Do what you're told!

Apparently, most of us will just do what we're told without questioning. For little kids, in their parent's protection, that's the best advice. In general, parents know better and act on their kid's behalf to keep them safe and train them in cultural norms. As this video shows though, most of us never break out of that paradigm and continue to blindly follow though there is no obvious reason. We are a nation of sheep, not shepherds. We have become a nation of followers and not of leaders. We live in a [psuedo-]democracy, and yet all of that is erased if we let someone else tell us how to vote. We need to break out of the yes-men style of business, and education, and finance, and invention and ask ourselves, and those that are telling us what to do..."Why?" If the answer given does not make sense, do not follow. Find a new path and lead.

People Watching Plus from Rune Madsen on Vimeo.

OK, now that I've said that... How do we do it? We have spent decades if not millenia getting our nation to where it is today. How do we turn it around? How do we change the culture embedded in our companies, our communities, our schools to let the norm be game changing and not the exception? How do we foster the atmosphere where people aren't afraid to raise their hand and ask questions, or to suggest something different, if not better, without being knocked back down into the same rut that the rest of us are in? How do we encourage people to break from the pack, find new ground and then settle and secure it? We've trained, or allowed ourselves to become so risk adverse that this great nation of ours is falling behind in every measurement imaginable - patents, wealth, health, freedom, and all of the rest.

I don't have the answer. I'm stuck behind the same financial obligations that most of the rest of you are. If I had no debt, no need to spend my time making money to pay off that debt, more time to think and act outside of the box, I'd like to think that I could be more productive to society. Maybe not, but it's a vicious circle. How I tall until I'm out from under financial control of the norm?

Got some ideas on how to fix this mess? Let me know.