Good and Bad Ideas

                One of the main problems in life is that our brains keep coming up with ideas. It’s not really a pleasant experience, because it’s never like you’re sitting there trying to think of an idea and then *poof!* There it is! No, ideas are always more like something you find sitting in your basement that’s just been festering there way too long. You know how it is, all covered in dust and way past the expiration date, sort of makes your stomach a little queasy just looking at it. But you think, “Hey, it’s there. I found it, and it’s in my own brain so I guess that makes it mine. If only I knew what to do with it I’d be all set!”

                But there’s the problem, you know? Because once you get into the habit of finding ideas, you’re bound to hit on this particular one: most ideas are bad.

                Bad ideas… I tell you friend, there’s nothing worse than a bad idea. They’re even worse than bad news! Now don’t get me wrong, I hate bad news as much as the next guy, because there’s nothing worse than finding out your dog just chewed through the power cable on your refrigerator. But the thing about finding out that little Fido just fried himself and ruined all the food in the house is that at least you know it’s bad news from the get-go. Bad news is pretty awful, but at least it’s unambiguous, you know? There’s none of that complex hand-waving and hand-wringing where you keep thinking, “Well, maybe it’s for the best that I have to replace the fridge and run to the grocery, and it’s always good to upgrade the dog every once in a while…” I mean sure, you try to put a good spin on it, think positive and whatnot, but at least you can always tell that bad news is bad news.

                The thing about bad ideas though… they always seem like good ideas until they go bad. Fido wasn’t chewing on that power cord because he thought it was a bad idea, you know, he just thought, “Well here’s some nifty little chewing material, nice and bendy with just the right amount of give to it, I’ll just go to town on this until—” (Well, you get the idea.) And that’s just with a dog! Human beings, on the other hand, can come up with some spectacularly bad ideas. I’m talking ideas so bad you’d swear they knew exactly what they were doing and you’d swear they got some kind of sick thrill out of driving themselves into the ground.

                Let me give you an example of a typically human sort of bad idea: some people are always trying to tell you that suffering builds character, or it’s good for the soul or something like that. Now how’s that for an idea! It sounds good, it sounds good, it’s got a kind of backwards logic to it that makes its own sort of sense: I may not be enjoying my life right now, but just think of what’s gonna happen later on! Let me tell you, the future is gonna be great, I mean we’ll have flying cars and 3-D Internet and cell phones that plug into a wall at home so nobody can reach you when you’re out of the house… we’ll have it made, I’m telling you, we’ll have it made just as soon as the future gets here.

                Isn’t that just a great idea? It’s like it’s tailor-made to get people to accept the status quo. It’s like you’re telling them, “Don’t worry, it’s okay that you’re bored, it’s okay that you’re angry, it’s okay that you’re miserable. You’re supposed to be that way right now, but in the long run you’re just building up your character and becoming a better person every day. Don’t get involved, don’t try to change anything, just keep your head down and wait. Everything will be okay later. Everything will make sense later. Just sit tight and passively accept your place in the world. We’re in a transitional period right now, but that Bright Beautiful Day is on the way.” (And the best part about this idea is that it works forever! If they come back to you and say that they’re still not happy… why, they just haven’t been patient enough!)

                I won’t belabor the point: the worst ideas can come all dressed up in the nicest, most lofty-sounding packages, and it’s more than possible for a person to go through their entire lives following a bad idea—or at least paying lip-service to what they and everybody else know is a bad idea, deep down. And they seem to like it so much, too! Part of it is this sort of inverted high-mindedness, where somebody thinks, “Yes, I’m being duped and I’m just going along with it, but since I know I’m getting duped I’m not really getting duped. At least I know a hell of a lot more than those people over there getting duped, even though they probably think the same thing about me.” Of course, it’s entirely likely (and probably inevitable) that some people will know more than others about what’s at stake in any idea, good or bad. The power of an idea is in its ability to create a space for multiple interpretations, gradations, levels and adumbrations of meaning. An idea that explains the whole world in a single swoop may be good and well, may even be useful, but nobody ever pays a second thought to it unless it’s interesting.

                There’s one idea I’ve been trying to have for a while now, but haven’t been able to come up with it. You’ve probably heard of the one: they call it “the right idea.” You know, somebody’s trying to explain something and then the other person says something that proves they get what the first person was talking about, and the first one says something like, “Yeah, you got the right idea.” Like I said, most of my ideas are bad, and even the good ones are never “the right idea.” Sometimes I think it’d be easier if they labelled which idea was the right idea, so it would feel a little less like walking into a minefield… but then again labels aren’t exactly interesting, now are they?

                Well, I’m out of ideas. Buh-bye!