!%#$#!!

I am living through a classic example of the difficulties with creativity.  For the next umpty-gek postings, this will be a double helix book.  This means that 2 books will travel side by side.  The problem I have is the layout limitations on blogger.com  ---- so dear readers, I need your help. Essentially what I need is an 8.5 x 11" LANDSCAPE format posting space.  Anything less will crunch the tables and artwork of the two books and render the helix template a disaster.  If you have suggestions --- please, please send them to me --- or post them as comments.  Thanks so much.  We'll get this ups and going eventually.

Joe Anderson

Author's Note #2

Dear Readers -

I am finally on the mend.  My thanks for the many notes.  

I will have a new post for you on or before, July 4th.

Joe Anderson

AUTHOR'S NOTE #1

Dear Readers,

I've just had an operation and experienced a few nasty complications.  It will therefore be a week or two before I make new posts.  Thank you for your patience and best wishes.

Joe Anderson

3-D STOP THE PRESS!

I just had an insight.  .  I was wrong about Edison and Carver.  They were creative.  Very creative.    They were both masters of synthesis and modification.  They just weren’t inventive.  And I have fallen into the same trap I’ve been trying to get you out of.  Isn’t that a kick?  I could rewrite these first 3 chapters to hide my faux paux, but I think I’ll just leave them as is.  Maybe it’ll illustrate the creative process.  Besides, it has literally taken me 15 years to get from the prior paragraph to this one, and I’d like to have something to show for all that time. This is it.

 

The difference between

Edison and Einstein is locale.

 

They were both creative, perhaps equally so.  They just chose to use that creativity in different locales – Einstein on the mountain top, Edison in the trenches.  This one simple observation has just opened my eyes, and everything which follows is a result of this one little epiphany.  Here’s my brain teaser for you ----- once you step beyond the wall, where do you want to go?

 

Let’s do a quick quiz

   How do you want to use this tool called creativity?

   Do you want to exploit the current system in which you find yourself --- Or do you want to change it?

   What drives you: the quest for wealth and glory --- or the welfare of mankind?

   Are you looking for one good idea --- or a whole new way to think?

   Do you need things to be concrete --- or are you happy as a clam with mushy thought?

   What counts as long term for you: a month --- or a century?

   Is there such a thing as ultimate truth --- Would you know it if you saw it?

Your answers to these kinds of questions will tell you where to go once you step outside the wall.  And for the sake of simplicity, let’s consider just two options:

1. you can work on the mountain top, or
2. you can work in the trenches.

Life on the mountain top   is pretty heady stuff.  You dine with Copernicus, Marx and Gandhi.  You debate with Galileo, Cicero and Franklin.  Thomas Jefferson stops by for cocktails with Mozart and his friends, Henry Ford and Michelangelo.  And you personally spend your life looking for that next big thing that alters the course of human history.  You do that primarily by practicing the Invention aspect of creativity, with inevitable help from the Synthesis aspect.

Life in the trenches   is a different story.  Jack Welsh will regale you with the stories of General Electric, Bill Gates will join you and Steven Jobs for a lively discussion on the relative merits of brilliance and doggedness, to which Edison will offer his 90% retort (it’s 90% perspiration).  And you will dedicate yourself to great ideas that’ll grab an extra 6% of market share, decrease turnover, or raise the test scores of your 8^th grade class 9 points.  And where will you get those great ideas? Most of them will be from the Modification aspect, but the real breakthroughs will come from Synthesis.  Pure invention, however, does not generally live in the trenches.  It prefers the rarified air of the mountain top. 

