I love the quote from John Stuart Mill: “Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people...it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”
John must have been in a cranky mood that day.
On the other hand, as frustrating as those sticks in the mud may be, those who need to be dragged forward to progressive thinking do prevent a certain amount of unstructured darting about. To quote another conservative, “If I have to answer right away, the answer is no.”
If you like to think outside the box, remember that you have conservatives to thank for the fact that there is a box at all. I always ask myself whether my own radical notions only seem supportable because I can hop back in the box for shelter if things look like they’re going to go badly. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But always ask.
We need both the reassuring box and the courage to go outside. Even more importantly we need to know when it’s time to follow the disciplined approach of thinking creatively within a structure and when it is proper to discard some of the structure to build anew. Otherwise we just mutate uncontrollably, and survival is a matter of luck.
It’s not just a matter of being moderate. Sometimes you have to be selectively extreme.
I never said it was easy.
No comments:
Post a Comment