Sunday, December 14, 2008

Dreamers Will Rule!


Most parents want their children to choose a "decent" profession. They shall become lawyers, accountants or software engineers, even if they'd rather write stories, compose songs or paint pictures. Aren't we all convinced that it is being a banker or a surgeon is more future proof? Well, it ain't necessarily so. To become a writer, a designer or a musician might soon turn out to be the better choice. For according to Daniel H. Pink, the "left-brain" dominance of the current Infomation Age is about to be all over. In his fascinating book, "A Whole New Mind", Pink contends that the future belongs to the artists. The "right-brainers", he prophesizes, will take over the lead. What makes Pink's postulation so strikingly convincing is ironically pure left-brain. Most linguistic or mathematical routine work will be taken over by computers or outsourced to low wage countries. More and more products will have identical qualities, and logic won't help people decide which to buy. That's why those who have the talents and the fantasy to design things, invent stories and combine bits and pieces to new entities will become more important, says Mr. Pink. It may well be, though, that their importance was so far only underestimated. After all Galileo, Newton and Einstein could have never revolutionized physics without artistic and holistic "right brain" imagination. It's more than a cliché that only dreamers can change the world. How nice that Daniel H. Pink enhances our self-esteem by assuring the reader that right-brainers are about to rule. 

2 comments:

  1. Shouldn´t pharma industry concentrate on developing some medicine that encapsulates the right part of the brain when a stroke happens? Maybe they succeeded already? Are there people who only have vital parts in the right brain? Sure, there are some german writers with this bug, e.g.: P.H.

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  2. Konrad Lorenz underlined 30 years ago the importance of the right brain. He distinguished between analytic intelligence and seeing intelligence, assigning the seeing faculty to the right brain (intueri = to look at). He insisted very much on the fact that intuition is not an irrational illusion compromising our potential of reasoning but a "ratiomorph" gift which should adress and lead the analytic processes of the left brain.

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