The bulk of life is lived in the trenches, not on the mountain top.  But if some of us weren’t up there taking on the big issues, the rest of us would soon run out of new things to do down here in the trenches.  And when that happens, society implodes.  Education stagnates, then ceases altogether, because – frankly – what’s the point?  Then the economy falters.  But the ensuing mass unemployment is dwarfed by the fact that our military hasn’t come up with a new weapon in 200 years so we’re left fighting a short final battle with some nation (or planet) who kept growing and changing --- because they had the good sense to encourage some of their people to live on the mountain top, with their heads in the clouds – chasing the ultimate verities of life.  My point is that the mountain and the trench are inextricably tied together.  Therefore, any reasonable book about creativity needs to address life at both locales.  The question, of course, is how to do it.

The most popular approach to this problem is to pretend it doesn’t exist.  You declare that the world is simple, and then focus on one little corner of life in the trenches.  These are the books that read like a Ginzu knife ad.  Breathless, upbeat, singsong – “Life is simple, just follow these 3 easy steps to guaranteed success --- but wait! There’s more! You also get the 4 pillars, and this attractively wrapped home version of the 8 commandments of prosperity.  Just call ……….”  You get the picture.

Another approach is to try to lump both locales into the same pot and try to come up with a few general rules that make sense out of the stew that results.  I tried this approach myself, for 15 years.  It doesn’t work.  Too complex.  It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing.  It just wears out the farmer and irritates the pig. 

So you are left with the only other option.  You write a separate book for each locale.  One book for creativity on the mountain top, and a separate one for creativity in the trenches.  I tried this approach  too.  It doesn’t work either.  The commonality of Synthesis to both locales means that there is considerable common ground between the two forms of creativity – so separating them is artificial. And then you also have the problem of memory decay.  By the time you get to the second book, you’ve already forgotten the bulk of what was in the first book.

So I decided to practice what I preach.  I invented a 4^th option.

Welcome to the world of double helix books

Susie calls this the schitzo book.  Starting with the next chapter:

-    the left hand page will be a freestanding book about creativity on the mountaintop; while

-    the right hand page will be a freestanding book about creativity down in the trenches.

You will note that they are separated by a shaded gutter, and have different typefaces, and different types of illustrations, which will help you stay on track.  But I encourage you not to.

You see, there is no one right way to read this book.

-    You can read the complete mountaintop book first and then the complete trench book

-    Or vice versa

              -    Or you can do a mountain top chapter followed by a trench chapter

-    Or vice versa

-    Or you can read a mountaintop page followed by it’s corresponding trench page.

-    Or vice versa

-    Or you can just start reading until something catches your eye on the other page, then jump to that book until something catches your eye back in the original one.

-    It’s a little like hyper-linking.

The two books are NOT purposely coordinated and integrated.  Yet there is a surprising amount of integration, sometimes in incredibly forceful ways. 

My recommendation is that you read  the whole @#$%! thing a couple of times.  

I did. 

 

Good luck

 

 

 

© 2009 Joe Anderson

3-C – SEVERAL USEFUL OBSERVATIONS

  1. Creativity involves navigating between and among the constraints and opportunities established by the environment.

2.  We tend to see even more constraints (boundaries) than really exist.

3.  There is wide latitude within the boundaries.

4.  Sometimes creativity involves changing or violating the boundaries themselves.

SEEING RELATIONSHIPS

Creativity is a matter of seeing new relationships, like finding a fruit that guards the house, is incredibly loyal and plops itself into your cereal bowl.  Al Capp invented just such a creature back in 1948 in his comic strip "Li'l Abner".  It was called a Shmoo.¹

Odd?  Yes.  Unreasonable?  Nope, the shmoo was just new and shocking, because it appeared to violate the laws of nature, including those about animated phalluses. But wait a minute.  The laws of nature are merely boundaries.  They're just one more wall of rationality.  And they've been vaulted before. 

The laws of physics tell us that one body cannot occupy two places at the same time.  Well, the essence of that law was violated thousands of years ago, with the first letter.  One's thoughts could be in Athens, and in Corinth, at the same time.  And if we take Descartes at his word, "I think, therefore, I am", (cogito ergo sum) – an ancient author simultaneously existed in both places, since his thoughts did. 

