Edward de Bono makes the simple observation that without alternatives, you have no choice. You are stuck. And in most areas of our life, being stuck seems just fine, thank you very much. People are unlikely to seek alternatives when existing methods are adequate. Why bother going in search of something new?

For many people, habit substitutes for thinking. We go about our usual business on automatic, using our brains for other purposes, and that is usually a good thing. We need good habits to carry us through life’s ordinary activity. So that while I drive to the grocery, which I’ve done dozens of times, my mind can concentrate on a problem at work.  

When habit becomes doubtful, for whatever reason, and we need a reason to choose one course of action, we tend to persist in using methods we always used before. Tradition has considerable power, especially if we are satisfied with the results. New parents might conclude that how they were raised is perfectly fine because, well, look how they turned out, so they adopt the same methods in raising the next generation.

De Bono even wrote, “We are very happy with what we have because we cannot conceive of anything better.” He then went on to write that “until we can conceive of something better we are not motivated to look for it.” Why bother?

By and large, if habits are working for you, that’s great. More power to you. If you eat a salad every day and exercise regularly and scrape down the tiles in your bathroom after every shower, then congratulations. Nobody is asking you to disrupt a happy lifestyle. The problem arises when habits no longer seem to be working.

Communities fall into their own habits. They tend to emphasize the same holidays every year, usually in the same way. They emphasize the same school sports year-in and year-out. They follow the same basic procedures for granting approvals, and leaders recruit leaders the way they were recruited. And most of these habits exist because they seem to work.

Periodically, however, a community has to reconsider its habits. What then? My own instinct is to identify the extremes and go between them. One extreme in these cases would be upheaval, revolutionary change, novelty for its own sake, and other forms of discontinuity. The other extreme would be resistance to change, stubbornness, a foolish tenacity we might call reactionary.

Notice that I avoid referring to them as progressive and conservative, because under either one of these banners change is possible, as a matter of principle. For all of the political conflict between progressives and conservatives, I still believe that the exaggerated extremes still exist and frequently harm communities. Progressives and conservatives can debate the rate and manner of improvements, so at least they are talking with one another.

When the occasion arises, then, do we generate alternatives and consider different options before making decisions? This happened for example when looking at using TIF funds for Lincoln Street. By giving ourselves a choice, at least we had the opportunity to choose. That might sound obvious, but as de Bono has pointed out, just because something is obvious does not mean we are very good at learning to do it.