Recycled Electrons
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Recycled Electrons
October 2004
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When I began to do research on what skills and structure underlay the capacity
to create desired results, I discovered that most experts focused on
creativity and creative thinking. Very few focused on the act of creating. I
wanted to know how creators actually brought their creations into being.
In my explorations, I discovered that the word "create" comes from the Latin
creare, meaning to produce, to make. My compact edition of the Oxford English
Dictionary defines "create" as "to bring into being, cause to exist, esp. to
produce where nothing was before, 'to form out of nothing'."
There is no entry in my four thousand-page Oxford for "creativity," but my
concise edition of the OED defines it as "inventive and imaginative." Most
people I ask define it as "doing things differently."
The word "creativity" refers more often to style than substance, as in the
case of an advertising account executive complaining that "we need more
creativity in this approach."
What often passes for creativity is merely the same old stuff done up with a
different twist or dressed up in a new package. In the corporate world,
creativity is often an add-on, something imaginative or inventive that is
sprinkled on after the fact to "spice up" a product or service.
Creators are sometimes-but not always-creative in the way they bring things
into being. They may think imaginatively or inventively. They may come up
with unusual things.
Mozart, for example, envisioned and heard complete symphonies in his head
while out walking and then went home and wrote them out in ink. His
composition books are pristine.
Other creators are more linear and conventional in their approach.
Beethoven's notebooks are black masses of scribbles and corrections. He
labored long and hard to craft his majestic works, even using a slide rule to
work out the mathematics of his harmonics.
Still others, like experimental performance artists, can be wildly
unconventional, inventive, and imaginative. Most creators, however, combine a
variety of approaches, seeking whatever process best serves the result-the
creation-they want, indeed are driven, to bring into being.
The drive to create-the deep, persistent urge to bring into being something
that you love and want to see exist-is a different factor than creativity.
The drive to create says Stephen Nachmanovitch, is what sets creators apart
from individuals who are merely creative.
"The drive to create . characterizes someone who is driven to do something
from the depths, something that he or she feel must be done regardless of
whether it's popular or well rewarded by society. This inner compulsion to
realize a vision depends on creativity for its fulfillment, but it is not the
same as creativity. The inspired poet or musician may in fact be less
creative, less clever, adept, or original than the designer of an advertising
campaign, but he is motivated by a life-or-death need to bring the vision into
being."
Although creativity is often an important component of creating, it is mistake
to see it as the whole of the creative process. You rarely, for example, see
groups of painters, sculptors, or poets "brainstorming" different ways to
approach their canvas, stone, or blank page. And when you do, such as when
aspiring writers workshop a new piece, or musicians "jam" together, it's just
one of many steps, not the whole process of creating.
Because of its association with doing things differently, creativity is often
confused with the unusual, unconventional, or even the outright bizarre.
In creativity course Robert Fritz told me about, participants dressed up in
chicken suits and jumped around making clucking noises to help them "free
their creative spirit."
Other popular approaches to creativity recommend that you whack or kick
yourself (metaphorically, of course) in vulnerable body parts. Can you
imagine Margaret Atwood clucking like a chicken? Or Georgia O'Keefe? I doubt
that Robert Frost whacked himself upside the head to shake loose the lines in
"The Road Not Taken."
Although creators do come up with imaginative processes and unusual results
from time to time, the unusual is not the essence of the creative process.
A creator's end result is usually predictable. A novelist usually ends up
with a novel, a painter with a painting. Architects see buildings take shape
as they were envisioned.
The essence of the creative process is that it causes something that the
creator desires to come into being-a creation. Although the path may vary
from straight to crooked, from up and down to a rising spiral, the essence of
the creative process is that it leads step-by-step to the outcome desired by
the creator.
You can see this complex combination of predictability and creativity by
comparing Picasso's original sketch for his famous painting Guernica with the
painting itself. Picasso knew what he wanted to achieve; the sketch contains
much of the final form. However, the finished painting includes a great deal
of detail that the painter had to work out through a further progression of
sketches and studies.
"Picasso," says John Briggs in Fire in the Crucible, "was not stating a
contradiction but plain fact when he said that a picture 'remains almost
intact' from its first inspiration and yet 'is not thought out and settled
beforehand."
Even those who insist that their creating is unplanned and spontaneous usually
end up with predictable results. For example, a woman in a summer college
workshop I did, a poet, claimed she never wrote with any end in mind. "I
can't," she told us, "It would stifle my creativity."
"So how do you create a poem," someone asked her.
"I just go quiet and it comes to me," she said. "Then I write it down."
"But," I asked, "isn't it inevitably a poem? Not a novel. Not an essay. Not
a ceramic pot or a screenplay. Isn't it always, predictably, a poem?"
"Yes," she said cautiously, then added, "But each poem is amazingly
different."
"Fair enough," I said, " But isn't a poem what you set out to produce when you
go quiet? Isn't a poem the end, the final form, that you have in mind when
you write it down?"
"Well, yes," she reluctantly agreed, "I guess it is."
"So," I asked, "would it be fair to say that you intentionally create a
space-a framework or a field of possibilities-in which poems can spontaneously
come to you?"
"Ah!" she said, smiling as if a light had gone on inside her head, "That is
what I do."
A Fundamentally Different Approach
Creating is a powerful process because not only does it generate surprise and
novelty, but also because it does lead reliably lead to the end results
envisioned by the creator.
When someone asks, "How can I live my life, do my work, or produce my product
more creatively?" they miss the point. The question implies that creativity
is a kind of magic pill you take to make things better. Such an approach
smacks strongly of problem solving.
