Wise Moves from MAD Land to NO MAD Land (5)

This is one of the stories from our series entitled "Your Next Wise Move: from MAD-LAND (leading us to Massive Assured Destruction)to NO-MAD Land" (based on Mutually Assured Development)

Here is our proposal for today’s shift, largely needed in a world of polarizations and exclusions that only leads to more Violence and Stupidity: the Shift from the “One Right Answer Saloon" to the “20/20 Vision Café”

Wise moves to make rapidly !

What we see and hear today seems to indicate that some parts of the world are going crazy! We call them Mad Land. MAD stands for Massive Assured Destruction. Fortunately, other wiser, Future-oriented and more creative territories are emerging. We call them No Mad Land. In this case, MAD stands for Mutually Assisted Development.

We have created an imaginary Map which is a metaphor of MAD Land and NO MAD Land.

To the left, MAD Land is the current known territory. To the right, NO MAD Land is the land of  emerging and unknown Futures.

Those two different "Landscapes" are created and sustained by very different- and often unconscious - "Maps": our worldviews, beliefs, paradigms, perceptions and stories. Indeed, our mental maps are not the territory, but they define how we shape the “visible” Landscape, through our decisions and actions

Results: driven by very different Mindsets, MAD Land and NO MAD Land have very different practices, such as:

·      Focus on selling more thermometers rather than reducing the global temperature

·      Competition versus Collaboration

·      Conformism versus Imagination

·      Make a career versus live a meaningful life, in tune with our values

Viable and exciting Futures depend on our ability to escape from today's paradigms and transform our mental maps.

Because it is not about the things we look at but about the way we look at things.  The known territory of MAD Land appears as “normal” with MAD Glasses. Whereas NO MAD Land is simply "not visible" with MAD Land "lenses".

We propose new perspectives to shape the Future. Everyday!

 Our map is illustrated with 174 locations and their captions. Each caption metaphorically illustrates a way of looking at the world, not something we "are", not something "good or bad". It offers the choice of a point of view to shape the Future everyday. Either starting from MAD or NO MAD Land.

The shift of the day

We may all get stuck in the One Right Answer Café. For a minute, a day or our entire Life. This is one of the most comfortable – and dangerous - illusion we can develop. And yet, isn’t it what a majority of people keep running after all their life?  

There is a joke about that. It says: "What’s the difference between God and a Jewish mother?" The answer is "God knows all, but the Jewish mother knows everything better!"

Have you noticed how, recently, more and more people talk as if they know everything “better” – not my Jewish mother - and how rapidly conversations   become polarized ? These people have clear-cut opinions without information nor mastery, intuitions without knowledge, certainties about uncertainties. In short, they want the stability of a “one right answer” in an uncertain world.

As the great scientist, NilsBohr said

“The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.”

It is a matter of perceptions, imagination, and points of view.

In our troubled times, we “all” struggle to make meaning of the world. Without admitting it, we are falling into confusion, fear, anxiety, lack of Imagination and a desire for Certainty: in short, in the One right answer Saloon.

But those Regression Forces lead to preserving the Old instead of shaping the New.

Wouldn’t be nice to activate Opening Forces?

The hidden path is to accept that

·      our so-called truths are just “proto-truths”, momentary truths

·      our so called “ideas" are not good or bad but that they are just “ideas”

·      part of what we call Creativity is precisely to make hypothesis and to consciously try another worldview

·      we are free to adopt flexible perspectives

·      our “Best Answer”of yesterday might not be the “Next Best Answer”

Science demonstrates that our brain can be rewired.

Let’s do it!

Let’s move to the 20/20 Vision Café!

Let’s put on “glasses” equipped with the latest State-of-the-Art progressive lenses. They allow us to look at the Past, the Present and the Future with Sharpness and Accuracy. We can look far into the Future and often develop a 2050 Vision!

What can trigger the move from the “One Right Answer Saloon”to the "20/20 Vision Café"?

Let’s activate our Creative Agency to the best. Let's develop the power and freedom to reshape our Mental Maps so we can change the way we shape the World.

This is at the heart of Shapership, the Art of Shaping the Future. ‍

The fast track to the 20/20 Vison Café is to move from the lawn-mower to what we call the"Altitude Attitude": the capacity to consciously think about the way we think from a higher vantage point”. With this altitude, comes the needed detachment from our "ideas".

• We can identify the usual  roads we take
• We can make our familiar routines and Thinking habits “strange” to us
•  We can discover how they sometimes alienate us by distorting our understanding and our sense of possibilities
• we can open new paths to the Future

Here are some simple moves you can chose to make if you adopt  the “Altitude Attitude”

1.    Move from Truth to Prototruth: remember that ideas are nothing more than representations we temporary consider as truth

2.    Move from Discussions and Argumentations to Explorations and real conversations

3.    Move from uninformed Opinions to pertinent Information with curiosity and humility

4.    Move from Conformity to Conventional Wisdom to Unconventional Wisdom

5.    Move from Intuition based on Ignorance to Intuition based on Knowledge

6.    Move from Rigid Rationalism to Regenerative Thinking : Thinking that is challenging, creative and imaginative

7.    Move from the satisfaction of power over others to the delightful pleasure of power shared with others

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Happy Moves!