Problems with formulas

As much as I admire the myriad of models currently available in promoting efficiency and efficacy in the business and social world; I remain wary of the fact that we have perhaps become too formulaic in our approach to human interaction and life in general.  Formulas can sometime extinguish creativity and suffocate spontaneity.  Rules are necessary, but if we become too adherent to them, and leave little room for aberration, than we inadvertently limit ourselves.  By abiding to rules stringently, we are in fact surrendering our faculty to think critically. Flexibility is lost when we ensconce ourselves in the false security accord by formulas.  We risk yielding too readily to a certain set of outcomes on some logic tree or flow-chart, and neglect the fact there is something more.  Thinking outside the box is good, but who placed us in a box in the first place?  Having formulas work for dealing with the ordinary, but I do believe ultimately our goal is to be able to act extraordinary.

I believe the lesser the rules, the more flexibility therein.  The truth is the more we seek to define, the more we confine ourselves.  Systems strip away humanity in that we seek to operationally define human existence to measurable units, neglecting the fact that we have the potential to be infinite, that our experience can be vast.  Think of the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule; they are sublime in their simplicity.  The message is simple: be nice to one another, and don’t desire beyond your needs.  Yet much of that is lost in translation beneath the layers of formulas.