Category: psychology

Free Your Mind and Creativity Will Follow

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“You just sit there young man, and think about what you’ve done!” is something that most of us have heard at one point or another.  We’ve heard this from a mother, a grandmother, or some authority figure in our lives.  Sitting in silence is an excellent punishment for a young mind that wants to move, explore, and participate, and the negative connotations we apply to such forced inactivity, may be the reason that some of us still avoid it as often as we can.  For some minds, however, it may be the key to tapping into untapped resources of creativity.

Ardent advocates of noise would disagree.  They would suggest that the best way to find that creative place occurs in the exchange of ideas.  The distracted mind, they would say, requires forced participation.  They also say that suggesting these minds need more space, and more silence, may allow the cracks of distraction to grow wider.

moronThe very idea that silence should play a role in the creative process seems antithetical to everything we’ve been taught. We, as a people, have spent so much time trying to create technological advances that put an end to silence that we’re now conditioned to believe that cluttering our minds with voices and images may lead us to finding individual, creative thought in that stew.  Some do, of course, as every brain works different.  Those that require more processing of information –conditioned to the same beliefs about the creative process– may buy a self-help guide to find out what’s wrong with them.  For them, the source of creative thinking can, more often than not, be found in the brain itself … If it is allowed to breathe a little.

As Dorothy Gauvin stated:

“Your mind makes connections between facts and experiences that may seem unrelated to a logical entity like a robot.  Imagination connects the dots and comes up with an ‘Aha moment’ we call inspiration.”

These technological distractions that we have, and all of the noise of the day, prevents our imagination from taking what we’ve learned to that place where all the dots can be connected to produce a creative thought, or what Ms. Gauvin calls ‘an Aha moment’.

“Remember the famous quote from A.A.Milne,” she writes, ‘Sometimes I sit and think and sometimes I just sits.’”

Some of us spent most of our time outside of the Socratic Method of teaching looking in.  We’ve witnessed other brains firing right along with the teacher’s.  The teacher hits them with a question, they fire right back; the teacher probes deeper, the students respond in kind, and a summary discussion ensues in which all participants are rewarded with like-minded smiles when they’ve reached the same conclusion.  Some of us have always wanted to be those people, and we have been … the next day.  The next day, we arrived in that class with an answer that would’ve knock our teacher right on her keister … If we had thought of it yesterday.  We wanted a do over.  We wanted to show the class that we had the perfect answer.  It was too late for us, of course, the class moved on.

Every mind works different.  Some minds are excellent for business, and school, and they can come up with the perfect solution on the spot.  With that perfect guide, they can delve deeper into the depths of the mathematical mind than either party imagined possible, or they do it so quick that some of us stare on dumbfounded.

The spoils for thinking often go to the quick, and that fact has led some of us to believe that we were the dumb.  Our “Aha moments” do arrive, but they arrived when we were walking down the stairs, after the meat of the discussion has long since passed, and we thought of all the things we could’ve and should’ve said. Our minds work different, and even if we realized this in school, we may not have been rewarded in the manner the quicker minds were, but it may have been less frustrating or embarrassing to realize that our brains work different.

If you have a “down the stairs, could’ve, should’ve said” brain, Ms. Gauvin writes, you may want to consider the idea of developing a routine that involves a moment, or a series of moments, where all you do is sit in silence to digest what you’ve experienced.  She writes that some meditate, some contemplate, and some “just sits” there in a manner that “suits their circumstances and personality”.  She says that once you figure out how your brain works, you should consider creating a regular period in which you experience silence in the manner high profile “professionals in Medicine, Sports, and the Arts” all do.

Feathers

“Free your mind, the rest will follow.” —En Vogue

Years after reading the brilliant, Raymond Carver short story Feathers,  I reread it.  I was confused.  I went back to the title of that story to make sure it was the same short story I read all those years ago and recommended to everyone I knew that expressed even a slight interest in fiction.  It was the same short story, of course, and it was just as good as I remembered, but I had so jumbled the details of that story that I misremembered it into an original short story.

