I believe that some workers or businesses thrive because they recognize and follow through with good original ideas developed by creative people. Perhaps it’s a better idea of how to hitch up a choker cable on a load of logs; or wiping the tables before cleaning the floor. At a given moment these might seem like obscure meaningless actions, but in reality each action begins with someone’s idea, and it they may be the difference between the success and failure of a business.
I would go as far as to say if 30 percent of a business’s workers were not “creative” then that business is doomed to fail. It’s this invisible creative acumen that is the key instrument for success and it also positions us in a different place within the world economy. Imagine being a creative person in a police state. You’re not taught to be a free thinker - as a result, original and new ideas may be hard to nurture or even recognize.
In today’s world, the primary elicitors for creativity are in fact, a free thinking and tolerant society, and education.
Those elicitors are becoming harder to find in countries around the planet. They are often hard to find within some businesses as well.
But besides a structure that encourages freedom to think, there is also a natural creative process. I have become convinced that in order to discover an original idea, one has to write 20,000 words or draw 500 pictures. There’s something about the torture of pure production that exhausts the human mind to the point where it shifts into survival mode. In its quest to protect itself from this repetitive behaviour that must seem unnatural in a universe where change is constant, the brain eventually begins to spill out whatever can be verbalized, sketched or tuned, creating a blood-like substance that pours all over the context of everything in hopes of purging this virus that might threaten the vessels of its own hidden primal knowledge.
From this dismal and often pathetic purge, comes the fabric of an original idea.
It’s as though the human mind hides all the knowledge of the universe deep inside each of us; every future invention, song, painting or system; but yet it won’t release any of it unless it’s forced or threatened – or so it might seem.
Others might suggest that the act of invention is actually ceremony which taps into the ancient wisdom of the creative seer within.
But, I’m not so kind – after 20,000 words and a deadline – I believe it’s more like a workers struggle against the ruling classes.
The process is domineering – it’s like a fever that may or may not break. Some of us choose never to begin; others will run away from it all and not complete; while a few will face their fear, and challenge the inner most part of their imagination. The risk is failure and death from boredom as one finally abandons the effort and succumbs to the recognition that nothing good will ever be invented from all of this, and precious time has been lost forever.
But sometimes there is success, as the mind rallies and in defense of survival, it releases a cocktail of ego and indulgence similar to adrenalin that becomes a fleeting element of discovery - and the crisis comes to an end. Détente between self and the universe captures the moment and it feels as though all of humanity gets to live another day. The nectar of something new is then poured into the grail to be shared with the world.
For the inventor of it all – this is every bit the baptism of a creator.
Surrounded by the debris of full sketchbooks, endless takes and many spoiled drafts – a good original idea is born. Thank goodness – life would be over if it hadn’t.
The process of creativity is both science and ceremony. At this moment high up in a New York City office tower, a dozen advertising designers are locked in a room and are being assigned a task where they’re told, “Ok, now pay attention – we want 251 things that a person can do with a shovel – and don’t even think of getting out of here until you get each one of those 251 ideas down on paper”.
Of course, after 50 shovel ideas the torture of boredom sets in. In the midst of dead air space, the competition for scraping together another idea becomes blood sport. Eventually, after periods of eerie silence the ideas begin to flow again. After various stages of the stupid and morbid, eventually the weird and truly different ideas begin to emerge and you just know that the 251st thing you can do with a shovel – is going to sell a lot of shovels.
This is the place where extreme creativity becomes sport that then becomes a primary piece of the economy. It’s a process that translates and then feeds ideas into compilations of images and sounds which are then presented into vignettes of space that tell a short and simple story in-between other things. All of this as a process has a Merlin-like mysticism attached to it that remains a mystery to most of us. But regardless, we all know that other people’s ideas surround us during every moment of our lives.
The secrets of creativity are becoming more exposed as we become more aware of how much we depend on this magic. In fact, some of us are creative while others are not. And anyone who says that everyone is creative, or can be an artist, is trying to sell something that not all people should buy.
To be creative, is to be interested in being creative – it’s as simple as that. The majority of people are actually more interested in the stuff that creative people have invented. They are oblivious to the process of creativity, and knowingly or unknowingly are quite comfortable being the beneficiaries of the ideas created by others.
And this is the way it should be, since there is nothing worse than an idea from an un-creative who largely regurgitates old ideas because they are cheap and comfortable.
Their tampering in the killing fields of imagination only leaves the stuff of embarrassments like remakes of the Sound of Music, television re-runs, reality TV, traffic circles, born-again Craftsman architecture and single bite deep fried chicken burgers. I could go on and on.
As historians write our history, the ideas from the un-creative largely tarnish the expansion of civilization. They further erode the better elements of humanity through their words which are commonly quoted throughout the ages as they attempt to explain their contributions, “Ideas are cheap”; “Artists are snobs – I could do that”; “There’s nothing wrong with an L-shaped living room/ dining room”; “Oh look – there’s an art sale at the mall”; “Don’t be so negative, the economy is fine”.
If the truth be known, most un-creatives commission creative people to turn their very bad ideas into reality, an act which has caused many a creative person to become inflicted with alcoholism or some other form of self-persecution from which, quite often, they never recover.
Needless to say, it’s important to recognize ones strengths and weaknesses, and today it would be wise for us all to realize that we need to empower creative minds with the freedom to generate much needed new ideas.
Collectively, we have created a mess of our world. Climate change and a spoiled economy have now become daily reminders that we have relied on old ideas that are no longer relevant in the present state of the world. We need to expand our creative footprint so that we can solve the present crises that we are in.
To not do so is a waste of a natural resource that exists within the human condition. Like Darwin said, “In the long history of human and animal kind, those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”
Collaboration and intention are key if we’re going to generate the ideas required to solve our current problems. For creative people time is the common hurdle to overcome and is not to be wasted, since regardless of ones actions, the process of generating new ideas unfolds in its own natural timeframe.
Darwin understood this as well when he said, “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
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Don Elzer writes and comments about the future, current affairs, lifestyle and the natural world. He is a director of the Watershed Intelligence Network publishers of The Monster Guide, which can be found at www.themonsterguide.com
He can also be reached by email at: treks@uniserve.com
