Many feel that it was René Descartes, with his famous saying *Cogito, ergo sum*, that launched the Age of Enlightenment, a worldview that continues to shape us today.
This statement, translating to “I think, therefore I am,” lifted the intellect to a throne that sat above all others in the human experience. Above the body, the emotions, and the spirit.
Descartes believed that, in a privileged transmission through the pineal gland in our brain, a singular and universal truth manifested through the intellect.
An intellect that allowed us to understand by taking things apart into smaller and smaller pieces. By understanding each of these pieces, we could not only understand the true nature of the whole, but we were empowered to reconfigure the parts into more efficient structures as a 'master architect'.
This mindset shaped how we created organizations and how we built nations. It lay the foundation for the Efficiency Movement that created Taylorism.
This worldview was also used to justify the creation of new social and organizational systems that centralized power into hierarchical structures based on the premise of superior intellect.
Structures of top-down authority that all too often used fear and shame to control human behavior, undermining the potential to unleash Creative Genius throughout an organization.