Trail Safe Three-Pronged Self-Defense

A few years back, I had the privilege of working with a business consultant named Joel Arthur Barker. Barker popularized the concept of "paradigms," by his definition, the rule-set by which we view our world. Barker contended that businesses often blind themselves to new opportunities by being trapped in their paradigms, unable to see what, in retrospect, would be opportunity knocking. Barker used the classic business example of the Swiss watch industry. Prior to cheap digital watches, the Swiss watchmakers ruled the roost, controlling something like 70 percent of the worldwide market for watches. Amazingly, Swiss industry researchers actually invented digital watch technology, then literally gave it away because they didn't see any value in it. A watch was a timepiece, an heirloom, and a once-in-a-lifetime buy. It wasn't a piece of cheap junk with a chip in it. Of course, it turned out that people didn't want an expensive heirloom; they just wanted to know what time it was. The Swiss watch industry nearly collapsed amidst the tidal wave of cheap digital watches produced for this market.

However, the Swiss did have the last laugh (proving that they learned quickly and could abandon paradigms) when they roared back with "fashion" watches—buy a bunch, one for each outfit—effectively shattering the paradigm that a person might need only one or two watches.

In an effort to demonstrate our personal paradigms, Barker developed a series of experiments. One of Barker's experiments involved scuba divers. He took a plain old red Coca-Cola can down 50 feet or so underwater, then sent divers down to look at the can. When the divers came up, Barker asked them a simple question—what color was the Coke can? Without exception, the divers confirmed that the can was red. One small problem here—color constitutes a reflection of a specific wavelength of light. The wavelength of light that we define as red doesn't penetrate that deeply through water. It was physically impossible for the can to be red, because, at that depth, red doesn't exist. The can was white. Even upon repeated questioning, the divers insisted that they had seen a red can.

Barker then created another, less-wet test. This time, he had a special deck of cards made. The hearts and diamonds of Barker's deck were black instead of red; the spades and clubs were red instead of black. The simple experiment entailed quickly showing people a card and asking them what color it was. Barker found that more than 80 percent of the people tested insisted that hearts and diamonds were red and spades and clubs were black.

Barker concluded that our filters are so powerful that they can actually work in reverse and tell us what we experience. The divers "saw" a red Coke can, even though the can should have appeared white, because somewhere in their brain a usually handy filter says, "Coke cans are red, silly." Our experimental card players "saw" black spades and red hearts because they had their own set of filters that says, "Spades = black and hearts = red."