Humans are fundamentally disobedient. All of our best outcomes, our quantum jumps, have come through disobedience. Evolution and innovation is born from disobedience. If you want your culture (at any fractal scale) to foster innovation, the protocols that govern that culture have to encourage disobedience.
Disobedience, is good trouble.
This is why I love describing my kids as being “good trouble.” I don’t want to raise obedient humans. I want the culture of our family, to encourage good trouble. I want us to be in the practice, of disobedience.
Obedience, is usually based in fear. And fear gives bad advise.
When we are afraid, we are less attuned to our intuition — to our creative voice. Fear is the antithesis of possibility.
Disobedience is an act of courage.
It is the belief in the possibility, of transformation.
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Any time we offer a new possibility to the world, we are working to overturn something in the existing body of knowledge. Often the thing we are working to overturn, is viewed by many around us as a immutable law of how things “are” or “should” be.
This is why many people are scared of new technology. New technology changes the protocols that govern the relationships that make up our lives. And that scares the shit out of people.
All new ideas, all new cultural shapes, all innovation, begins with a problem. Often my understanding of a problem, starts as a feeling, that something is amiss. The offering of a new possibility, is proposing a theory for how life could be better. It is our attempt to bridge the gap, between where we currently stand, across the unknowable, to a new imagined place — a place that is better.
Innovation, is our attempt to offer a new explanation of some aspect of life. Good explanations begin as bad explanations. You travers from bad explanations and good explanations through experimentation. Experiments only really work, if they are authentic. And a necessary precursor to authenticity, is vulnerability.
To emerge valuable novel outcomes, you have to vulnerably experiment in public. You have to put your new explanations in direct conflict with the existing body of knowledge. For it is only through conflict, that we find out where we truly stand in a relationship.
You don’t get points for good ideas, only for what you vulnerably ship. If you never put your theory out into the world to interact with other knowledge, desires, and constraints, you’ll never find out if it’s a good explanation. You can’t build something of worth, without being vulnerable. You can’t grow, without being vulnerable. The path to all great change, runs through our capacity to be vulnerable.
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The most vulnerable thing we ever ship, is our own authenticity
The offering of ourselves, as deeply embodied, good trouble.
Sean Ritchey 