The Creative Contrarian

Wise Fool Strategy # 7Fool Around with the Constraints

“Limits are an artist's best friend.”

— Frank Lloyd Wright, American Architect

One of the Wise Fool's favorite ways to play with a problem is to look for solutions and possibilities outside the usual rules and guidelines. For example, in the 3rd century BC, the Greek city of Miletus experienced a sudden rash of copycat suicides by young women. The inspired solution of the city fathers to halt this? They decreed that any woman who committed suicide would first be carried naked through the marketplace before being buried. Did this violate their religious customs and norms of propriety? Absolutely, but the ancient historian Plutarch says that the city's unorthodox edict stopped the suicides cold.

Another example of this approach is the Macedonian general Alexander. In 333 BC, he and his army arrived in the Asia Minor town of Gordium to prepare for their upcoming military campaign against the Persian Empire. While there, Alexander heard about the legend surrounding the town's famous knot, the “Gordian Knot.” Supposedly a prophecy stated that whoever was able to untie this weirdly complicated assemblage of loops and twists was destined to become King of Asia.

Alexander was captivated by this story, and he asked to be taken ...