> On 20 Jun 2014, at 3:21 am, Terren Suydam <terren.suy...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As someone who can juggle 5 balls, I would say there really is very little,
> if any, creativity involved. It's purely training of muscle memory over
> hundreds/thousands of repetitions. I'm not even sure how creativity would
> enter the equation... I suppose you could be creative about how you train
> yourself, using inventive techniques. But that's not at all necessary.
Exactly. Creativity is not some parlor trick - however amazing juggling 5 balls
may seem. Anyone who can perform Chopin's more difficult piano compositions is
doing the equivalent with ten balls - their fingers. Pianists are trained to
perform exquisitely difficult music in the most routine manner. It works.
Creativity, I insist is concerned with the generation of new ideas and value.
There is this curious notion that creative thinking has to do with technical
invention. This is a very minor aspect of creative thinking. New ideas are the
stuff of change and progress in every field from science to art from politics
to personal happiness. Creative thinking is concerned with breaking out of the
concept prisons of old ideas. This leads to changes in attitude and approach to
looking in a different way at things which have always been looked at in the
same way. Liberation from old ideas and the stimulation of new ones are twin
aspects of creative thinking.
Creative thinking is quite distinct from vertical thinking which is the
traditional type of thinking. With vertical thinking you have to put your
bricks together in a way that is "correct" at every step of the way otherwise
the tower might come out "wrong". In other words one moves forward by
sequential steps each of which must be fully justified. The distinction between
the two modes of thinking is sharp. For instance, in Lateral Thinking (creative
thinking) one uses information not for its own sake but for its effect. In LT
one may have to be wrong at some stage in order to achieve a correct solution
in the end. In vertical thinking (everyday thinking) this would be impossible.
In LT one may deliberately seek out irrelevant information for it's creative
discontinuous effect; in vertical thinking one selects only what is relevant
because of the fear of being "wrong".
Kim
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