Ridiculous Opinions #226
Before you begin reading my post, I want you to read the small essay written at the link above. The essay is by a man named Joe Rohde. Rohde was a Disney Imagineer that I idolize because of his world view. There are only a couple of people that exist in the world that I think utter pure, unfiltered creativity. One is Alan Moore, the comic writer and creator of Watchmen, Tom Strong, and the greatest comic book series ever made, Top Ten (an absolutely wonderful series that, if you like comics, you should go out and purchase right now, because it’s radioactive in its compressed creative splendor). Joe Rohde is the other person that I feel is endlessly creative.
Rohde designed some of the best things that exist at Disney parks and was notorious for going against the grain when it came to Disney’s corporate interests vs. theme park design. His design of Animal Kingdom at Disney World is spectacular and the corporate gods at Disney have worked for the last twenty years to try to undo everything that he did since then. Just walking around that park is like venturing into another world (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively). It’s a spectacular place. He “retired” from Disney a couple of years ago, getting out while he could to move on to other things as Disney’s board decided to plaster everything in the parks with intellectual property in order to MAXIMIZE SHAREHOLDER VALUE.
But I digress.
If you follow Rohde on Instagram, what you’ll find is a man who has since retired and is now traveling the world, enjoying life. And with each Instagram post about his travels, he includes small essays. Some of the essays are thoughts about the architecture of what he sees as he travels, or about the history of places. Each post is dense and deep with thought. If you read his posts regularly, you will be guaranteed to learn something. It’s like attending the lecture of your favorite university professor.
But sometimes, he offers opinions, and what you’ll read above is his opinion on "Dissent and Critique”. This one struck a chord with me, because I am notorious about those two things in life. I engage in a great deal of dissent and critique. In the first sentence, he writes, “Consensus is sort of ship of fools. It is absurd to expect a uniform opinion from any large diverse group trying to accomplish any complex task.”
This has long been my opinion, but we as a society work constantly to get consensus when engaging in a project. It’s a ridiculous notion. Someone needs to set out and blaze a trail in their attempt to be creative. I work very hard to try to come up with new ideas and to blaze new ground, even if those paths that I take might come to nothing.
He wrote, “The same tendency for lateral thinking and extended metaphor that creates unique groundbreaking ideas can also create crazy useless ideas. Dissent and Critique help to strengthen creative ideas by testing them against disagreement and skeptical analysis.” I like the concept of crazy, useless ideas in that quote, and it’s something that we need to embrace more as we venture through life. I do a lot of stupid, useless things at school. But I reserve the right to fail at those things. Not everything is going to be perfect.
For example, I had an event last Monday, which was a drive-in movie night at school. Was it the greatest thing that ever happened? No. Was it flawed? Yes. Was there a point to it? Kind of. But I wanted to try something different, and our school is notorious about simply doing the same thing, over and over again, without engaging in new thinking or questioning why we are doing things in the first place. I reserve the right to try new things and I reserve the right to fail at them. We are so intolerant of failure and I want to change that.
I particularly like when he writes:
“Opponents want you to stop and do nothing. Dissenters and critics are valuable members of the team who prevent creative teams from spinning off into a narcissistic fantasy world of consensus, where nobody ever admits the obvious problems with the idea because they’re all supposed to be nice.”
Again, genius. If you’re ever bored, then go have a look at his Instagram posts, because all of them engage with deep thoughts that are important to how we make our way through the world.
Two more, very busy weeks of school left. Our daughters are arriving in a week. I am so, utterly excited to see them! Have a great weekend!