Carver’s short story was so great that I experienced a creative high after reading it.  As an aspiring, young writer, I have to imagine that reading that story was equivalent to a young basketball player watching Michael Jordan drive the baseline against the Knicks in the 1993 playoffs.  Carver, like Jordan, made it look so easy that I thought I could do it.

The focus of Carver’s story was, of course, the main characters, but my focus churned on the side characters.  I identified with them in some manner I couldn’t grasp at first.  I decided to explore.  I decided that this exploration was worthy of a short story, my short story.

Upon rereading Feathers years later, I realized that the side characters were so far removed from the ones that I had created that no lawyer in the land could prove an infringement on, or plagiarism of, Carver’s material.  After getting over that initial spate of confusion, and some feelings of being so stupid as to misremeber those characters, I realized that I had come up with my first original “quality” short story.  And all of those leaps occurred in quiet moments where all I did was ‘sit and think’ about them and the short story, and my relation to them.

The Sounds of Silence

Silence can be difficult to find at times.  We spend so much of our time trying to keep our minds active, focused, and participatory that we’ve cluttered it with noise, under the proviso that “No TV and no beer make Homer crazy”, until we’ve reached a point where our lives are drained of silence.

If you’re one that needs a creative space of silence, and you’re able to find time for it, it’s important to note that there is no specific quantity of silence from which creativity is born.  Laying out such a provocative idea may lead some to say that it doesn’t work for them.  “I tried it,” they will say. “It ain’t for me.”  Our natural retort will be, “Well, how long did you try it?  How much effort did you put into it?”  It’s a pointless –square peg in a round role– discussion for some, of course, because all minds are different.  For those creative minds that don’t know how their brains work yet, and the others that have to deal with them, this may be an eye-opener.  For those that experience writer’s block, or creative fatigue, silence may be the one method they haven’t tried yet.

interactionYour silence should be drained of distractions.  We all have minor distractions that pervade our silence, such as what sassy Susie said to us the other day; the delicious burger that we’re planning to eat tonight; reliving the Blackhawks championship run; and how the stand-up comedian described going to the bathroom in the toilet tank as going top shelf, and we all have an almost unnatural propensity to dwell on those ideas.  To void your mind of such distractions, I like to think of the process the Tom Cruise character went through in the movie Minority Report, when interacting with the futuristic gestural interface to find the information he wanted in its database.

Not all silence should be active, or focused, but it does require a certain degree of participation to find the undiluted creative area.  Focusing yourself into specifics is difficult, of course, but if you can swipe these distractions away, you can achieve various specific, creative thoughts on the subjects of your own choosing.  The key to creative thought, in my opinion, is to create an eighth day in which you, the god of your creation, can rest with everything that hit you in the previous seven days.  The key is to avoid putting headphones on when you jog, mow, or workout at the gym.  Some may go so far as to “just sits” in a quiet room, others may take long drives alone to nowhere with the radio in the off position.

I found the perfect vehicle for freeing my mind, a while back, when I got myself the most brainless job imaginable.  I didn’t do that for this purpose, of course.  When I was forced, by management, to do away with all distractions for the ostensible purpose of placing all of my focus on a job that I could’ve accomplished in early R.E.M. stages, I achieved a state of blankness.  Not everyone is as fortunate as I was to have found such a tedious job, I understand, and for those of you forced to focus on a demanding job will need to find another avenue, but many have found silent moments to stew.

This blaring horn of creative silence can also be found in the most innocuous places like a doctor’s waiting room.  My advice: once you reach that point where you’ve waited so long that you’re so bored that the urge to pick up that magazine –you’d never read otherwise–overwhelms you, fight that urge.  Fight that urge and stare out at the dregs of humanity that wait with you.  Look at that guy with tousled hair and frayed jeans, in a short-sleeved shirt, and wonder why no one ever taught him how to dress.  When you’re engaged in the monotony of lawn work, fight the urge to wear headphones, and pick those dandelions naked … without aural accompaniment, or stimuli of any kind.  Free the mind from everything that you’ve been jamming into it for the previous seven days, and “just sits there” on an eighth day of rest, and the rest will follow.