Here's an interesting thought.  I moved in with you the moment you opened this blog.  What's for dinner?

The telephone and live TV are simply better violations of the same law, because the thoughts are truly simultaneous whereas the letter writer had probably forgotten the thought by the time it got to Corinth.  In order for letters, phones, telegraphs, and TV's to be invented someone had to believe that the laws of nature could, in effect, be broken.  And one of the biggies is the definition of “place.”  It used to be static.  I had to get home before I turned on the tube or made a call.  The cell phone made “place” dynamic.  Place is wherever I, and my phone, happen to be at the moment.

What About You?

So now we've established the concept of creativity.  It is the Great ISM; which requires both insight and action.  Do you recognize it?  Probably so.  But the big question is, have you experienced it in your own life?  Do you know what it feels like?  In short, are you creative?

 Most of us say "no" because we've never done anything big with it.  We've never written a symphony, much less a hit song.  We've never painted the Sistine Chapel, much less our own house.  We never really invented anything.  So we're likely to sit back and content ourselves with identifying creativity rather than practicing it.  That makes us as useless as a drama critic ... all talk and no action.

The fact of the matter is we've all been creative.  Most of us just missed that fact because we never labeled our behavior as such.  And that's because we didn't understand the various types of creativity.  Remember, creativity is nothing more than vaulting the wall.  Composing a symphony certainly qualifies.  But so does inventing the automobile, and much to our surprise, so does rearranging office furniture to improve work flow.  Creativity exists to the same degree in all three ventures.  And that's a point we often miss.  The action determines the existence of creativity, not the fame and fortune that might follow it. 

So far we’ve done two important things.

1.  We’ve established that creativity has three aspects:

Ø    Invention, Synthesis and Modification.

2.  We’ve also established that you trigger creativity by relaxing one or more of the constraints imposed by the Wall of Rationality you currently inhabit.

So congratulations, you are now willing to consider life beyond the wall.

 

End Notes

1.     The precise description of a schmmo is “…the lovable creature [that] laid eggs, gave milk and died of sheer esctasy when looked at with hunger. The Shmoo loved to be eaten and tasted like any food desired. Anything that delighted people delighted a Shmoo. Fry a Shmoo and it came out chicken. Broil it and it came out steak. Shmoo eyes made terrific suspender buttons. The hide of the Shmoo if cut thin made fine leather and if cut thick made the best lumber. Shmoo whiskers made splendid toothpicks. The Shmoo satisfied all the world's wants. You could never run out of Shmoon (plural of Shmoo) because they multiplied at such an incredible rate. The Shmoo believed that the only way to happiness was to bring happiness to others.” The schmoo was the number 1 merchandising phenomena of the early fifties, featured in Lil Abner the leading newspaper cartoon series of its day (60 million readers per day).   Source:http://www.al-capp-lil-abner.com/

 

  © 2009 Joe Anderson

 

3B - SINBAD AND THE CAVE OF TORTURE

  Sinbad, the penniless sailor of myth and legend, was held captive by the evil sorcerer-king.  After a period of unspeakable torture, the king came to him with a riddle that would determine his ultimate fate. 

   "See, here." said the king. "I have a parchment with nine spots.  Your life depends on how you use them.  I want you to connect them all with as few lines as possible.  The lines must be straight.  And each line must touch another, as though a hand had made them all without leaving the page. 

   "If it takes you five lines or more," said the king, "I shall leave you in this living hell of daily torture.  Four lines buys you a speedy and painless death.  Three buys your freedom.  And if you do the impossible, and use only two, you win my kingdom, the hand of my daughter, and I shall become your prisoner." 

.      .      .

.      .      .

.      .      .

  Sinbad pondered a moment, carefully folded the parchment several times, then stabbed it with a stick.  "There, my Lord", said Sinbad. "Nine spots with a single line.  And the price for it is your head."  The king let out a fearful scream of disbelief, then realizing that his own riddle had doomed him, he ripped off his head with his bare hands and gave it to Sinbad before collapsing.  Sinbad of course, took the daughter, the treasure and the kingdom and lived in sumptuous wealth to a ripe old age.  Modification, you see, can be as creative and as useful as invention.

