Card #70 – ”Dogma House”

Card #70 – ”Dogma House” from the Creative Whack Pack

Available on the iOS App Store and as a physical deck of cards

Everyone has externally imposed “shoulds” and values that influence their thinking. When these become dogmas, they can cloud your decision-making abilities.

Example: none other than Plato himself dictated that the circle was the perfect form for celestial movement, and for the next two thousand years, astronomers said that planetary orbits were circular — even though their observational data suggested otherwise.

Even Copernicus used circles in his heliocentric model of the universe. Only after much soul-searching did Kepler use the ellipse to describe the heavenly paths.

Joseph Semmelweiss, the nineteenth century Hungarian physician, felt that doctors could reduce disease by washing their hands in chlorinated lime water before inspecting their patients.

His fellow physicians denounced him. They thought of themselves as “being close to God,” and strongly resented his suggestion that they were “carrying death around on their hands.” The later discovery of bacteria proved Semmelweiss correct.

Having a big success with one set of assumptions can easily create a dogmatic outlook.

Thomas Edison founded the electricity supply industry using direct current (DC). This prevented him from seeing both the benefits of alternating current (AC) and that the future of the industry lay with that type of current.

— What dogmas are clouding your mind?

— How do they affect the way you view your issue?

— Any political, educational, class, religious, or economic dogmas coloring your thinking?

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