The Binary Fallacy
Why order and structure may not matter in the pursuit of creative growth.
Ones and Zeros. Nuts and Bolts. They belong in machines, yes, but what about us?
I’ve always chased some form of order in my life from the insistence of my friends, my family, and the internet. It could be in the form of planning my weekends down to the hour, cooking a dish with a recipe, or rectifying my cricket batting technique. Order and structure have constantly glued to my sense of being.
Even when I’m writing this article, I’m thinking about the size and alignment of each paragraph. It bothers me that my lines don’t fall right beneath the other; that each line has a different amount of space at its end. I also try and maintain the length of my writing to ‘round’ numbers such as 500, 1000, or 1050 words. I can’t stand to see word counts of 437, 874, or 999, there’s something so odd about it.
But that’s probably just me.
I was recently listening to a podcast titled “A Bit of Optimism”, and one of the guests on the show, Brian Collins, offered an inspiring anecdote. He reasoned that over his career as an entrepreneur, he has despised the phrase ‘Cultural fit’ because it boxes one’s perspective. Rather, he favours ‘Cultural contribution’.
Most functioning institutions look for people that fit into their system. For example, the NBA franchise, the Golden State Warriors, build around their ‘3-point’ philosophy. They tend to look for players that have high field goal and three point percentages, or in simpler terms, players whose strength lies in shooting the ball. But this won’t necessarily be the case for every franchise. Some would look for players that can defend very well or players that can score closer to the basket.
This is a typical example of ‘Cultural fit’.
Collins, however, reasons that one should seek talent that can add to a culture in an entirely new way. In a professional workspace, for example, he encourages a system of extroverts to accommodate introverts, vice versa. Likewise, a smart woman should seek the company of people with higher intelligence rather than the same intelligence as her. These examples are synonymous with the idea of ‘pushing oneself outside of their comfort zone’ or ‘thinking out of the box’.
At the same time, it’s important to understand that opposites may not always thrive in the presence of one another. Creating a system of disorder is quite similar to the consequences of the ‘big bang’ itself. You’ll have inhabitable planets with toxic atmospheres. But you’ll also have planets like Earth that give birth to life.
By filling a bucket with an assortment of nuts and bolts in contrast to the same type, the owner of the bucket, say a mechanic, can help himself to many more jobs, more sources of income, and quite possibly a better life.
Diminishing the role of order in creative pursuit may open a door to a larger number of future possibilities, but we can’t ignore the ‘inhabitable planets’, the unavoidable consequences of thinking more unconventionally. So what if we encounter situations that aren’t favourable to us?
Regret sounds awful, and it’s hard to go through. But it makes us more informed about the choices we make in the future, shall we learn from it.
Collins recounted an experience involving one of his employees about fifteen years ago. His employee, seeking higher wages, presented an ultimatum to Collins: either he pays him higher wages or he quits. Collins knew he couldn’t do the latter. He didn’t want his employees to think that they can storm into his office and gain a pay raise. So Collins let the employee quit, a decision he regrets to this day.
Because, if we look at this situation, there were actually more than two ways of dealing with it. Instead of firing or giving his employee a raise, he could have taken him out for dinner and verbally resolved the situation, or, he could have assigned the employee some more important responsibilities to keep him to stay.
Instead, Collins lived with regret. But this regret enabled him to deal with a similar situation in a better manner. In fact, this situation did repeat itself, but this time he got his employee to stay. Learning from negative outcomes is a large part of creative growth but it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds. I can’t embody it all the time, but I try to, and I’ve often felt that it’s one of the best tools to inspire positive choices.
Collaboration, diversity, and globalization, are some ways in which our race has become increasingly disordered, but of course, it has also become more progressive, expansive, and connected as a result. Likewise, the yin and yang is an ancient Chinese symbol that represents two starkly different forces, however, they combine together to form a whole circle by sharing each other’s qualities.
Modern or ancient, human beings have cultivated a state of disorder in order to progress our beliefs, inventions, and knowledge. In fact, read that sentence again.
‘Disorder in order to’.
Let’s end this article with that neat oxymoron/pun/stroke of genius.
Some filler words to meet 900 words, and…done!