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------------------------------------------ This is the second of nine chapters of THINK THUNDER! AND UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVITY Copyright (c) 1989 by Thomas A. Easton ------------------------------------------ CHAPTER 2: WHAT IS CREATIVITY? "The self-interest of mankind calls for a ... general effort to foster the invention of life. And that effort can be guided intelligently only by insight into the nature of the creative process." ---Brewster Ghiselin, ed., THE CREATIVE PROCESS (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952) WHO IS CREATIVE? YOU are creative. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You are human, and creativity is an essential part of being human. In fact, creativity has more to do with distinguishing us from other animals than tool-using, or play, or laughter, or communication. Many animals--chimps, blue jays, even ants--use tools. Lions and dogs play. Monkeys laugh. ALL animals communicate, and chimpanzees and gorillas have been taught to "talk" using sign language. But only humans constantly invent new tools, new political and social systems, new jokes, new languages. We cannot stop creating. Do we say that some people are creative, and some aren't? We oversimplify, for every human being is at least a little bit creative. Some--the Rachmaninoffs and Einsteins and Picassos and Stephen Kings--are very creative. Some seem just creative enough to decorate a cake. Most fall somewhere between the two extremes. We say that some are and some aren't because we recognize a vast gulf between ourselves and the Picasso and Einstein giants of creativity. We look at them, and we feel that our own inventions hardly deserve the name of creativity. But they do. The difference is one of degree, not kind. Our sense of the gulf between the "creative" and the "uncreative" is what fuels the creativity industry. We resent our shortage of creativity. We want to join the ranks of the artists, inventors, and innovative business people whom society admires and rewards. Or we wish simply to come up with ideas for, and then to write, school papers as easily as some of our fellows. And in school and out, our desire is strong enough to support an industry of books and courses and seminars that promise to make us more creative. Differences in creativity may strike us as unfortunate in an age that likes to insist that all people are created equal, but these differences are real. It is no myth that many people are indeed less creative than the favored few. We will discuss some reasons why this is so later on. For now, let us say simply that a great many people are less creative than they might be because their creative powers have been inhibited or leashed, often by ridicule and discouragement in childhood (and later). Still, though you may think yourself uncreative, and though you may in fact be less creative than the famous artists and inventors, you ARE creative. You have to be, not only because you are human, but also because some degree of creativity is essential in almost every human activity. Most animals do the things they do by little more than instinctive rote. There are exceptions, but most birds build nests, court mates, and sing songs in nearly the same way every time, generation after generation. Bees and wasps are even more mechanical. But human beings--we cannot dig a ditch without stacking rocks in attractive patterns. We cannot mow a lawn without making designs in the grass with the mower. We cannot pick up a pen without doodling. We cannot cook a meal without adding little touches of spice and herbs to the instructions in the recipe, and without arranging the food just so on the plate. Do we think that creative touches such as stacking rocks, mowing paths, and doodling have nothing to do with the job at hand? Do we think they even interfere with that job? Then think again, for they give us the freedom of self-expression and maintain our sanity and our interest in mindless, self-denying jobs. And then look in the kitchen: There we see how the creative touch becomes essential, for a restaurant with an uncreative cook quickly goes out of business (or should; one sometimes wonders). Why don't we see these simple things as creative? They ARE, for creativity is no more than a matter of coming up with new ways--necessary or not--to do things. But we don't THINK they are. They are too trivial, too simple, too ordinary, too much the sorts of things anyone can do, and we have built up a mythology of creativity based on the arts: The truly creative people are painters, sculptors, musicians, composers, poets, and novelists. They do not merely add trimmings to normal activities. They create new things from whole cloth--songs, stories, symphonies, and statues--and they are different from ordinary people, smarter, more independent, and even a little crazier. In recent years, we have extended this mythology of creativity to business. We have long recognized the creativity of advertising people and graphic artists. Now, driven by embarassing shortfalls in productivity and the loss of business to Japan and other nations, we are recognizing a need for innovation, and hence the value of the creativity of inventors, entrepreneurs, and business consultants of a thousand stripes. At the same time, our increased awareness of creativity in nonartistic realms lets us recognize that scientists, physicians, scholars, lawyers, teachers, hobbyists, and many more are also creative people. Artists, inventors, and business innovators do not have any monopoly on the creative ability. Creativity is indeed something for everyone! It is simply the ability to come up with ideas, and then to develop those ideas as appropriate. And this ability is essential, at least to some extent, for everyone, even for cooks, students writing papers, and ditch diggers. Furthermore, everyone has at least a little of it. They do. YOU do. And as soon as you recognize that you are in fact