Radical

Not necessarily crazy.

Photo by Chris Leggat on Unsplash

For hundreds of years “radical” ideas have been proposed by men and women with credible reputations.  They are often intriguing, even ingenious, and many promise a beneficial reform of the overall economic and/or political system.

Almost universally they are more often ridiculed that evaluated.  They pass through the culture like undigested food through the human body.  When some eventually become embedded in successful policy, they are viewed as ideas that were “before their time.” 

And many are largely forgotten.

Why?  I suspect that then as now they ran up against the entrenched persuasiveness of “stability.” 

No concept has bred so many cliches.  “Don’t rock the boat,” for example. 

But that is only part of the story.  Cliches have a habit of clustering around economic and social advantage. And why not, as stability is another way of saying the present distribution of goods and services should be protected from “radical” change.

This is not likely to be different today.  We can, however, be more tolerance of ideas.  Why not chase them from hidding.  Throw them back and forth at social gatherings.  Enjoy their creativity. If I bring up a controversial idea, I need not be thought irresponsible. Just playful, which is serious in a better way.  

We are at risk of losing some very worthwhile, needed, perhaps necessary, new ideas. Given the risks we are taking and the dangers we face, we may not be able to wait, as in the past, until “there time has come.”