Let’s say you are thinking about a problem. Inspiration comes and now you have what you think is a meaningful solution. Yet, where did it come from? Lateral thinking expert De Bono reminds us that it’s a change in our neurons (or whatever) that produces the shift from one thought to the next. You can actually teach your brain to move between concepts laterally when you solve problems to different and better interpretations. We can use concepts to drive strategy. But often these kinds of synthesis are hard to navigate, I want to talk about the ways in which concepts begin. Why can I sit at this Macbook Pro and write this without considering the words I am going to type next. Because I don’t proofread? I don’t think so… because they are creative.
David Lynch said that he often would sit down and ideas would come and he would work hard to capture them, so that he could hold on to them. Isn’t that interesting. I often have my best thinking when I am driving, in the shower, on the throne or elsewhere. I don’t really care how it works or why it does but I find these times when ideas just come are often not synthesis. I am growing to dislike the way we use that word. It’s more like a description of a ‘product’ of something else. Think about Chemicals. We call the hybrid ‘synthesis’ (I hope) and use that as a way of describing a process. I would argue that synthesis is the outcome of creativity in some cases. Human beings are creative. We make stuff. A lot of stuff. So this presents two problems in my limited mind.
1. Stuff comes from somewhere
2. Not all stuff comes from somewhere, some stuff just comes.
I am often impressed by the word, ‘variegation’. It reminds that two things can be true at the same time and the other thing can also be true as well. What? Well we often frame our problems as thus: ‘It’s either this or that’. This invites synthesis. Combine the ideas and create a new perspective. But in design, we often make new ideas that other people engage with and this process of making ‘new’ ideas is not necessarily a process of combining old ideas. It’s something else. Inspiration, creativity and new ways of thinking are often hard to conceptualise for an academic, we follow the patterns and contribute to others. Our arguments don’t often synthesise the texts either, sometimes they contradict and refute. This process leads me to think that thinking and creativity are deep.
I am reminded of perspectives, how they shape and inform, how they create and divide logic. How interesting that we ever thought a rational process could explain irrational humans? What of rhetoric? Ok that last micro sentence was silly. Anyway, remember that combining things and looking for new interpretations leads to synthesis. Synthesis is not the combining of old ideas and new ones, it’s the emergent process of creativity which is beyond my intelligence to comprehend. We use words like inspiration too loosely.
Synthesis, leads us to new interpretations but sometimes new interpretations come because of some other reason. When I figure that out, I will more than likely be dead. Now there’s a concept.
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Yes, “We make stuff. A lot of stuff.” I venture to suggest that we make far more stuff than we can possibly imagine.
I don’t know whether all this “stuff-making” is “synthesis”, which, to me, is quite a bit more than just a fancy word for sticking stuff together. It hardly matters. The point is that new stuff is not made out of nothing. So when you ask where new stuff comes from, you are really asking two questions: What process produces new stuff, and what does it produce it from?
Of course, it may be that there is more than one process, but I shall assume not. Furthermore, I shall assume that Produce-New-Stuff is not even a different process from Produce-Stuff. This leads to the conclusion that thinking creatively is no different from thinking “pure and simple” (if you’ll forgive the heavy irony). So, does creative thinking differ from “ordinary” thinking in any significant way?
Almost as an aside, I feel the need to defend what I can only refer to as “subjective originality”. We are inclined to attach peculiar significance to the truly original thought: an idea which, as far as anyone knows, no one has ever had before. This is (somewhat) objective originality, of importance to academics and protectors of intellectual property. But it is only a special case of “subjective” originality, where the idea is one which, as far as he or she is aware, the thinker has never had before. I think it’s important to realise that there is a contradiction of sorts between these two types of originality. You have to do your own thinking in either case, but if your goal is objective originality, you need to be aware of all the old thinking on the subject, which reduces the level of subjective originality. More importantly, the “old thinking” actively suppresses “new thinking” on the subject, to the extent that the “old thinking” has been properly understood. Originality is the product of ignorance.
To return, then, to the Produce-Stuff process, envisaged as the fundamental activity of the mind. We know that our experience of the world in the present moment is “patterned” by our past experiences. We see objects around us, not patches of colour, as Impressionist painters strove to. We hear our native language as a series of words, not the stream of sound that an unfamiliar language appears to be. It is a struggle, at least, and perhaps an impossibility, to put aside the past, even temporarily, and make new sense of that which is familiar to us. Our minds are built to believe in the past, to cherish the familiar and to be suspicious of the new.