The Creative Eye

   Creativity is how Sinbad got a head.  As you can see, bad puns often hold great truths.  The fact is that many folks spend their entire lives in the cave of torture, because they simply do not see the opportunities that sit in their laps.  They deny themselves their own creativity by imposing even more constraints on themselves than the natural order or an evil king ever imagined, such as:

      -     the paper must remain flat,

 -       we can't diminish or increase the size of the dots,

 -       we have to use a standard size writing instrument,

 -       all the constraints are equally important, or

-    we can't go outside the apparent boundaries.

The last one is a major cause of creative blindness.  Take another look at the piece of parchment.  When we first look at it, we imagine that the outer dots form a fence, and all our efforts must remain tortuously inside.  But if we do that, 5 lines is the best we can do.  It is only when we go outside that self imposed boundary that we arrive at the 4 line solution

That's creativity, literally going beyond the boundaries.  And things get even more interesting when you try to do it with one line.  As it turns out, Sinbad didn't have the only good solution.  In fact, you may want to try your own before you proceed.  Now here's a word to the wise.  If that doesn’t do it for you, well --- you know, if it were me I’d give up on logical solutions.  I’d get frustrated and start doing stupid stuff.  Give it a try.  It might be good therapy

Now, let’s take a look at some solutions.

Solution A - change the environment.  Go to a copier and set it on "reduce".  Then keep re-running the parchment until the 9 dots essentially merge into 1 dot.  Then your #2 Ticonderoga will "connect"  them in 1 line.  Or get a gigantic magic marker.  The net effect is the same.

Solution B - go a step further.  In addition to changing the size of the dots (this time making them gigantic), also change the contour of the page – roll it into a cylinder.  Once you've done those two things, one line will circle the tube and go through all 9 dots, if you pick the right angle --- like a descending staircase.

Solution C  - is the effectiveness solution. If the core task (connecting the dots with 1 line) is important enough, violating one or more of the constraints may be the proper solution.  We simply remove a constraint and use a curved line.  Let is snake its way through all 9 dots.  Pretty simple, and effective.

  

 

© 2009 Joe Anderson

3A - THE GREAT "ISM"

Watch CNN.  What you'll see played out before your eyes every single night is that the world is ruled, rocked and healed by "isms". 

Ø     Creationism traveling in the guise of Intelligent Design, contends with Darwinism for control of public schools.

Ø     We've set up an entire government network to find sexism, ageism and racism under every bed because we no longer have communism hiding under there to frighten and entertain us.

Ø     We watch nationalism turn Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Chechnya into pools of blood and genocide,

Ø     and we wish to goodness that everyone would just choose baptism and capitalism so that we could all get a good night's sleep

Ø     ... as long as we don't experience nightmares about liberalism or socialism. 

Ø     And then we awaken to the "Today" show where some dweebish scholar tells us that last night's bomb attack simply illustrated the ongoing battle between Romanticism and Rationalism, which is, of course, the engine that drives terrorism.

 

Enter the Great ISM

We are surrounded by isms.  They are the energy that propels civilization towards its own future.  And if we want to determine whether that future will be prosperity or the poorhouse, we need to tap into the one great ism that is the foundation for all the rest.  Its name is ISM, somewhat like giving your name as "I am the great I AM", which tips us off that this is a concept of Biblical proportions.  And yet, like most great concepts, it is simplicity itself. 

The Great ISM stands for Invention, Synthesis, and Modification, the 3 ways that creativity expresses itself.