a creative individual, you have opened the door to expanding that creativity, to letting your mind bloom in the gardens of the arts or in the fields of business or industry or academia. There are literally thousands of careers--in the arts, science, publishing, advertising, education, business, and industry-- open to those who are creative enough to earn the "creative" label, and many of these careers pay their top performers--who are often among their most creative performers--very well. These people all use their creativity to support themselves and their families, and sometimes to earn a measure of wealth or lasting fame as well. Unleash your creativity, and you will be able to join their ranks. If you are already in such a career, you will improve your performance, your professional stature, and your rewards. But bear in mind that creativity is never enough all by itself. Even the most creative of individuals needs something to be creative about. That is, he or she must be trained in painting, music, literature, physics, marketing, advertising, product development, or any of a thousand other things. Given a body of knowledge and the skills to use that knowledge, the creative individual can then produce wonders. At this point, you may well be asking: Is it really possible to unleash your creativity? You know there are thousands of books that promise to do the trick, and you have good reason to be skeptical, for most are relatively useless. This book, THINK THUNDER!, does work, however. The techniques that it describes actually turned the author into a prolific--and published!--poet (see Exhibit 1). ---------------------------------------- EXHIBIT 1: A Computer-Aided Poem (first published in HEADCHEESE, August 1988). PUNK GENESIS Where do they get that hair? It makes me think of overheated horses on a beach, Racing, blowing, their punky manes stiff with sweat. Or of haystacks bristling perversely in the wind, Hinting joy to heifers, agony to bulls. Of tattered formal gardens brilliantly ablaze With color, magenta, orange, pink, and blue. Or of divers, headfirst, into vats of strawberry jam, Who were then electrified. ----------------------------------------- Before we can get into those techniques, we must consider the nature of the creative mind and of the things that prevent it from working as it should. Only then can we consider how to surmount the blocks and unleash your creativity. THE CREATIVE MIND We know so little about the kind of mind that is most creative that we simply call it--whatever it is--the "creative mind." Intelligence is not necessarily a factor. Nor is education, or even sanity. What is it then? All we can say is that it has certain important features. According to some researchers [See S. Weisburd, "The spark: Personal testimonies of creativity," SCIENCE NEWS, November 7, 1987, pp. 298-300 (report on a Smithsonian Institution symposium on creativity held September 11, 1987, at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC)], creative people: --Have a drive to uncover beauty or to create order out of chaos (think of those artists who build collages). --Grow as excited when they find a new or unusual problem as when they solve one (think of scientists and other intellectuals). --Are at home with metaphor, and they have a huge ability to make unexpected connections (think of scientists, poets,... and comedians). --Are able to test their creations for sense (see the section on "The Critical Mind," below). --Are risk-takers who thrive on novelty, tolerate ambiguity, and operate on the borders of their competence (think of entrepreneurs). --Are not motivated by the same things that drive the rest of us; they care less for money, grades, recognition, or awards than for the satisfactions of creation. Yes, high intelligence does seem to help, for intelligent people do seem to be more creative, but we have seen creative geniuses with entirely unremarkable IQs. Education seems to help, too, for a well-stocked mind has more of the raw material that feeds the creative process. Indeed, many creative people find it essential that they prepare for creation by, first, immersing themselves in books on the topic they wish to address, music they wish to interpret or arrange, landscapes they wish to paint, or forms they wish to sculpt. Then they must let what they have absorbed settle into their minds, or incubate, until finally, in a moment of illumination, they cry "Aha!" and bring forth their newly created idea. But it is a mistake to think that stocking a mind needs schooling. Rather, it requires experience of life and work, reading, thinking, feeling, sensing. Creative geniuses--poets, painters, inventors, and so on--abound who never graduated from high school. They had no need to. What about sanity? Creative people have a reputation for craziness, but that may be simply because the creative mind has to be a little loose in the joints, and therefore prone to more free-wheeling behavior than most people accept as normal. If it is not a little loose, it cannot see beyond the conventional, and it then cannot have new ideas, or ideas that are new in any nontrivial way. And after all, the "crazy" label is applied by conventional, noncreative people, who have trouble accepting that new ways of doing things, or seeing the world, or behaving, can be as good as or better than the normal, conventional ways. To them, different is abnormal, and abnormal means crazy! Abnormal may also mean dangerous, and when "normal" people decide that that word applies, creative people can wind up tied to a stake, with bundles of burning branches at their feet. This may be the sentiment that lay behind the medieval witchhunts and heresy trials that made the Spanish Inquisition so infamous. It may even be a justified sentiment, for creative people have a way of refusing to accept tradition and other orthodoxies without asking awkward questions. And it is creative people who come up with new ideologies and systems of government and urge them upon their