But…
Produce-Stuff is not constrained by these policies. Produce-Stuff has a thousand half-theories for every hint of a pattern in the state of the bodymind. Or it may be a million; or it may be a billion. How many of these can be said to be “new”, it’s impossible to say. For all practical purposes, every state of the bodymind is wholly unique, in that it has almost certainly never occurred before. And if it ever occurred again “you” certainly would not notice. We are the sense we are making of this infinite confusion, and hardly any of Produce-Stuff’s output gets past all the filters we habitually apply. But in an unguarded moment, in perhaps a series of them, some of that stuff can get further than before, and be acknowledged as fit, in some sense, to be recognised.
We use words like “inspiration” too loosely, you say. But it just means “breathing in”. The stuff our minds breathe is all around, like the air. Sometimes it’s windier than others. Sometimes we just keep breathing without paying attention. Sometimes we just know we’re struggling for breath. But always the air supplies the oxygen we need.
Can we alter Produce-Stuff to produce more or different stuff? I doubt it. But we can practise being more open minded, even if that means actively finding ways to avoid consciously thinking about the “problem”. Whether we like to admit it or not, all problems solve themselves, in that “our” solutions (if we ever conceive of any) never originate in our consciousness, which is wholly incapable of originality. “We” only ever respond – with curiosity, perhaps, or lust – to stuff that Produce-Stuff has freely provided in the context of an awareness of sorts of some aspects of a situation that, holistically, the bodymind is not fully accepting of.
I meant that to be vague!
Hi Alan,
First of all let me begin by saying sorry for taking so long to reply. At first I forgot, then I remembered, then I was on a plane, then I forgot and two weeks later remembered.
I admit to not understanding your thoughts completely for many reasons. I would think most of it comes down to me trying to explain your thoughts in my own words. My words are neatly formed inside the box of a tiny literature. Insomuch as I form thoughts in light of what I have read. This is a bad habit. It also forbids me the luxury of philosophising in the cool general manner I used to and instead produces thoughts of a fixed nature. Synthesis is a word that’s from the fixed-ness. Problem comes from that too (operations research) and such I find that I have difficulties escaping the literature. Picture it as a box stapled to my brain. Actually, don’t.
I think we disagree on a fundamental point about creativity and probably have agreed to disagree about it in the past. However, it’s the future as you read this so I won’t waste time trying to explain the fact that I don’t agree, so I will take the committee stance and say, ‘I also agree.’ Where do I also agree.
Well, what is ‘breathing in’ if not pure unadulterated ‘newness’, if that newness, is known to me only? Is it actually new? Or is it a form of oldness, that was old but made new by my refreshing processes of thought. If my thought creates newness is it newness? If I breathe in, do I breathe out? I think this is the newness, but now that I reflect on it, does it actually produce newness? I think maybe.
The comment about intellectual property is an interesting one. The academic mantra of course is ‘making a contribution to knowledge.’ It relies on your ability to produce a perceived originality or unique contribution. We are told our peers represent the gatekeepers of this originality. I am reminded of a good friend of mine who once shouted at me,’There’s no such thing as intellectual property.’ But, that’s a question of value isn’t it? This person is an academic in the true sense, someone who is seeking to learn and understanding newness (breathing in), whilst maintaining the existed benchmarks of a top heavy biased system. Yet, I digress… a bit.
Our minds are trained to believe in the past, yet they are also trained to believe in the future. Which means they are trained to believe in things that are not present, even though they are also trained to believe in that. This is why time doesn’t really exist, it’s just helpful to think of things this way. If it’s a matter of training, it’s a matter of learning and comprehension, which leads us to better and worse concepts from which to construct and act from. Which brings me to my point (at last): if inspiration is just ‘breathing in’ what are we breathing in? Ourselves? These connections old and new are fueled by something, inspiration or other, that join the dots for us. Anyway, I don’t really have an effective answer but I still believe we use it too loosely! Let me share something I did once that worked wonderfully well.
I once told my brain deliberately to think about a certain problem as a picture. I then changed that picture to something else and over a period of a day or two, I changed how I felt about the problem. Did I solve it? No, the language of problem solving is WAY too crude to give that justice. I stopped worrying and felt better as a result. This self-deception made my life a hell of a lot easier. Did it fix anything? Probably or I don’t know.
I would love to know how to create things with my mind… but that probably means I am responding to the wrong comment!