Crazy questions

Destructive worry can lead to compulsive overparenting where parents drive themselves and their only child crazy with excessive needs for control. Parents can chain worry "If you flunk this class then maybe you ll flunk others, then maybe you ll drop out of school, and then maybe you ll end up living on the street " Parents can ask crazy questions (questions for which there are no answers) "How do you know for sure you won t get hit by a drunk driver and get killed " Parents can obsessively control "You re not... 

This ordering of these conditions and d-SoCs is not scientific for it has never been made explicit and subjected to detailed examination to determine how well it orders reality. Further, its implicitness under ordinary circumstances makes it a barrier to better understanding, when a value system or a set of assumptions is implicit, you do not know you have it, so you do not question its value. You automatically perceive and think in terms of the value/assumption system. For example, anything said by a person labeled "psychotic" must be viewed as a sign of his craziness, not to be taken at face value. Patients are crazy the doctors are sane. 

We don t discuss chemistry over dinner and you absolutely must put this in this interview. We do not bring our work home with us unless one of us does an absolutely terrific experiment. People imagine that we talk about chemistry all the time but we don t at all. We like to play, we like to go swimming, we like to go to the beach, we like to travel as a family. We separate our life at work from our life at home. Every once in a while Peter and I go to a meeting together (when my mother comes from New York to take care of our daughter) and then we hear each other talk about our work. And we re interested in it because we don t usually talk about it at home. Sometimes we ask each other a question at the meeting and people look at us and think we are a little crazy. 

I worry that you, dear reader, may now get overly concerned with questions about whether you are successful enough and perceptive enough to be a successful and perceptive malcontent. If you have read this far you are probably perceptive enough, but how many imperfections are you allowed to have. Is a minimum income level required. What about those really crazy thoughts and feelings you sometimes have... 

At least intellect does not differentiate innovators from noninnovators. That does not say that you do not need a degree of intelligence to be an innovator. But it does say that it is obviously not the only condition necessary to be an innovator. There is something else missing. So we move onto another question which is probably the most common assumption, namely, innovators are crazy. 

Accordingly, it is not surprising to note that he proposed the use of organic diisocyanates and diols or diamines for the production of macromolecules in 1936. However, these sug stions were not accepted by his superiors who now questioned his ability to remain as head of an industrial research laboratory. Even one of his colleagues told him politely that "if you had ever made a monoisocyanate, you would never have had that crazy idea."... 

If avoiding the question drives you crazy, and we think it should at least make you a little uncomfortable, be sure to do this problem—the answer falls right out. See also Chapter 9. 

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