compatriots, often with bloody rebellions. It would be nice if we knew precisely what creativity is. We know it best by its effects, the springing forth of novel ideas, plans, and devices. This means that we can recognize it when we see it in action. We also know a little about the process, for many creative people have shared their reflections on how they went about being creative. Creative people have a great many different ideas about how creativity works. Fortunately, every one of their ideas works, at least for one individual. Anyone who wishes to enhance his or her creativity can therefore learn a great deal by reading collections of reports from creative people [such as THE CREATIVE PROCESS, edited by Brewster Ghiselin and published by the University of California Press in 1952 (it is currently available as a Mentor paperback from New American Library)]. Also fortunately, many creative people describe creative processes that share certain elements, and we can extract from their reflections useful descriptions of creativity. One such description appeared above. Another, and one more useful to anyone trying to understand how to encourage creativity, breaks the creative mind into two distinct functions, the "popcorn" mind and the critical mind. THE POPCORN MIND Many creative people claim that their creativity is unconscious. Things come to them out of the blue, in dreams, in fits of inspiration. Things they have seen, thought, and learned combine with each other below the level of consciousness. The combinations are triggered by cues, accidental (as the sight of a swallow in the air) or deliberate (going to bed with the thought, "I need a topic for a paper."). They may be guided by the individual's concerns or worries. And in due time--minutes, hours, days--answers to problems, inventions, topics for papers suddenly appear. People have even been known to awaken in the middle of the night with a complete poem or a story just waiting to be written down. The process is hardly unique. Everyone has ideas pop into their heads, at least occasionally. Creative people have it happen all the time, and we can therefore say that creativity begins with the "popcorn mind." The most creative individuals are those who throw off ideas the way a popcorn popper sends popcorn flying into the air. The mind's stock of knowledge froths, and puns, questions, insights, and images tumble forth, combining and recombining into more elaborate ideas. The same thing happens with writers, artists, inventors, business people, and scientists. It even happens with mathematicians, such as Henri Poincare, who described the process very aptly in 1908: "Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.... I had only to write out the results." The popcorn mind functions entirely automatically. It needs no starting and no tending, for it is in its nature constantly to pop. It needs little more than due care not to interfere. Interruptions can too easily prove fatal, as when the "man from Porlock" knocked on Coleridge's door and thereby brought the pleasure domes of "Kubla Khan" to abortive ruin. The popcorn mind is also irrepressible. A "man from Porlock" can knock it irretrievably off a particular track, but only by knocking it onto another; Coleridge's visitor ended only a poem, not the poet's creative career! The creative mind is impossible to stop, even for its owner, even when its effusions become an annoying burden to friends and family members. The best anyone can hope for is to manage its popping, to direct it into useful channels, and, with luck, to keep it there. Does the popcorn mind sound familiar? It should, for it is the mind of any child, seething with irrepressible freshness, and it has often been said that creative people are those who retain the outlook of a child into adulthood. They see things new every time they open their eyes. Their minds are not hobbled by preconceived notions of what ideas can reasonably fit together. What they have that children lack is discipline; they can, with luck, stay on track. Ghiselin stresses that management is a crucial part of the creative process: "the mind in creation and in preparation for it nearly always requires some management. ...avoiding ... fatal interruptions is a minor difficulty. ... The larger objects of management are two: discovering the clue that suggests the development to be sought, that intimates the creative end to be reached, and assuring a certain and economical movement toward that end" (p. 21). Discovering clues is only sometimes a problem. Most popcorn minds have little trouble in generating ideas, on request, about whatever topic you put before them. When they occasionally stall, as in writer's block, it is not generally because of any shortage of clues. Most often, there is a distraction, such as anxiety about success, love, or family. And the block is not total: The novelist who freezes when facing a blank page of paper can still drive his friends crazy with his puns. The popcorn mind never quits, though it may resist control. Keeping control--assuring that "certain and economical movement" in the direction desired--tends to be more difficult than finding clues. And the problem is not the direction. Creative people seem consistently to be able to move toward particular ends unconsciously. They "sleep on it" to solve a problem, awaken in the middle of the night with a puzzle solved or a new idea clamoring for attention, shout "Aha!" in the middle of a shower, a meal, or a lecture and rush off to work. They need only focus on a problem to set their unconscious machinery to work. But creative people can be distracted. They find the clues they need for creativity everywhere, and it doesn't need a "man from Porlock" to distract them. The creative mind is perfectly capable of distracting itself by finding something to worry about or another clue to pursue and something else to create. Many creative people therefore find isolation--a quiet room, a desk facing a wall instead of a window, an office far