 1. Invention.   It is the act of making something out of nothing.  With fervid apologies to physicists and their theory of atomic displacement, it is possible to make something out of nothing.  Beethoven faced a blank page and made the immortal 5th symphony spring to life.  Shakespeare did the same with Othello and a host of other masterpieces.  The Wright brothers filled an empty sky with planes.  Without the things that come from invention, we'd still be living in caves.  However, don't lose sight of the fact that it is also possible to invent an idea.  Someone invented the idea of freedom.  And someone else invented the ideas of exchange, democracy, home and family.  And someone else invented the word "invent".  Think about that for a moment.  An airplane is meaningless unless someone first invents the idea of flight, and the words and numbers to express it.  Wow.  In that case, the greatest inventor of all time was probably the person who invented the first word.  It was probably a noun; something like “food”.  Up until that moment nobody knew what he wanted.  Everything was confusion.  After that moment, everybody knew what he wanted.  It worked so well, we invented a word for everything and the world changed.  That’s why the book of John in the New Testament begins, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  It was trying to say that God (Jehovah, Yahweh, I AM) was the great inventor of all of life.  Now that's what you call staking a claim.   Anyway, invention is without question a form of creativity.  But it is not the only form, nor is it even the most important one.  There are others of equal import - which is crucial to remember - because most creative people are not inventors.

 

2. Synthesis is the act of relating two or more previously unrelated phenomena.  Take a cake.  Take a shovel.  Put them side by side and stare at them.  Boom!  The cake server is born.  It's a miniature shovel.  That's synthesis.  The first wheel was the product of invention.  So was the first axle and the first box.  But until someone came along and synthesized them into the cart, mankind didn't get much good out of the three components.  Synthesis is the core of society's advancement.  Invention is nice, but synthesis is the real engine of survival and prosperity.  Have you ever performed synthesis?  Have you ever filled a balloon with water instead of air?  Now there's a very gratifying bit of creativity, especially when performed on a 4th floor balcony.  Have you ever used a carpenter's chisel to separate frozen hamburger patties?  Have you ever found that a beach was more conducive to reading than a library?  If so, congratulations.  You synthesized.  And that puts you in the same league as Thomas Edison.  He never created anything in his whole life.  All he did was suck the brains of others and synthesized like crazy.  So whadayathink?  You creative?

 

3. Modification is the act of altering something that already exists so that it can: (a) perform its function better, (b) perform a new function, (c) perform in a different setting, or (d) be used by someone new.  Putting pontoons on an airplane doesn't change the function of the plane (take off, fly, land), but it certainly broadens the settings in which it can perform its function.  Moving a hose to the back end of a vacuum cleaner changes the whole function of the machine, from sucking to blowing.  And something as simple as lowering a water fountain, or adding a footstool opens its use to a whole new group - unattended children. The most ambitious modification effort of all time might just be the effort to rebuild and re-inhabit New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

THE GREAT ISM IS IMPURE

            Invention, synthesis and modification are the crux of creativity.  But they do not exist in isolation.  Instead, they overlap so much that it is difficult to separate them in reality.   In fact, we are hard pressed to find any examples of pure invention beyond the creation story in the first few chapters of The Bible.  And even there, Eve came from Adam's rib, a marvelous by-product of synthesis and modification.  Creativity, therefore, is best envisioned as a bubbling stew in which the various components lose their crisp separate identities and start to meld into an interwoven whole.

            This is a crucial point, because it affects our self-confidence and the goals we feel we must meet before we accept ourselves as being creative.  You don't have to invent in order to be creative.  In fact, our most prolific inventor wasn't really an inventor.  Thomas Edison merely synthesized and modified existing items.  Vacuum bulbs had been around for a century.  So had burnable filaments.  And electricity had been the subject of scientific inquiry for half a millennium.  All Tom did was put it all together.  I don't know about you, but realizing this fact makes me feel a lot better.  I don't have to be God to be creative.  All I have to be is a conscientious version of me.  In fact, I can accomplish a lot in this life just living off of my ability to modify things, like Sinbad did.   (Next week – the adventures of Sinbad)

 © 2009 Joe Anderson