Countering the Counter

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Analyzing how someone is different, weird, and just plain strange was a common practice at one time. The stated motivation for doing so was that we needed to learn about them, to know more about us, and human nature in general. Some took this to an extreme, of course, and we pursued this study for the purpose of entertaining the masses. Was this the wrong? Perhaps, but our attraction to the explanations for why people are different are endemic to human nature, and no political movements to end that will kill that fundamental truth.

We still have some who analyze these differences, but their findings tend to conform to the common ideal of the nice more often than not. And when it doesn’t, the analyst opens themselves to scrutiny that is less devoted to scholarly refutation of their findings and more to an effort directed at aspects of their personal characteristics to destroy that analyst and hopefully remove them from the argument.

The word “counter” in the title of this article is intended to include the counterculture, but it is not limited to specifically countering the tenets of that movement. Countering the counter, refers to the near universal acceptance of collective ideals and mass delusions that we’ve all been coerced to learn to a point where such thoughts have become conventional thinking of late. Some of these lesson plans have occurred on a large scale, but more of them have occurred in a smaller, more neighborly precincts that have transformed the way we now interact with one another.

“I know you’re trying to believe this,” I said to a purveyor of the message when I first encountered it, “but you can’t truly believe you’re saying?”

Different isn't always better
Different isn’t always better

Every free culture is subject to sociopolitical shifts over time, from the push to status quo ideals to the rebellious push away. With these opposing forces acting and reacting to one another in overt and subtle ways, it can also be difficult to determine where a culture is without historical perspective.

The question of whether America has changed for the better is debatable, of course, but what is not debatable is that it has changed. How much the culture has changed might be a better question, and for the answer to that question we might want to turn to our re-animator machine to resurrect a person that died in 1950.

To attempt to achieve some sort of objective answer We should allow this subject unfettered access to schools, businesses, and any and all places where people gather. Our research analysts would ask them to gain the perspectives from as many economic levels, cultures, and generations as possible in the time frame of one year. We would then ask them to sit down for an interview at the end of that year to have them discuss all the changes they have witnessed between 1950 America and 2015 America.

In that interview, they would probably have a tough time getting past the macro changes that have occurred since their time: the internet, the choices available to the average consumer on television, the power of television and the internet versus newspapers and the radio, and the home gaming systems. They would surely obsess just as much over a number of other macro events that have shaped our way of life in ways we now take for granted. Once we got beyond all that, however, we would inform them that the reason that this experiment was conducted in the first place was to study the micro, sociopolitical changes that have occurred for ordinary Americans in their every day lives.

A symbol that the “enlightened” 1950’s person may use to illustrate their answers would be the phenomenon that permeates just about every facet of modern America: Star Wars. For those not acquainted with the franchise, it contains two opposing forces: the Rebellion and the Evil Empire. In the 1950’s scenario, the Evil Empire would represent status quo institutions of the culture, such as those of a more traditional and religious mindset, and the Rebellion would represent the forces against all that. The final conclusion that the 1950’s man would reach is that the Rebellion has achieved a crushing defeat.

If the 1950’s man were a student of History, he might offer the opinion that this sociopolitical defeat had to have occurred some time ago. Why? “Power is power, and human nature is human nature. Once humans get a taste for power, regardless their politics, they want to stay in power, and they don’t care if they have to eventually adopt the very tactics that they so opposed in their rise to maintain it.”

“We had speech codes in the same manner you have speech codes,” is something he might say, “but ours were 180 degrees different.  We considered someone that suggested that America was anything less than a noble power, or that they were in any way nihilistic, or atheist, to be different and inferior in many ways, and we ostracized them for not conforming to group thought. And the only reason I see this now is that I’ve been introduced to the alternative reality in this past year, where the patriotic and/or religious are now regarded as different and inferior in many ways.”