from the racket of the home, an island hideaway--essential for creation. Sometimes they need slavedrivers. In business, it is commonplace to hire creative people--say, computer programmers--and find that they are not working, but playing computer games. Worse yet, often enough, they are making up computer games for other people to play. Here the problem is not finding what clues can help them come up with the ideas they were hired to produce, but finding ways to keep them on the official track. Unfortunately, there is no good answer other than constant whip-cracking. (Or might the creative whip-cracker decide that selling computer games might make a nice sideline for the business?) Can "uncreative," or less creative, people learn to froth with ideas, entirely automatically, in the same way as the creative popcorn mind? Probably not. The mental looseness that makes mental popcorn possible is something you must have from birth, or retain from childhood. But many "uncreative" people can learn to generate ideas almost as freely as the most creative of popcorn minds. This is, in fact, the thrust of most creativity-enhancing seminars, courses, books, tapes, and other programs. They can and do teach people how to pop, not constantly, perhaps, but whenever they wish to turn on their newly gained talent. Unfortunately, no one program works for everyone. THE CRITICAL MIND Popping is not all there is to creativity. Think of the child, coining elephant or grape or turtle jokes as fast as possible, ringing changes, popping irrepressibly, and doing it all out loud. Most of the jokes are abominable. A very few are--perhaps--genuinely funny. Now think of a creative adult with the same task. He or she may create the jokes just as quickly, just as steadily, but only the funny ones get spoken aloud. The rest are recognized as stinkers before they ever reach the mouth, and squelched. Popcorn minds are not very efficient, for only a small minority of the raw corn kernels that go into the hopper ever pop. Most by far remain "old maids." And the most creative minds are not just popcorn minds. They filter their output, often before it gets out. They don't just generate ideas. They sort out the good ones, the popped corn kernels, from the old maids. To quote Poincare once more, "To create consists precisely in not making useless combinations and in making those which are useful and which are only a small minority. Invention is discernment, choice." Or, as chemist and Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling once told a student, the trick in coming up with good ideas is to think up a great many ideas--and then to get rid of the bad ones (cited in Weisburd, op. cit.). An essential part of the creative ability is thus the critical ability, the ability to tell gold from garbage. Most people can do this easily enough when they are appraising someone else's ideas. We call this kibitzing, and in this form few would say that it had much to do with creativity. It is in fact often more destructive than creative. But if you can look at your own ideas in the same way that you look at the ideas of others, and appraise them with the same brutal honesty, you have the other half of creativity, the half that recognizes and discards that vast majority of useless garbage the popcorn mind hurls into view. Unfortunately, those who claim to teach creativity only deliver on half their promise. Very few people--even those with popcorn minds--can view their own ideas as honestly as they can those of others. And this honesty is much, much harder to teach than is generating ideas. The problem is that when people look at their own ideas, they are looking at their selves, and they feel--more subconsciously than consciously--that rejecting any one of those ideas is rejecting their selves. Those ideas are them, and they are all good, by definition, and therefore not rejectable. The problem becomes worse when the individual is trying to come up with ideas somewhat more significant than paths in the lawn, doodles, or arrangements on a platter. This may explain why for many people creativity is limited to the trivial. When they try to go beyond the trivial, they find that the necessary destruction of their ideas, their selves, is literally painful. Self-criticism hurts. This book is an attempt to get around this obstacle to making more people truly creative. It offers a way to automate the popcorn mind by making it a function of one's personal computer. The resulting ideas are then less parts of one's self, and they can be criticized and winnowed more honestly, more brutally, and more effectively. With practice, one then comes to rely less and less on the computer and the criticism becomes more truly self-criticism. In a sense, the computer program serves as training wheels for the creative mind. SUMMARY To sum up this chapter, creativity is FLOW. It is the free flow of words, ideas, and images, and especially of new combinations of these things, appearing as puns, jokes, ideas for poems, stories, new products and processes and businesses. It is the constant, unstoppable asking of questions and inventing of new ideas, new things, new ways of doing things, and new ways of seeing and thinking. But creativity is also more than flow. By itself, it is like a river rampaging down a gorge, impressive but useless. It needs direction as well as flow, and then it needs filtering to separate the useful new ideas from the useless. This last aspect of creativity may be the hardest to teach, for it involves rejecting parts of one's self. Teaching it successfully requires a way to separate the individual's stream of ideas from his or her self-image, as by attributing the ideas to a computer, the tack taken in this book. ------------------------------------------------------------- Press <ESC> to exit this chapter and BROWSE the next chapter. ------------------------------------------------------------- Complete book and software available from R.K. West Consulting P.O. Box 8059, Mission Hills, CA 91346.