Dumbth Rule No. 9

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Dumbth Rule No. 9

photo of steve allen at the piano Steve Allen has written a book I call a must-read for everyone interested in strengthening their creative-thinking muscles. Published in 1989 as Dumbth: And 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter and in 1998 as Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking with 101 Ways to Reason Better & Improve Your Mind.

In the first book, his ninth rule for smarter thinking warns us to beware of prefabricated answers. To make his point, he lists nine pairs of familiar wise sayings which contradict each other.

For example:

Look before you leap.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Time and tide wait for no man.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Two heads are better than one.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Clothes make the man.

Many hands make light work.

Better safe than sorry.

He who hesitates is lost.

It’s never to late to learn.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

If you want something done right, do it yourself.

All that glitters is not gold.

You can’t tell a book by its cover.

Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I’ve attempted to sort Allen’s contradictory adages, listing the more cautious, conservative messages on the left and the more impulsive, inquisitive, and skeptical concepts on the right. Just the opposite of what we mean by left and right politically but typically what we mean when we talk about right and left brain dominance.

Did you find yourself siding with one column or the other? I tend to favor the right column, but I have no idea what that means, because I can’t sort them without finding contradictions. “Clothes makes the man,” for example, can be considered a call to conformity and uniform dress codes or the watchwords of the fashion industry extolling self expression in personal attire. In the end, I think that’s Allen’s point.

In the spirit of Steve Allen’s advice to question our assumptions, I’ve made a game of twisting adages and truisms into their contradictory versions. It’s called Ricliché and offers playfully modified adages such as “Leap before you look.” I use as a tool to stimulate creative thinking.

How can contradictory statements and intentionally twisted sayings actually make sense?

If it walks like a duck...

Truth is stranger than fiction.

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