The Tipping Point

Some would say that the seeds for the 60’s counterculture were planted in reaction to the 50’s, but they didn’t begin to truly flower throughout the culture until the 70’s and 80’s. Those of us who were paying some attention to this movement would have to admit we were down for that struggle. They were the underdogs at that time, and it is human nature to cheer on the underdog. Especially when the movement was a celebration of all that is different. The status quo of their presentations were our dads, our teachers, and our bosses. We loathed all that they stood for and we wanted something different. We wanted what the musicians, the writers, and the artists were going on about. We may not have known the extent of their message, but we wanted it, and we were willing to do whatever it took to get it.

As author Malcolm Gladwell has informed us, however, all movements have a Tipping Point. Gladwell describes this moment, as: “The moment on the graph when the line starts to shoot straight upwards.” A cynic could also define the tipping point as that precarious moment when it’s at its peak, and the smallest thing will cause it begin to fall down the other side. That tipping point occurred, for me, when I discovered how much mileage the anti-establishment gained for being for against everything. There came a point where I began to realize that not everything is about what you are not. And once the fog of this culture war began to lift, and they stood victorious, some of us began to wonder what we were supposed to be for in the aftermath.

Another tipping point arrived, for me, when I was informed that this desire to be different was now considered so laudable that it was above reproach, or any form of analysis that could be determined to be negative.

“He’s just different,” the purveyors of the movement that I knew, said to combat any attempts to analyze, “and you can’t criticize something you don’t understand.”  

I initially assumed that these people thought I would go negative in my analysis, and I attempted to inform them that this was not the case. I asked them if they thought that an individual goes out to get an eighteen inch, blue Mohawk simply because they had a boring Tuesday. We both agreed that this was probably not their motivation. We both agreed that something drove them to be so different that not only did they not mind that another might stare at them at an airport, but that they pursued it. We also agreed that something drives us all to be who we are, and that some of us enjoy analyzing those variations if, for no other reason, than to better understand ourselves. It was at this point that I was informed that further exploration, from me, would be deemed negative, even if my primary driving force for doing so fell within the parameters I was suggesting.

“Have you ever had a Mohawk?” he asked me. “No?  Then you can never understand one that has one. And … and, you didn’t let me finish, your genuine desire to understand one will be critical.” 

Okay, but I met a guy that used to have one, and it appeared to have influenced his life so thoroughly that the only thing his best man and the bridesmaid could think to say about him, in the toasts at his wedding, involved the fact that he used to have a Mohawk.  You don’t find that’s fascinating, or worthy of inspection?

“I said you’re dismissed.”

Even though I planned to use my friend’s mentality as a source for trying to understand future Mohawk wearers, in an objective, albeit somewhat critical approach?

“SILENCE!”

Even though the rebellion to the status quo has been so successful at this point that most observers will avoid even a hint of observation that could be deemed negative, the standard bearers of the movement march on to eliminate anyone not yet sufficiently intimidated.

“What is your level of education? What was your family’s financial situation? What is your ethnic origin, your sexual proclivities, and your political orientation? Have you ever had anyone regard you as different? Has anyone ever been so afraid of your superficialities that they walked on the other side of the street?  Has a woman secured her hold on her purse the minute you stepped on the bus? Has a store owner ever watched you walk through his store with that extra-special scrutiny that they reserve for your type? Have you ever been ostracized in anyway? Have you ever been picked on by bullies? If any of these answers fall outside the paradigm we’re discussing here, you are officially relieved of your analytical efforts, for you will never be able to understand the plight of others, and we don’t care to hear your “inside looking out” perspective. It’s the new world order. Welcome aboard.”

To Defeat: Eliminate, or Emulate?

How do we win a debate? The first, and most effective, tactic is to eliminate our adversary. By eliminating them, we don’t have to stand toe-to-toe with them. It also permits the audience to join us in eliminating everything our adversary says regardless if it makes sense or surprisingly insightful. The purpose of this tactic is shame, as the provocateur attempts to shame the subject from further subjecting their audience to their relatively unfounded ideas. If a follower can introduce shame into the argument, an emotion that doesn’t require much mental acumen to induce, it can provide tentacles that reach a wide audience and intimidate future skeptics into getting their mind right before entering into such an argument.

