Dumbth Rule No. 9
By Peter LloydSteve Allen has written a book I call a must-read for everyone interested in strengthening their creative-thinking muscles. It was published in 1989 as Dumbth: And 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter and in 1998 as Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking with 101 Ways to Reason Better & Improve Your Mind.
In the first book, his ninth rule for smarter thinking warns us to beware of prefabricated answers. To make his point, he lists nine pairs of familiar wise sayings that contradict each other. For example:
Look before you leap. / He who hesitates is lost.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks. / It's never to late to learn.
Time and tide wait for no man. / Where there's a will there's a way.
Out of sight, out of mind. / Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Two heads are better than one. / If you want something done right, do it yourself.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth. / All that glitters is not gold.
Clothes make the man. / You can't tell a book by its cover.
Many hands make light work. / Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Better safe than sorry. / Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I've attempted to sort Allen's contradictory adages, listing the more cautious, conservative messages on the left and the more impulsive, inquisitive, and skeptical concepts on the right. Just the opposite of what we mean by left and right politically but typically what we mean when we talk about right and left brain dominance.
Did you find yourself siding with one list or the other? I tend to favor the sayings on the right, but I have no idea what that means, because I can't create a consistent sort. "Clothes makes the man," for example, can be considered a call to conformity and uniform dress codes or the watchwords of the fashion industry extolling self expression in personal attire. In the end, I think that's Allen's point.
In the spirit of Steve Allen's advice to question our assumptions, I've made a game of twisting adages and truisms into their contradictory versions. It's called Ricliché and it generates playfully modified adages such as "Leap before you look." I use it as a tool to stimulate creative thinking.
Why do contradictory statements and intentionally twisted sayings actually make sense?
If it walks like a duck... / Truth is stranger than fiction.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.