I’m very tired of hearing this definition of insanity: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” People think that they are so clever when they use this definition against their opponent that you can almost see them straining their own arm to pat themselves on the back. For example, I hear this slogan most often as an out of hand dismissal of Communism: “Well, Communism may sound nice, but has been tried before and has failed; therefore trying it again would literally be insane.”
I’m not here to defend Communism; it has some serious problems in my judgment. But I want to discuss this odd analysis of insanity, and then next week, apply these observations to the current health care debate. There are two dramatic insufficiencies with this so-called definition of insanity. First, it would require us to say that it was insane of Edison to try again and again, even 100 times, to invent the light bulb. It must have been insane – right?, because he did the same activity over and over again expecting different results. This, of course, is false. The obvious response is that even though engaged in same activity again and again, he did it in a different way each time. That makes his actions completely sane.
Or consider my adventures with my computer. Sometimes, I click a button, and I get an error message. Then, I click the same button again. And I get the exact same error message again. This may happen a third or fourth time, until the fifth time it finally works. I did everything in exactly the same way, but my actions are not insane because I was hoping – and reasonably so - that the underlying conditions had changed.
What these two examples show is that it is stupid to say, for example, “well, health care reform has been tried several times before, and failed every time; therefore it is insane for Obama to try it again.” It is not insane for both of the reasons introduced above; Obama is trying to reform the health care system in a different way (like Edison). Furthermore, the underlying conditions have changed (like me clicking the same button repeatedly). Next week I want to discuss these underlying conditions that have shifted.
