Drone Thinking

I have coined my own term: Drone Thinking. A drone is one who does things in a routine, unimaginative way. In fact, a true drone can do nothing more. Drone Thinking, as I define, is thinking in a simplistic, non creative, robotic manner. I will elaborate.

Having once tutored high school students primarily in math and science, I quickly realized that there were two basic types of thinkers in scholastics. To be the most effective tutor possible, I discouraged memorization almost always. I encouraged my students to understand where a formula came from, and why a certain method for solving a problem works. When you understand "the why," as I call it, you naturally remember. Some students embraced this and did well. They understood that the "distance formula" was just manipulating properties of a right triangle, and they saw that the "ideal gas law" was just a natural ratio. To these students, things soon came easy. Others, usually the more lazy students, rejected this method, and became increasingly insistent that I just give them the formula. They did not care when I began to explain "the why," they just wanted to know how to do it. "Just give me the formula!" they insisted. These students did not perform as well in their classes as the former group.

As I pondered this one day, I realized that many doctors I have encountered are the same way. It seems to me that Drone Thinkers are like computer programs: input and output is all they can do. Doctors take your symptoms as the input, run their drone thinking minds and tests like med school taught them, and give an output of a diagnosis and generic (and often incomplete as well as inadequate) treatment. In fact, virtually every medical condition and problem can be at least partially treated with a proper diet, but how many doctors ever ask their patient about what he eats? Well, why would they? Nutrition is not part of the algorithm they learned in med school.

Having a certain manageable medical condition myself, I am quite familiar with the inadequacies of Drone Thinking doctors. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that all the more creative treatment strategies- which always happen to be the most effective- that I have used in dealing with my condition, I came up with entirely on my own. If I go to my doctor and described a particular problem I was running in to with my treatment, something unique to me, I will get the same stupid questions, stupid suggestions and stupid answers that any other doctor out there would give any other patient. When I ask them if a strategy I came up with will work, they think for a second, sometimes they seem shocked at an actual new idea entering their world, then say something to the effect of "yea, that might work." Why didn't they come up with anything like that? Eight years of school for this!? They can't even say "hey, good idea!" when they see one! Why are they such robots? I'll tell you why, because they have no creativity.

The same is true for those students I could not convince to invest in understanding the subjects they were failing. One can hardly blame them, considering the new wave of multiple choice standardized testing in our schools. A, B, C, or D? That is the only question that matters anymore. Forget about "the why," forget about thinking for yourself, forget about alternative methods to solve a problem, even if they work. Just give them the formula in the book! And now, with Bush's monumental failure, (supported by both retarded sides of the aisle, mind you), the No Child Left Behind Act, this trend has gone even further. There is little if any time for art (the outlet for a child's creativity) or science (science's purpose is to understand the world, mind you) in the elementary classrooms anymore. I speak on this with authority, by the way; I know more than a few elementary school teachers personally. Also, this is not to pick on doctors. Theirs is just one of too many professions that exhibit the symptoms of Drone Thinking. And this is certainly not to pick on teachers, just the morons who wind up being their bosses.

Problem is, all these mathematical formulas, all these medicines, diseases studied and defined, treatment strategies, and, well, EVERY advancement in society since the wheel, required creativity and understanding. No Drone Thinker has ever contributed anything to society that resulted in advancement. The best any Drone Thinker has ever done is make it possible for someone else, someone with creativity, to do so. Why, then, do the powers that be encourage nothing but Drone Thinking, stamping out creativity and individualism whenever possible? (I could make a whole point about mind altering antidepressants and other drugs designed to make people non dynamic, complacent robots, but that is the subject of a future post.) The answer, I believe, can be found in nature.

Two examples come to mind in which the truest form of drones can be found: ants and bees. (Just so happens, these are perhaps the truest forms of communism on the entire planet. Coincidence?) Both cases feature colonies of insects that are all the same. A pack of dogs, on the contrary, is one working unit, but the dogs all have rank and individual personalities, skills, tasks to perform, etc. Some ants may have a few separate classes to perform different tasks on a limited scale, depending on the type of ant, but they are all essentially the same. They do simple, menial tasks. They have no individuality. They are strong and hard working, but not at all creative. Bees are the same way. They defend the hive, they make honey, they visit flowers... They do not differ from one another. They are drones. Now why is it, do you think, that today's leadership seems to favor Drone Thinking over virtues like creativity and understanding? Look further in to nature's example. At the center of every drone populated ant colony and bee hive in the world you will find one thing: a queen that rules them all.