Attempting to defeat the other side of a culture war also denotes an end game, as if the prospect of changing that one hundred millionth mind would be an occasion for a dropping ball, a gathering on Main Street to witness it, and a retreat back to one’s humble abode for a nightcap to wallow in the victory. There is no such end game when it comes to welcoming traditional thinkers into the correct way of thinking. We’re right. You’re wrong. This is no game, and they don’t want their advocates satisfied with temporary victories.

The final, and most prominent, reason to avoid declaring victory, may have something to do with the fact that total victory may open advocates up to the critical scrutiny that they used against the status quo to gain stature. They prefer that underdog role that we all cheer on with emotion that will hopefully thwart the same rational investigation that we give to the powers that be.

The final, and most interesting element of the ongoing debates is the what then question. What do the victors do soon after achieving victory. One of the keys to victory for the contrarians was the ‘they don’t want you to hear what I have to say’ angle. “I’m too dangerous. They don’t want you to know what I have to say on this subject.” That was so appealing that we not only took the contrarians side, but we began to dress our comments in the same manner. Another effective rhetorical tactic they used was to inform us that the other side uses shame to seduce us into believing what they say. Once they achieved victory, they began emulating the forces they just defeated with censorship, demonization, and shame. The leading voices of the counter-culture were absolutely stunned that “their guys” the “new” leaders of the new movement were basically emulating all of the tactics they spent their whole lives fighting against. We must admit that we were too, but the thing no one accounted for was that it was human nature for the victors to attempt to dominate, humiliate, and vanquish their opponents by whatever means necessary.  

Victory can be declared however. The culture war is over, and the rebellion has won. To see evidence of this victory, all one has to do is turn on the television. Every channel, including the Cartoon Network, has subtle and overt messages of the rebellion. Cartoons? Cartoons. The ultimate exclamation point behind this victory arrives when your friends denounce you for noticing the repeated messaging that occurs in cartoons. “You’re quoting something that an eggplant said to piece of asparagus?” Yes, you say with some level of embarrassment. Some time after you recover from that blow, you realize that total and absolute victory occurs when you defeat an opponent so thoroughly that they don’t even know when you’re firing shots at them.

Innocents Abroad, or Innocence Aboard?

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In our travels to the east, we were afforded an amiable, native as a guide. Her demeanor was such that we were never afraid to ask questions, or prod her for more information. She proved to be an eager, energetic font of knowledge who was so happy to share information about her home state that no one could mistake her for being anything less than a proud New Yorker.

If you don’t care for the food that a waiter serves you in New York City, our guide informed us, the way to rectify this is through what the indigenous people call complaining. After numerous exercises in this course, she would provide us with a knowing smile that I scoured for some sort of condescension. I couldn’t find a hint of it. She knew that our experience with her state was limited, and that we were unaccustomed to the rich traditions of New Yawkers. Her goal was to try to help us learn how to get along with her people.

NYC-1She informed us of some of the “crazy people” we might encounter in our walk through her beloved city. The best example she could come up with was a man who exited his car screaming at an inflatable female under his arm. He continued this screaming, she said, until he entered his apartment. I wondered if there were any chivalrous males on the scene, and if they felt an innate impulse to step in to prevent an escalation.

Our tour guide then attempted to expand this characterization she was building, as a world traveler, by correcting a native Mandarin speaker on their pronunciation of a Mandarin word. The native speaker exhibited some grace by avoiding the correction and continued answering my question. I asked our guide about the exchange later, and she informed me of the various dialects of Mandarin, leaving the impression that neither party was correct or incorrect about its pronunciation.

The one thing our guide did not prepare us for, were the number of people walking around New York City. We had already been to New York City, so she may have figured that the sheer breadth of the population had already daunted us. The second time through, however, this widened snapshot of the world reminded me how many divergent thoughts exist on our little planet, and how many divergent takes there are on humor, sadness, misery, and horror. We have all experienced these emotions, on various levels throughout our lives, and we all consider our experiences unique.

