The Thinker challenges the conventional wisdom
The Thinker has always challenged the conventional wisdom.
Challenging received wisdom is the first duty of a Thinker because, as everyone knows, the conventional wisdom is always wrong.
The Thinker stands outside the conventional wisdom, answerable only to evidence, reason, and the professional requirement to produce a counterintuitive argument by Thursday.
The problem is that almost everyone the Thinker knows also claims to oppose the conventional wisdom. Every article promises to challenge prevailing assumptions. Every conference seeks to move beyond stale orthodoxies. Every panel consists of four independent minds courageously disputing positions that none of them appears to hold.
The Thinker suspects that challenging conventional wisdom has itself become the conventional wisdom.
This poses a serious professional problem. How can you distinguish yourself in contesting a conventional wisdom that everyone already condemns?
It is a challenge worthy of the Thinker’s genius.
The Thinker could defend the supposed consensus. That would certainly be counterintuitive, perhaps even revolutionary. Few of his peers would expect a leading independent thinker to argue that government officials, mainstream analysts, and respected institutions broadly understand the issue correctly.
But this seems reckless.
The conventional wisdom might be right in some narrow, technical sense (which is probably how it became conventional in the first place). Yet saying so would leave the Thinker with no obvious role. Newspapers rarely commission articles titled “Officials Have Thought About This Carefully.” Policymakers do not need him to tell them that their policies are sensible; they have entire org charts full of deputies, special assistants, and deputy assistants for that.
The Thinker understands, however, that the conventional wisdom need not consist of propositions that are widely believed—or, for that matter, believed by anyone at all. It is better understood as a group of people no one actually likes. The conventional wisdom, in this view, emerges from the Blob, a vaguely defined establishment that dominates thought in Washington.
The Blob has a peculiar composition. It includes everyone in Washington except the person currently denouncing it. Like dark matter, the Blob cannot be observed directly; its existence is inferred from the energy devoted to opposing it.
The Thinker, by that definition, is not part of the Blob. Blob Thinkers attend the same conferences, appear in the same newspapers, circulate through the same institutions, and compete for the same grants. But they carry tired establishment ideas into the system. The Thinker, by contrast, carries fresh establishment ideas into it.
The Thinker’s greatest professional asset is identifying as an outsider who just happens to be located on the inside. His craft is the ability to present a familiar conclusion through a seemingly distinctive analytical lens.
Producing a small-batch, artisanal heterodoxy on a weekly basis, however, is not easy.
The Invention of Tradition
Surveying the current intellectual landscape, the Thinker quickly identifies the Blob’s latest consensus: the world has entered a new era of great-power competition. The Thinker sees what the tired establishment cannot. The world’s major powers are not competing so much as regressing. They remain trapped in adolescence. The United States seeks reassurance that it is still dominant. China craves recognition. Russia acts out. Middle powers test boundaries. Smaller states play one parent off against another.
What the international system needs is “Geopolitical Adulthood”.
The phrase is ridiculous, but only if you think about it. It sounds new but also instantly familiar and inevitable, like something history has been waiting to call itself.
His argument is that power now requires emotional as well as material maturity. Adult states accept limits, take responsibility for their neighbourhoods, and stop expecting the international system to validate their identities. The article’s real target is the establishment, whose talk of credibility, resolve, and leadership the Thinker diagnoses as textbook adolescence.
The Thinker titles the resulting article “The World Must Grow Up” and peppers it with references to Geopolitical Adulthood.
Foreign Affairs eats it up.
At first, colleagues resist. Some object that states do not possess childhoods. Others say the metaphor privileges Western ideas of maturity. One reviewer complains that the concept lacks clarity and asks whether China is an adolescent, a parent, or a civilisation-state. The Thinker regards this confusion as evidence of the concept’s richness.
Gradually, the phrase spreads.
A popular columnist writes that Washington and Beijing must “achieve Geopolitical Adulthood.” A foundation launches a Global Maturity Initiative. A thinktank conference asks whether the Global South has entered Geopolitical Adulthood. A consultancy produces a Strategic Maturity Index based on defence spending, diplomatic restraint, and a willingness to attend summits in other people’s capitals.
Eventually, a foreign minister announces in her new national security strategy that “Our country is ready to assume the responsibilities of Geopolitical Adulthood.”
The Thinker’s idea has escaped the narrow world of reports and seminars. He has “elevated the debate”.
The Thinker feels a small surge of pleasure, followed quickly by concern.
When the Heresy Becomes the Creed
Governments have turned a subtle framework into a hierarchy in which powerful states declare themselves mature and classify everyone else as adolescent. The language of adulthood now disguises coercion, condescension, and the desire to subjugate others. Worse, the foreign minister did not credit him.
Soon “Geopolitical Adulthood” appears everywhere. Lesser analysts use it casually on television. Journalists describe it as the emerging consensus. A university launches a Centre for the Study of Geopolitical Adulthood. People who once questioned the term now earnestly explain it to the Thinker.
The phrase becomes useful precisely because it can redefine any policy in a relatable way without actually changing it.
Intervention becomes adult responsibility; restraint becomes adult self-control. Joining an alliance demonstrates maturity, while refusing to join one shows adult independence. China invokes Geopolitical Adulthood to demand respect for its status. The United States invokes it to demand that China behave more responsibly. Every state proves its maturity by continuing to do what it had already intended to do.
Another Turn of the Wheel
The Thinker realises that his challenge to the conventional wisdom has become the conventional wisdom. He explains to his colleagues that the establishment has settled into groupthink. They nod and tell him they have reached the same conclusion.
It is time to challenge the conventional wisdom of his own idea. He writes a second article, “Beyond Geopolitical Adulthood.”
The problem, he notes, is not that his original argument was wrong. On the contrary, it was so right that others corrupted it. The problem lies not in the concept but in its vulgarisation by the Blob. Circumstances have changed. Evidence has accumulated. The policy debate has moved on, arguably full circle.
He explains that the adulthood metaphor has infantilised international politics. The Blob, he writes, has embraced adulthood the way it embraces everything: as a substitute for thought.
The moment demands a challenge to this new orthodoxy: Strategic Mindfulness.
The Thinker now finds himself in the odd position of opposing a consensus he has helped create. That is lonely work, but intellectual independence often is.
His new article attracts even more attention. Journalists praise it as a challenge to entrenched thinking. Officials invite him to discuss its implications. Other analysts begin using his latest formulation.
A few months later, a prime minister announces that his country will achieve Strategic Mindfulness by 2040.
The Thinker listens with mixed emotions. His ideas have challenged the conventional wisdom yet again. Already, he is starting to see their limitations.