Out of Box

This happened in certain discourse:

The preacher was looking to encourage the listeners to think out of box. He took the marker and wrote on the board:

He: “Come to the edge.”
They: “We are afraid.”
He: “Come to the edge”
He pushed.
They

“What happened to them?” the preacher asked the listeners.
There was an awkward silence which was broken by an enthusiastic voice, “They flew.”
“Correct.” The preacher completed the half sentence on the board: They flew.
“This is the effect of out of box thinking. For this you must have to free yourself from your usual notion…………….. ”

The person who narrated this incident to me said he was thinking of answering the question by saying ‘They Died.’, but had never thought that the answer would be such a weird ‘They flew.’

Why have I written all this crap? I don’t have any idea. Maybe I just wanted to vent out my feelings somewhere. The incident has affected me in a way. I’m not sure of ‘Out-of-Box’ thinking anymore. There have been many instances where out of box thinking has changed the way we look at the world. So we had Newton thinking that the earth is attracted to an apple which has just lost its connection from the tree and hence instead of going up in the sky or for that matter hanging out on its own in the open space the apple falls to the liking of earth. The result: We have one more chapter in the class XI Physics book, new constants in the form of ‘g’ and ‘G’ and some additional questions in the entrance examinations of respected institutes. Of course the side effects are that we now send air crafts in space, plant satellites in sky so that we can watch TV and sometimes even predict the weather correctly and finally embark a journey to unravel the mysteries of the universe. We all know this is not the only case of out of box thinking.

So we had ‘Thomas Alva Edition’ who would forget many things but will go on inventing more things than the number of days some people actually do good work. We had ‘Kalidasa’ who thought it is okay for a cloud to deliver messages instead of people. We had ‘Copernicus’ who thought it is wise to replace Earth from the centre of world and give Sun a much deserved place in the now named ‘Solar System’. We had ‘Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’ who would argue that a peaceful non-cooperation can shake the foundation of the mightiest empire in the world. And now we have scientists who would genetically engineer species, would bet on ‘Strings’ (A much smaller element than most of us can imagine) to bring forth a unified solution to all the mysteries of universe and would plan a human settlement in near future to other galactic objects of our solar system.

And out of box thinking does not only bring about good change or provide futuristic aspirations to entire generations, it has been known for some of the silliest and sometimes dreadful decisions man has ever made. So we also had ‘Mohammad bin Tughlaq’ who would rather shift his entire capital without thinking of the consequences. And we had to witness the explosions based on nuclear energies to wipe out entire settlements and disable future generations in order to bring a war to an end. ‘Wiping out a set of humans to save other set.’

My point is why there is so much emphasis on out of box thinking. Can it be taught? Why does one often finds oneself being told that it is important to have an out of box perspective to succeed? With all due respects to the die-hard fans of ‘out-of-box’ thinking, I would like to say that it is not out of box thinking only that make success stories. Sticking to the formula also make good success stories. My only point is that I even don’t think that there is something called ‘out-of-box’ and for one thing it can not be taught. All the instances I have mentioned or others which I have not are not because one thought deliberately out of box. These moments may be moments of truth, moments of realization or moments of exploring a new possibility. To term it out of box may not be the right terminology. The whole emphasis on the terminology by some so called intellectuals unnerves me. One can not think out of box if forced. Whenever I deliberately want to write something I fail. As I have failed this time. What I would like to term such a thought process is spontaneous thinking. So whether the above preacher actually thought the weird answer to be out of box or not I really think that it was at least not spontaneous thinking.