Bestselling books took on a different light, as I encountered so many different faces. Some books become bestsellers through the sheer brilliance of the writing, and some of the times we find these books. Some of the times, brilliance has its own way of bubbling to the surface without critical assistance or an extensive and expensive marketing plan. Some of the times, word-of-mouth has its own way of worming through our culture. Even though the internet has made it possible for us to make the world a little smaller, and easier for word-of-mouth to spread, these books are still the exception to the rule on most bestselling lists. Those written for the sole purpose of becoming a bestseller still dominate. We all know these books when we’re reading them, and for some reason we all enjoy them. I used to consider it a concession to write a bestseller for the sole purpose of writing a bestseller, and I still do to some degree, but my prejudicial disdain for those that do diminished a little when, walking among the divergence, I realized what an accomplishment it is to appeal to this many people.

In my travels throughout the museums and art houses, I discovered a number of guides who were so well-informed and enthusiastic about their subject that they were just dying to talk about it. They described the artistic pieces as if it were one of their own. They viewed each question I provided them as an opportunity to launch into the history of the artist. They did it with such enthusiasm that I couldn’t help but be impressed, even though some of my questions could be perceived as a challenge to the artists’ aesthetics. I could tell that some of my questions wobbled them a bit, not that they were extra-intelligent, but different from the usual questions they were asked. One guy drank from a sports water bottle, like he was dying of thirst. My thought, while watching him, was that he wanted to have something to do with his hands. I made him nervous, but nervous in a good way, almost like he didn’t want to disappoint me and fail to live up to the challenge I was offering him. I did not intend for this to be a psychological experiment, but it turned out that way when I encountered one of the few who wasn’t as sure of herself as most of the guides were throughout my visits.

My questioning of her may have appeared aggressive, but it was not intended that way. The perception may have been borne of my desire to appear confident in the face of my nervousness. This woman answered me in a defensive manner. She attempted to give me a memorized response, and her body language suggested to me that she never wanted me to speak to her again. I didn’t. I allowed her to speak uninterrupted from that point forward, but I couldn’t help but think we were both missing an attempt to reach a greater understanding of this subject. I know what I know, in other words, but my desire to know more can cause me to appear somewhat obnoxious in the face of those that don’t have the same needs.

Our travel to the east concluded in airports, of course, and I encountered an individual that began flatulating. This wasn’t one of those simple three chord structures used in modern mainstream music, this contained some complicated rhythms that the Ancient Greeks would’ve called diatonic, a complication that appears exclusive to the jazz world, with a dominant seventh chord and a sharp ninth in succession. What bothered me about this is that while I’ve been hearing flatulent ditties my whole life, this seemed to disprove my theory that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, if you’re artistically inclined, your chance of composing a masterpiece is just as possible if you’re not afraid to express yourself, work your natural abilities and talent to its fullest extent. It may have been anecdotal, but what this man’s digestive system was capable of proved better than anything I’ve heard from a Northwesterner or an individual from the Midwest. New Yawkers are supposed to be smarter, more creative, and more successful, but some of the times they’re just people who happened to have been born there and raised there, and when they grew up they wanted to stay close to the family. We’re all from somewhere. We all have different faces, divergent thoughts, and our own individual definitions of horror, comedy, and drama, but we often end up reading the same books, watching the same TV shows and movies, and listening to most of the same music. In other words, for all that a person from the East experiences in relation to what a person from the Midwest might experience, and for all the opportunities they have to experience more by way of artistic exploration, it often comes out the same when we sit down to express ourselves. What I was hearing was different, no doubt, but was it a one-off from an individual who must have ingested some inartful material, or was it one of the best arguments I’d ever heard that New Yorkers are, in fact, more creative, and do everything better? No one would’ve confused this display with a Rachmaninoff structure, but it was beyond anything I’d heard in the Midwest.