“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog one important thing” – Archilochus
The Greek philosopher Archilochus really started something. In today’s world, it is worth asking whether someone with many small tricks will have a better chance of success than someone with one big trick. Tricks of the trade can be thought of as tools for getting a job done. But there is a dynamic tension between having too many tricks or tools, as Erasmus reminds us “too many chefs, spoil the brew.”
The fox can escape the hounds through a portfolio of cunning subterfuges and stratagems while the hedgehog has only one trick: to curl up in a ball with its prickly quills pointing outward discouraging adversaries. One stratagem– but a very effective one at that. To effectively navigate a world of gray filled with ambiguity, fuzzy contradictions, and paradoxes that can often lead to what Isaiah Berlin referred to as “incommensurable truth or values.” Each is is true but to borrow Einsteins’s frame-of-reference” lens it all depends on your Point of View (POV ) particularly when it comes to metaphysical matters. A stationary observer watching a moving train (at a constant speed) from an embankment will have a different frame of refernece than the observer standing up in the train. This is physics and at the heart of the theory of relativity. When it comes to metaphysocal matters, POV is a function of one’s worldviews, values and belief systems. Right to life is not more or less true than the right to chose. They are incompatible matters not subject to simplified measurable analytics. These ar Berlin’s incommensurable truths/values. But it sure causes intractable responses from both sides of the tracks.
This is why our cultural ideologies are so hard to reconcile and create political dysfunction. A one trick approach of the hedgehog is to curl up in a ball and assume a defensive posture. The fox one the other hand has a more robust bag of tricks; empathy, compassion, deceit and cunning are all contextual tools that can provide a more adaptive, flexible response. Knowing when to act more like a hedge hog or a fox will be a valuable skill as we move into the future where as the military term VUCA comes into play. VUCA? What’s VUCA? As the War College tells us: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Some might recognize this as the Fog of War. Welcome to the VUCA-verse!
So it would seem that learning to blend the cunning of the fox with the less clever one-trick pony might be the best strategy in this brave new world of innovation. Morphing from all fox to all hedgehog or a combination of the two leads us tao believe that when it comes to successful innovation perhaps we are in need of a new breed of animal: meet the hedgefox. In the world of incommensurables– trying to measure two things that are not measurable– a single POV of a hedgehog will likely be ineffective. Trying to bludgeon a climate change skeptics with data and science will only tend to harden their positions. Their view is most unlikely due to any scientific argument or position but their system of values.
With other litmus test issues such as gun control, abortion, gay rights, and gender equality for example, Isaiah Berlin’s notion of incommensurability suggests that the two (or more) sides are not even having a conversation about the same topic. In a Wittgenschtein, Kuhnian et. al. duck-rabbit framework, each side is capable of seeing either the duck or the rabbit and there is sociological, psychological, physiological blockage, or perhaps baggage, that preempts even a well-meaning attempt of empathy to fail.
The value of choice versus cherishing human life can not be reconciled. They are both two completely different value sets. These issues are deeply embedded into the individual and group identity where world views, values, and belief systems trump all forms of rational argument. So be sure to sign up for our soon-to-be-launched HEDGEFOX ACADEMY. We will be looking for a few good men and women, and other himans with less traditional gender identities.