However, creating is not about fixing what doesn't work. Neither is it about
merely doing things in stylistic different ways. It is not positive thinking,
visualization, or brainstorming (although it might include all of these
elements). Moreover, it is not a trendy form of life planning designed to
superficially change the way you do things.
Creating is a fundamentally different way of approaching what you do. It is a
way of envisioning then bringing into being what matters. It is a process
that embraces and transcends problems, circumstances, and complexity. Yes, it
is a process, but its purpose is to serve desired results.
In the next issue, we'll take a closer look at the distinction between process
and results and see how both are necessary in the creative act.
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from Lois Raats
http://www.metateamsolutions.com
Here's my definition, from an exercise I often give to
clients:
Passion is the energy that turns vision into action in the form of mission.
Without passion, a vision is just an idea or a daydream. Your vision and
what you feel deeply about need to be strongly connected, or you may create
grand dreams but then run out of steam as you try to accomplish them. When
your vision and your passions come together, your mission often quickly
becomes obvious. Just ask people who are in love!
There are many synonyms for passion: strong feeling, desire, love,
motivation, inspiration. All of these words are feeling words because
passion is a deeply held set of feelings about the things that are most
important to you.
Many of us have gotten out of touch with what we feel strongly about.
That's because we've often been taught to discount what we think and feel.
We've been encouraged to adopt the thoughts and feelings of such other
people as spouses, parents, teachers, friends, or society at large. We may
have been laughed at by people who did not value the same things as we do...
So we learned to tuck our perceptions away, sometimes so deeply that it
could take years to elicit them again.
When your passions are fueling your vision and mission, you will begin to
attract people into your life who have similar passions, and you will be
able to fuel each other. This back and forth, continuous flow of energy is
the essence of a great team, whether it be a marriage, a work team, or a
corporation. The energy of shared passion is able to propel us past "No",
and can transform what seems impossible into reality.
Here are some questions that might help an individual to understand his or
her own unique passions:
1. If I had the time or money, what would I most want to study, practice,
master, or research deeply? What would I want to be an expert in?
2. What activities do I engage in or discuss with others, where I lose all
track of time?
3. If money wasn't a concern, what work would I be willing to do for FREE?
4. What kinds of problems do I absolutely love to solve?
5. What kind of needs, opportunities, activities, or ideas really motivate
me and seem to give me energy?
6. Who do I know that I would like to change jobs with? Why?
7. What qualities do I have that I would want someone working with me to
have?
8. Imagine a perfect day at work, what would it involve?
9. What thoughts, people, and experiences make me the happiest?
10. What do I think or dream about when I lie awake at night just staring at
the ceiling?
11. What causes am I willing to dedicate my life to?
12. What price am I willing to pay in order to pursue my passion (i.e.
sacrifice financially, face fears, eliminate bad habits, make some tough
decisions etc.)?
13. What price am I currently paying for not pursuing my passion? (i.e.
stress, poor health, physical symptoms, spiritual or emotional un-ease)
Millions of would be world-changers are lost in this maze!
http://www.playforchange.com/Maze/index.htm
"This site empowers people to tackle pressing social issues, like traffic, creatively."
http://www.ingham.org/hd/ENVHLTH/eh.htm
Recycled Content Product Directory
from Gene Townsend http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/RCP/
...thousands of recycled products and provides information on the companies that reprocess, manufacture and/or distribute these products. The many benefits of buying recycled content products include diverting waste from landfills, reducing manufacturing waste and pollution, reducing energy consumption, and improving markets for recycled products.
By Juan Cole, through Tom Atlee
Professor of History at the University of Michigan
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109582366638394688
President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and
implied that things are improving in that country.
What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The
population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics
would have to be multiplied by that number.
Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately
of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings,
grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the
last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if
America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.
And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the
capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston,
Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco?
What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the
Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State
Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture
out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal
City or Alexandria?
What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were
trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move
more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was
happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they
ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National
Guard units?
There are estimated to be some 25,000 guerrillas in Iraq engaged in
concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies totalling
275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!),
rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous
urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely
controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas,
Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go
into those cities?
What if, during the past year, the Secretary of State (Aqilah Hashemi), the
President (Izzedine Salim), and the Attorney General (Muhammad Baqir
al-Hakim) had all been assassinated?
What if all the cities in the US were wracked by a crime wave, with
thousands of murders, kidnappings, burglaries, and carjackings in every
major city every year?
What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings,
Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in
Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of
"criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old
ladies?
What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing
hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons
of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery,
and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of
graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial over on the Mall? What if
the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of
thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US
Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh
Memorial Brigades?
What if there were virtually no commercial air traffic in the country? What
if many roads were highly dangerous, especially Interstate 95 from Richmond
to Washington, DC, and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston? If you got on I-95
anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you would risk being carjacked,
kidnapped, or having your car sprayed with machine gun fire.
What if no one had electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often
less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind
to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in
Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled at
least monthly? What if unemployment hovered around 40%?
What if veterans of militia actions at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City
bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you need a
tough guy in these times of crisis?
What if municipal elections were cancelled and cliques close to the new
"president" quietly installed in the statehouses as "governors?" What if
several of these governors (especially of Montana and Wyoming) were
assassinated soon after taking office or resigned when their children were
taken hostage by guerrillas?
What if the leader of the European Union maintained that the citizens of the
United States are, under these conditions, refuting pessimism and that
freedom and democracy are just around the corner?
http://www.re-news.net/pliny/index.htm
http://www.positivelymad.co.uk/pd/10_keys_parenting.htm
MSU's Green Building Speaker Series
- Download
flyer
http://www.ecofoot.msu.edu/events.htm
Thanks for recycling,
LeRoy
