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Peripatetic Rat
Hitching a ride on humanity’s progress.
Feb 26 · 9 min read
On Being | krēˈādiv |
Creative is not reaching for a lightbulb. (Via James Pond on Unsplash).
One De&nition.
(Old Idea) — Creativity — (Old Idea)
This is, apparently, one of the de7nitions of creativity. That’s to say the
combinational act that happens between two old ideas, the pzazzz! that
links them both anew. We are often seduced by the notion that creativity
happens, like the proverbial eureka! moment, in a period of intense focus
and devastating convergence of mental faculty. Furrowed brows, light
bulbs, sitting in a bath. A shocking combination. Creativity is linked perhaps too closely with our use of the term ‘create’, as in our notions of
what we see as ‘created’. The Big Bang. Something where there was
nothing. Some form of Creator. Its use often implies the monumental,
the ultimate.
Let’s step away from that and take the wheel.
The greater invention, the donut followed in 1847.
Why would this invention occur?
1. I have lots of stuL here.
2. I really want to take it there.
3. The stuL is too heavy, and there is too far.
The understanding was that the circular shape possessed constant traction with the ground, and therefore progressive movement. A square did
not, despite whatever the Flintstones projected. The creative genius did
not lie in placing goods on top of the wheel and rolling it. It lay in comprehension of a connective element, namely the load bearing capacity
between two wheels, enabled by the axle, which rose to prominence
somewhere around 3200BCE in Mesopotamia. This united two circles
with a line. It was of course due to prevailing conditions, that being a
general appetite for transportation.
. . .
So What’s Your Point?
That the axle didn’t magically appear in a bathtub in the Fertile Crescent.
The noble wheel was probably around since the earlier date of 3500BCE,
devised with a horizontal use to create pottery. Taking a now ‘old’ concept, the potter’s wheel, and employing it to link another thorny old concept, that of ‘moving stuL’, was the inherent creative genius in birthing
transport.
No genius meditated deeply on this quandary, and
simply magicked a novel concept out of their singular
ass. This shit was crowdfunded in the agora. — Plato
Creativity isn’t supreme novelty. It doesn’t have to completely elude your
understanding due to its containing heretofore undiscovered concept
matter. It is, happily, usually an iteration of something already there. The
unholy marriage of two ideas laying around in plain view.
The trick is ‘simply’ to see the links.
. . .
How?
Well. There is no perfect ‘how’ that can hand you a roadmap to creativity.
That would infer that the process is wholly understood, regulated, and
demarcated. It is actually a quest to, at the risk of sounding too Yodaesque, ‘unlearn what you think you know’. Or whatever could be clouding your vision. It could be your immediate environment, too much
caLeine, too little caLeine, the strictures of time in a work-mandated
schedule, or simply the following statement:
Perfection is creativity’s biggest foe.
A common example would be 7nding oneself in a state of dire hunger in
a new place (the 7rst day of your city vacation) and wanting to locate the
best possible meal for your 7rst taste of local food. The notion that ‘this
place looks ok but I bet there’s something better round the corner’ often
leads to a growing resentment and uncertainty of the situation, coupled
with a growing hunger that baYes any sense of logic. What constitutes
that ‘perfect’ touchdown bite in a new place anyway?
This works for many people. Some possess an in-built drive to try and
complete a given project to some unde7nable level of completeness. A
wholeness that is complete. It’s a real pain in the ass, but it can also be
the fuel that propels hard work. It in no way means you are more eLective, and it can be the biggest issue that obstructs you from actually
achieving a goal or completing a given project remit. The tough part is
therefore 7guring out how to dismantle any notion of perfection, replacing it instead with an acceptance of continuous improvement. No matter
how much sweat you put into creating that piece of work, if you switch
gears and come back to it after a few days…it will seem in dire need of
correction. Like your essays at school.
Hamster Wheel of Eternal Improvement + Ultimate Outcome.
This is a healthy approach the 7rst time round. Update the work with
fresh eyes and wrap it up. Done. Complete and walk away.
Or not.
The more you tweak it, the more tweakable it becomes. This can lead to
a 7xation on completing the project only, and thus can diminish further
creative streaks. It puts the 7nish line further out of reach because it’s the
only thing you see. This is that somewhat pointless realm of ineLectiveness you travel to when you’re operating on the immediate expectations
of people or the project around you instead of liberating yourself to forget about them or it. This is the bad side of ‘isolation’, what we would call
‘blinkered’.
So the opposite scenario, an ‘open mode’ if you will, is when you successfully manage to dispense caution to the Four Winds and peer into your
pocket to see how many reserve f***s you have left to give. It’s momentary freedom from obligation, and that means you get to decide what to
absorb. Information in front of you, the input of your colleague, or some
other in_uencing factor. Is it greedy? No, it’s personal absolution from
distraction to let your own mind distract you where it wants to.
It’s eLective, and grown up.
For your mind has a plan to take you where you want to go.
. . .
Open Shut Mind.
As with most things in life, nature has a tendency towards balance and
reciprocity. Thus, when it comes to working creatively, your mind can
work in the two states of ‘open’ and ‘closed’. The wondrous open mode
self, unencumbered by peripheral dross, is able to muse on problems and
rationalize what is required to attack them. Not isolated, but switched on
to calmly receive signals and input from around you that help you 7nd
what your mind is seeking.
