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