truth and sub-optimizes previous renditions yielding new and better operating efficiencies. Upstream ideas challenge the existing normalization of truth, to much dismay of the people reigning its current walled-gardens, and produce a new normalization from which a first of the next generation of downstream renditions is born.
Downstream ideas are finite and make us run out of ideas when new groundbreaking instances of upstream do not periodically reinvigorate them.
We run out of ideas when societal norms, legal frameworks, constitutional restrictions (in some countries) do not allow us to challenge anything and everything anymore. And when the systems we build are resistant to change, usually the outcome of debilitating principles of freedom instilled in them.
And when we, on our own volition, under pressure from societal ex-communication take Thumper’s mom’s advice from the Disney cartoon; to not say anything when you do not have anything nice to say. Because much of manmade depravity of reason, stemming from confounding of consequence and cause, comes precisely from people influenced by naive pageantry of false positivity, the kind of positivity that systematically ignores reality.
So, to sum up, we run out of ideas when we stop challenging the truths set before us. And we inadvertently become sacrificial lambs to human evolution. It is high time to reinvent the operating-systems of humanity to unleash the kind of freedom so crucial to our evolution.
