In a Left Brain World, Right Brain Thinking is the Ultimate Weapon

As a dyed-in-the-wool polymath, the discovery of profound connection between seemingly unrelated or even diametrically opposed ideas is about as close to God as I feel one might come in this lifetime. It is my opinion that the two ideas I want to present in this post could together solve just about every problem every marketer or business person has ever faced.

Actually, I think the juxtaposition could bring about something akin to world peace. But hear me out first.

The “Informationalization Age” demands we create meaning from the madness. Or bust.

For the business person, making sense of continuous information overload is an unrelenting stressor; it presses down upon marketing and operations to the point that no single task or activity seems to make a damned bit of difference. It’s hard to know what works and what doesn’t, let alone if any of it matters at all to anyone.

If information and humanity could finally meet in the middle somewhere, what would that look like?

Do we not have the ability to become masterful mind-maker-uppers who can distill information into actionable, purposeful knowledge?

I believe it’s possible.

First, let’s introduce the madness I speak of:

Now, let’s introduce what I believe to be the ONLY long term, viable solution to ending the confusion and resulting destruction once and for all:

(Right around minute 17:40 of Sir Ken Robinson’s talk I nearly choke up. Every time. What he says at that moment is much, much more than a commentary on big pharma.)

So on the one hand, we have a world that seems to be expanding at an exponential rate in terms of both information proliferation and population growth.

And we generally feel powerless–even strangled–by the ever tightening grip of “too much.”

On the other hand, we have the creative mind that does not consider each possibility in its purest mathematical, calculable form; it does not contemplate the perfect choice, the optimal decision, the most rational use of resources at any given moment. Instead, the creative mind–the right brain if you will–navigates an information-bloated world organically and intuitively.

Like the child who cannot think without the dance.

Like the business man or woman who should not make a decision about which path to take without tuning in first to the rhythm of his or her heart.

Let’s now consider for just a moment what would happen if we applied Sir Ken Robinson’s ideas about the evolution of human intelligence to a world dominated by quantitative, left-brain, “perfection-is-excellence-is-God” thinking.

What would the world look like after many, many years of practicing “disciplined creative thinking?”

I have a few ideas, though my list is far from exhaustive:

• Governments would back technology that potentializes humanity, not downgrades it.
• Consumers would only buy products and services that impart meaning, not simply more.
• Marketers would prioritize value, not create the perception of value where it doesn’t exist.
• Children would be eager to step into their potential, not shrink back from it.
• Parents would teach children the awesomeness of freewill, not seek means to take it away.
• Teachers would instill an appreciation for the unknown, not teach how to measure what is already known.

What’s missing from this list?

And how profoundly might the world be changed by an unleashing of right-brain thinking onto our excruciatingly informationalized environments?

(This was originally posted at KarriFlatla.com in February, 2010. I’ve since closed that blog but am moving some of the posts here. Shout out to Tim Brownson for inspiring me to bring this one in particular back to life.)