The concurrent closed mode can be eLective if you wield it correctly.
Your closed mode state is actually required to engage solutions as revealed by your open mind. It battens down the hatches and reduces the
damnable options that can divert your attention. This is the good side of
‘isolation’, what we would call ‘focused’. Both sides work in concert to illuminate the pathway, then walk you down it to the end.
When the open mode bears fruit, the challenge is to pick it. That’s it. It’s
the key moment when your creative aptitudes are in sync with the challenge at hand. It’s the audible ‘click’ within your skull, and the gateway
moment for entrance to the @ow, your closed mode where focus brings
that solution to ultimate completion. This is the ‘eye on the prize’ component, and a sensible amount of tweaking aside, this is where you have to
7gure out what is required to make the closed mode work. Which distractions do you exclude? Do you stare at a blank wall? Gaze out a window on to a rich vista of inspiration? Maybe it means enduring hours of
terrifying peripheral procrastination before you pieces 7nally slot into
place?
Challenge vs. Skill, and where it tips you in to the Flow..
The above chart comes from a presentation by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
way back in the NeverNever of 2004. It proceeds at a stately pace, so
(start from here) the skinny version goes like this:
The stimulation fundamental to the active application of creativity @ows
when the level of challenge of a given task spikes enough to match the level of
personal skill you possess for that task.
So you’re good enough to take on a challenge, but not before you know
you have what it takes!
You can push the envelope of your abilities, and to do so you may just
need to keep nudging the dial between a state of arousal (when you are
stimulated by challenge) and a state of control (when you are almost
overcon7dent with your skill set). It makes the _ow state sound impossible to enter, but when you approach with care you can see the entrance
clearly.
Going back to Csikszentmihalyi’s wonder chart above, note how the
emotions on the left (starting) side of the graph correlate with feelings of
uncertainty or borderline refusal when beginning a task. These change
as you acquire more project understanding and the scope of the task increases, piquing your interest as you dive in deeper. It’s when you’re
equipped with both the con7dence of knowledge and the excitement of
what you can do with it that you can fully immerse and go with the @ow.
And by this we mean it’s ok to understand the limits of your own current
expertise, so you aren’t taking on challenges that you may not currently
be quali7ed to face.
“In human societies, knowledge is distributed.”
It’s. Ok.
. . .
State of Being.
Although creativity isn’t a simple beast to de7ne, the above approach
holds merit as it allows you to actively map your potential progress towards entering a creative _ow state via one simple process.
How?
Analyze your current emotional state!
‘Being in the moment’, ‘being present’, ‘mindfulness’, these are all terms
that have lately been popularized to counteract the vast ptotential for
distraction we face. Close the browser, swich oL the box, don’t feel the
absurd need to be painfully collaborative with those around you all the
time! When you can ask yourself how you are truly feeling at this moment (getting touchy feely here), you can ascertain how those emotions
relate to your real progress on your creative work. You may then sense
which of the following conditions you are experiencing, indicating you
are in the _ow:
1. Involvement — deep focus. Serenely so.
2. Ecstasy — removed from regular reality.
3. Inner clarity — as Eddie Morro said in ‘Limitless’*:
I wasn't high, I wasn't wired.
Just clear.
I knew what I needed to do
and how to do it.
Read more:
https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?
movie=limitless
*(Admittedly he was railed on NZT-48, but the point of clarity is the promise
of the drug).
Feeling any of these?
. . .
Unicorns. The &nal word.
Why? The unicorn symbolizes the frantic race to be special. DiLerent.
Rare. It’s the current cultural apotheosis of making it Big. It clouds one’s
view and denies creativity to _ourish.
Using the ‘U’ word scratches a worrying line in the sand. It’s a pretext for
a jolly romp down the Yellow Brick Road toward some kind of perfection.
And which side of the line you land on infers your success or failure.
Though this is a tech sector-centric metaphor, and golly gosh it is a concern, it still applies to our societal fascination with the rainbow shitting,
joyously galavanting pony as something systemically aspirational.
While sad, everyone heaved a collective sigh of relief.
The unicorn has come to denote the quest for self-validation in uniqueness. While this is wrapped, marketed and consumed in all manner of
joyously multicolored toss, it’s sad that we need to search outside of reality for such a powerful cultural metaphor. The rhino is practically the
same, extant, though probably rarer than the damn unicorn!
Whatever creature becomes a totem for vaunted perfection, it is still a
search for just that. There is nothing collectively stimulating about trying
to attain such rarity. It denies the serenity required for just being, just focusing on the project at hand.
Okay, so this may be a rather drastic summation, but it’s called a
metaphor for a reason. It’s not a call for the mass culling of aspiration,
more a suggestion that if you constantly need to keep up with the Jones/
⽥田中/李李/Nguyen/Garcia people (or whatever works in your hood), then
you’re preaching to the crowd and not talking with yourself.
Creativity is diLerent for all of us, and that’s why it needs to originate
within each of us.
. . .
No animals real or mythical were harmed during the creation of this catharsis. I’d like to open up and explore what creativity means, how it enacts, and
how we can let it happen in subsequent posts.