Read the following top down.
“Happiness comes from within”
Is a lie, and
“money will make me happy.”
So in 30 years I will tell my children
They are not the most important thing in my life
My employer will know this
I have my priorities straight because
work
is more important than
family
I will tell you this
Once upon a time
families stayed together
but this will not be true in my era
this is a quick fix society
Experts tell me
30 years from now I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
I do not concede that
I will live in a country of my own making
In the future
Environmental destruction will be the norm
No longer can it be said
my peers and I care about the earth
It will be evident that
my generation is apathetic and lethargic
It is foolish to presume
there is hope.
Now reverse the way you read it and read it starting at the bottom and read up. Reading the words one way and then reversing the way you read the same words produces two contradictory viewpoints.
Dr. Albert Rothenberg, a noted researcher on the creative process, has extensively studied the use of opposites in the creative process. He identified a process he terms “Janusian thinking,” a process named after Janus, a Roman God who has two faces, each looking in the opposite direction. Janusian thinking is the ability to imagine two opposites or contradictory ideas, concepts, or images existing simultaneously.
Rothenberg found that geniuses resorted to this mode of thinking quite often in the act of achieving original insights. Einstein, Mozart, Edison, Van Gogh, Pasteur, Joseph Conrad and Picasso all demonstrated this ability. It was Vincent Van Gogh who showed in Bedroom at Arles how one might see two different points of view at the same time. Pablo Picasso achieved his cubist perspective by mentally tearing objects apart and rearranging the elements so as to present them from a dozen points of view simultaneously. Looking back at his masterpiece, Demoiselles d’ Avignon, it seems to have been the first painting in Western art to have been painted from all sides at once. The viewer who wishes to appreciate it has to reconstruct all of the original points of view simultaneously. In other words, you have to treat the subject exactly as Picasso had treated it in order to see the beauty of the simultaneity.
In physics, Einstein was able to imagine an object in motion and at rest at the same time. To better understand the nature of this paradox, he constructed an analogy that reflected the essence of the paradox. An observer, Einstein posited, who jumps off a house roof and releases any object at the same time, will discover that the object will remain, relative to the observer, in a state of rest. The unique feature of this analogy was that the apparent absence of a gravitational field arises even though gravitation causes the observer’s accelerating plunge. This analogy and its unique feature inspired his insight that led him to arrive at the general theory of relativity.
This was the analogy that Einstein said was his happiest thought in life because it pertains to the larger principle of general relativity. (He was looking for an analogy in nature that would allow him to bring Newton’s theory of gravitation into the theory of relativity, the step making it a general theory.
Louis Pasteur discovered the principle of immunology by discovering the paradox. Some infected chickens survived a cholera bacillus. When they and uninfected chickens were inoculated with a new virulent culture, the uninfected chickens died and the infected chickens survived. In seeing the unexpected event of the chickens’ survival as a manifestation of a principle, Pasteur needed to formulate the concept that the surviving animals were both diseased and not-diseased at the same time. This prior undetected infection had therefore kept them free from disease and protected them from further infection. This paradoxical idea that disease could function to prevent disease was the original basis for the science of immunology.
Rothenberg found another illustration in Niels Bohr’s thinking. Bohr believed that if you hold opposites together, then you suspend your thought and your mind moves to a new level. The suspension of thought allows an intelligence beyond thought to act and create a new form. The swirling of opposites creates the conditions for a new point of view to bubble free from your mind. This ability to hold two opposites together led to Bohr’s conception of the principle of complementarity. The very claim that light is both a particle and a wave is inextricably self-contradictory.
To think in terms of simultaneous opposites, convert your subject into a paradox and then find a useful analogy. Foundries clean forged metal parts by sandblasting them. The sand cleans the parts but the sand gets into the cavities and is time consuming and expensive to clean. The paradox is that the particles must be “hard” in order to clean the parts and at the same time “not hard” in order to be removed easily. An analogue of particles which are “hard” and “not hard” is ice. One solution is to make the particles out of dry ice. The hard particles will clean the parts and later turn into gas and evaporate.
THINKING PARADOXICALLY
Following are specific guidelines for solving problems based on this thinking strategy which include creating a paradox, finding an analogue and using the unique feature of the analogue to trigger original ideas.
W.J.J. Gordon used this strategy to develop Pringles potato chips. Pringles was a matter of designing a new potato chip and package that would allow for more efficient packaging of chips without the need to fill the bag with more air than chips.
1. PARADOX. Convert the problem into a paradox. One of the things that distinguishes the vision of genius is its curious relationship to contraries. The question to ask is: What is the opposite or contradiction of the problem? And then imagine both existing at the same time.
EXAMPLE: The paradox of the Pringle’s situation was a chip that would not destruct.
2. BOOK TITLE. Summarize the paradox into a book title that captures the essence and paradox of the problem. The book title should be two words, usually an adjective and a noun. Some examples of book titles are:
Sales target— Focused Desire
Different level employees— Balanced Confusion
Nature— Rational Impetuousness
Reducing the paradox into a book title makes it easier to work with and comprehend.
EXAMPLE: The book title that captured the essence of the Pringles paradox was “Compact Destruction.”
3. ANALOGUE. Find an analogy that reflects the essence of the paradox. Think of as many analogies as you can and select the most suitable.
EXAMPLE: The analogy they worked with was bagging leaves in the fall. When you try to shove dry leaves into a plastic bag, you have a difficult time. But when the leaves are wet (unique feature), they are soft and formable.
5. EQUIVALENT. Use an equivalent of the “unique” feature to trigger new ideas.
EXAMPLE: The unique feature is a wet leaf conforms to the shape of its neighbor with little air between them.
6. BUILD INTO A NEW IDEA. The new idea was to make the ingredients of the chips stronger with potato flour and to wet and reshape them into smaller chips so they could be stacked and packed in cylinder style packages. By wetting and forming dried potato flour to make them more compact, the packaging problem was solved and Pringles got its start. Pringles was a matter of designing a new potato chip and package that would allow for more efficient packaging of chips without the need to fill the bag with more air than chips.
Change your psychology by reversing the way you look at the problem. Early nomadic societies were all based on the principle of “getting to the water.” Only when they reversed this perspective to “how can we get the water to come to us” did civilization begin to flourish.
When Josh Opperman’s girl friend left him after a three-month engagement, he was crushed. All she left him was the fancy engagement ring he’d worked so hard to save up for. When Josh Opperman’s fiancée left him after a three-month engagement, he was crushed. All she left him was the fancy engagement ring he paid over $10,000 for. However, when he took the ring back to the jeweler, he got a nasty shock. They only offered $3000 for the $10,000 ring.
The opposite of buying is selling. So he started a new business called I DO, NOW I DON’T which is a website that allows people to sell their engagement rings (or any other fancy jewelry) to other users for way than going to a jewelry store. Think of as the Craigslist for fine jewelry. The site has been an incredible success and has been featured on CNN, The Today Show, Fox News, and in The New York Times.
Think of Michelangelo when he sculpted what may be the world’s most famous sculpture, David. He did not think of “building” something; he thought of “taking away” something from what was there. A quotation often attributed to him has it that “the more the marble wastes away, the more the sculpture grows.” Michelangelo would gaze at a block of marble and visualize what was within it. Then he would chip away at the block to free his vision.
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