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An ability to hold our instincts up to the light, rather than naïvely accepting their products in our consciousness as just the way things are, is the first step in discounting them when they lead to harmful ends.Big ideas often rock the boat, but few have rocked it as thoroughly as the idea of evolution by natural selection. The notion that humans evolved from non-human ancestors, through the survival of some mutations at the expense of others, offends countless cherished ideologies. Natural selection insults the religious conviction that our existence is divinely sanctioned, disturbs the progressive belief that selfish competition is a modern aberration, and disorients the widespread desire to find purpose and morality in the natural world. Given these transgressions, it's no wonder that evolution has serious public relations issues.
- Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature
"The unexamined life isn't worth living."Socrates' observation also applies to business. When Eric Schmidt was CEO of Google, he famously said, "We run this company on questions, not answers."
Comment: Some good advice and exercises in the above piece. However, one wonders if anyone had the attention span to actually read it in its entirety!
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