Great ideas don’t always come when you expect them to. Descartes may have insisted on meditating about his place in the great scheme of things and the nature of God but, as has been seen, he was ultimately fooled by his own deluded mind – just because he thought, why should he be?
No, great ideas come when you don’t expect them; but the shame of it is that we don’t recognise them – we don’t listen to our instincts. How many times have you walked into a room and felt that something had changed, even though you didn’t know what it was? There are millions of inputs entering our brains every second, but because our conscious mind cannot process all of this information, often all we are left with is what we call “instinct”. You don’t think how to walk when you walk; and a good thing too, because if you did you would keep falling over your feet. Your subconscious – in this case, the part of your brain that deals with proprioception – deals with the walking, so that you can get on with the business of noticing what is going on around you : or, more likely than not, ignoring what is going on around you.
Did you see that?!
Too late, it’s gone now. But you didn’t see it, or hear it, or feel it, because it didn’t matter to your conscious brain : it wasn’t important at the time.
Unfortunately we miss many of the things that do matter, because our brains are designed to allow our bodies to survive, not to achieve intellectual perfection. In order for us to notice the things that may really matter – the solution to cold fusion, a way of getting governments to drastically reduce emissions, or an invisible way to prevent bad morning hair – we need to change our state of mind. We need to be distracted.
“Arthur Dent swung down sharply, nearly catching himself a nasty crack on the jaw with the doorstep and tumbled through the air, so suddenly stunned with what a profoundly stupid thing he had just done that he completely forgot the bit about hitting the ground and didn’t.
“A nice trick, he thought to himself, if you can do it.”
(So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish (c) 1984 Douglas Adams)
When I was a university student I was having problems trying to think of how to express the way that water flowed down different slopes on different alluvial surfaces without resorting to my extremely bad mathematics. I was abruptly woken out of my sleep by some drunken students playing hockey, of all things, in the halls of residence corridor, and as I began to get angry, in my tiredness I suddenly had a flash of inspiration. I had found a simple way of describing the solution to my problem, and three hours later after writing my entire essay down, I had the best cup of coffee I have ever had.
Sometimes I can’t sleep, and have little ideas for articles hanging around at the back of my mind. As I try to drift off, pertinant ideas come into my head, and I have to write them down. The same with standing in the shower after a session at the gym – as the water runs off me, tiny ideas flow into my mind, and rather than bat them away with thoughts of getting back to my place of work, I let them ferment and by the time I am dry have enough structure to tap them into my organiser.
We must not ignore those things that pass in the night, those tiny glimmers of doubt or uneasiness that cannot be explained. The spark of creativity is within us all, and those than can capture it may just be the ones that the rest of us will be thanking – even if it’s only for making sure everyone’s hair is neat in the morning.
Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
www.reduce3.com
And proud member of The Sietch.
My apologies, I’m slow. Can you give me the meaning of this in 25 words or less?
Rt: I think the point is you need to read the whole thing, and then sort of let it simmer.
Nice to have you back Keith, very interesting article, the same used to happen to me in college, I would be stuck on a very hard computer problem and I would wake up in the middle of the night, my brain screaming about instantiating semaphores, and proper string tokenization and all manner of crazy crap, I would get up and immediately start working, its pretty crazy what the mind will do.
I would still like a concise message. Perhaps I just don’t think on the high levels you do. Damn me for being so stupid – or is the intent to obfuscate?
Take a hot bath, then think about it.
It turns out I experienced the same the thing as as a student in industrial electronics. I had to memorize gate logic (and, or, exclusive or, j-k flipflops, etc.), there were no CS majors at the time. It would go thru my mind while I was working at the newspaper inserting ads. I would go thru my mind as I trying to go to sleep. Indeed, the mind is a curious thing.
I still don’t get the point of the post.
rt: that was my concise message, like let the world sort of soak in, perhaps I am bad at summarizing. Maybe keith will chime in later to help.
Keith, lovely thoughts. This couldn’t of come at a better moment since I recently have been having nights of these same moments. But I think that they only come about when the body is under stress and then made to relax. That is to say, I don’t believe that in general our minds have these nuggets of wisdom just waiting to burst forward during the next massage session, but only if it has been pushed hard just before hand. Similar to how we work our other muscles…save the heart, which thank God we don’t have to think about pumping blood or then again even breathing to bring the power to the mind.
Oi, Feador! Summarize Crime and Punishment in 25 words!
Hardly likely, I would think, but I can have a go at a quick summary if you want. Bear in mind, though, it would only be my impression of the book; someone else may take something completely different from it.
Sometimes, RT, it doesn’t help to be too clear about the meaning of a piece of writing – the most beautiful prose is that which can alter its meaning depending on the mood of the reader, or the person actually reading it. Take from my writing what you will : if it helps then it will have been worth it.
Regards
Keith
Sorry people, I am too analytical for my own good. I have been a techie most of my working life for that very reason.
I get the gist of it after letting it steep for a while. Mouseydew’s comments helped as well.
You keep working the creative stuff – me, I’m a computer :) Sad, but true.