The last few weeks, I was discussing about the concept of thoughtleaders.

For me the idea of a thought leader, is that one person has a brilliant idea, she spreads that idea and she creates a tribe of people following that idea.
Our current culture is one of worshipping these people and they are instant famous (for 15 minutes or for eternity)
I personally have a few problems with this.

1. I don’t like the worshipping part. As humans these are not better or worse than other people.
   It actually puts a lot of pressure on these people and for some people it even creates the impression that they are god. We have seen a few examples of brilliant people who did stupid things on a personal level. I think our system of worshipping is partly to blame for that.
2. What is worse for me, is that this is a very limiting model.
   It means that only brilliant people can come up with idea’s: bummer for me, I’m not brilliant. And bummer for you, 50% of the people their IQ is below average.
   (Ok sorry, of course not my readers, you are all above average )
3. I believe that most ideas are actually created by networks of people.
4. The ideas created by many people are of higher quality then when they are created by one person.
5. On top this all, you can’t copyright an idea, so for me it’s wrong that one person can dictate how their idea should be used.

That last point is interesting to think about, because one if the side effects of this is the law of raspberry jam: The wider you spread it, the thinner it gets. Many thought leaders, try to counter this point by dictating that you can only do x their way. And yes, I have seen enough people trying to change something before they understand it, to understand why ThoughtLeaders ask this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All of this has inspired me to think, there should be another model, instead the model of thought leaders, we should have ThoughtJockeys.

What is the idea of a ThoughtJockey, well one part is, its created by a bunch of people. So Instead of me telling you what it is, I point you to a document that was a created by a bunch of people. I want to encourage you to:

1 read it completely

2 Adapt the parts that you think should be adapted

3 If you agree or if you changed something, please add your name to the contributors list.

Yves, wait are you tell me the full internet has editing rights?

Yes

Isn’t that insane? What about the hackers, spammer etc?

That’s why I call it an exercise of trust.
I want to see what happens, and where it takes us. And yes, when (not if, when) we will take action. Let’s for now see what trust can create.

As my father wrote a few years ago, most laws are created by a bunch of people over many years and that make them much better then just ideas of one or 2 people.

Please check with me, what’s happening….

www.ThoughtJockey.org