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Integrated thinking gave us more creative power than the smartest men in the world today. That was why we -- yes, humdrum people like us -- actually became creative geniuses, even with our average IQs! Our education gave us powerless specialized thinking that left us stranded as adults in routine-rut jobs with specialized tasks. Even if someone were very good at what he did, he was usually powerless at fulfilling his deepest dreams, perhaps like one of those world's strongest men powerless at pushing over the big boulder. Fortunately, in the Neotech Era of prolific information, we learned to snap thoughts together into an integrated force that easily pushed over the big boulder to major success.
When America went Neotech and limitless information bombarded us, we evolved beyond specialized mental weaklings into integrated mental giants. Before 2001, the same forces that held back super entrepreneurs and super technologies held back our creativity. You see, our career politicians and regulatory bureaucrats controlled our educational system. The ordinary person graduated from our public schools with severe short circuits; he or she could not put together the connections needed to be creative. He or she, in short, could not integrate.
In trying these techniques now, I overcame many of my own short circuits. I actually knocked out of my mind the passive acceptance of specialization. I imagined my most ambitious dream and daydreamed for a few minutes. I eclipse all the specialization and its obstacles that held me back. In my mind's eye, I saw myself leading my company into sweeping success. Well, with all that I knew now, that daydream strikingly demonstrated to me that, under old-code dynamics, I was in a terminal rut. As simple as it may seem, that striking snapshot of my lifelong stagnation-trap set off an act of self-preservation: I automatically started seeking broader thought clusters at my work. And now, after the Six Visions, I knew what to do: I tied together those limiting and stagnating simple thoughts (impotent specialized thinking) into limitless and growing thought clusters (potent integrated thinking).
Let me review how I did that, starting with the first of my two steps to creativity: structuring my thoughts and my work with common denominators. In The Philosophy of Education, Professor Peikoff used the following example to explain common denominators: Consider a drunk took a stroll on the beach. He perceived many things -- the wave breaking and rumbling onto the shore then sliding back into the ocean, the pebbles rolling down the wet sand toward the sea, the fish jumping and splashing back into the water, the sea gull landing. To the drunk like to a dog or cat, all such events were like new and unique experiences. The events seemed to come at him at random, with no structure or sense. Each event happened then was gone. He retained no logic or memory. He did not integrate events by common denominators. For instance, he did not link together the concept that the wave broke, the pebbles rolled down, the jumping fish splashed back into the water, and the sea gull landed because of gravity. The drunk never saw that common denominator, and neither did ordinary people with a 20th-century education. That common denominator -- that concept of gravity -- would begin integrating those random events into some sort of structure, making them sensible and retainable in one's memory. But to the drunk, to the dog, to the ordinary person in the 20th century, the events made no particular sense; they just happened and were just as quickly forgotten as other events were perceived. That "drunken stupor" was not so bad when strolling along the beach; but it was tragic when strolling through one's life, one's career, marriage and family life.
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