June 29 2014: Part 3. “Secrets of the Creative Brain” by Nancy Andreasen is one of the finest articles on creativity that I have read to date. If she hasn’t determined all the secrets of creativity, she is certainly on the right track. And she writes with clarity and style.

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”

Kurt Vonnegut

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”

Oscar Wilde

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Creativity? Let me present the Millau Bridge in southern France where it crosses the River Tarn in the Massif Central mountains. It was designed by the British architect Lord Foster and at 300m (984 feet) it is the highest road bridge in the world, weighing 36,000 tonnes. The central pillar is higher than the famous French icon, the Eiffel Tower. The Bridge opened in December 2004 and is possibly one of the most breath taking bridges ever built.

This piece ends with a comment on perseverance. Based upon my own experience, the successful implementation of one’s creative ideas requires persistence above and beyond anything which one’s fellow (normal) humans would consider reasonable. In brief, you must fly in the face of creative failure, repeated rejections, and the immutable logic that your sheer survival demands you do something else. Ignore it all. Creative achievement has nothing to do with logic and the practicalities of living. It is all about the work itself and your commitment to it—and you must be relentless in that regard.

In my case, I have even lost the support of members of my immediate family. In fact, two of my children have worked actively to stop me writing. I have pressed on regardless supported by a few close friends and my fans (who have been—and remain—quite fabulous).

Creativity is nothing if not demanding. It may demand every sacrifice. Stay with it. In the end you will find it is worth it.

And now for the last few extracts from SECRETS OF THE CREATIVE BRAIN by Nancy Andreasen.

As for how these ideas emerge, almost all of my subjects confirmed that when eureka moments occur, they tend to be precipitated by long periods of preparation and incubation, and to strike when the mind is relaxed—during that state we called REST. “A lot of it happens when you are doing one thing and you’re not thinking about what your mind is doing,” one of the artists in my study told me. “I’m either watching television, I’m reading a book, and I make a connection … It may have nothing to do with what I am doing, but somehow or other you see something or hear something or do something, and it pops that connection together.”

Many subjects mentioned lighting on ideas while showering, driving, or exercising. One described a more unusual regimen involving an afternoon nap: “It’s during this nap that I get a lot of my work done. I find that when the ideas come to me, they come as I’m falling asleep, they come as I’m waking up, they come if I’m sitting in the tub. I don’t normally take baths … but sometimes I’ll just go in there and have a think.”

Some of the other most common findings my studies have suggested include:

Many creative people are autodidacts. They like to teach themselves, rather than be spoon-fed information or knowledge in standard educational settings. Famously, three Silicon Valley creative geniuses have been college dropouts: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. Steve Jobs—for many, the archetype of the creative person—popularized the motto “Think different.” Because their thinking is different, my subjects often express the idea that standard ways of learning and teaching are not always helpful and may even be distracting, and that they prefer to learn on their own. Many of my subjects taught themselves to read before even starting school, and many have read widely throughout their lives. For example, in his article “On Proof and Progress in Mathematics,” Bill Thurston wrote:

My mathematical education was rather independent and idiosyncratic, where for a number of years I learned things on my own, developing personal mental models for how to think about mathematics. This has often been a big advantage for me in thinking about mathematics, because it’s easy to pick up later the standard mental models shared by groups of mathematicians.

This observation has important implications for the education of creatively gifted children. They need to be allowed and even encouraged to “think different.” (Several subjects described to me how they would get in trouble in school for pointing out when their teachers said things that they knew to be wrong, such as when a second-grade teacher explained to one of my subjects that light and sound are both waves and travel at the same speed. The teacher did not appreciate being corrected.)

Many creative people are polymaths, as historic geniuses including Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were. George Lucas was awarded not only the National Medal of Arts in 2012 but also the National Medal of Technology in 2004. Lucas’s interests include anthropology, history, sociology, neuroscience, digital technology, architecture, and interior design. Another polymath, one of the scientists, described his love of literature:

I love words, and I love the rhythms and sounds of words … [As a young child] I very rapidly built up a huge storehouse of … Shakespearean sonnets, soliloquies, poems across the whole spectrum … When I got to college, I was open to many possible careers. I actually took a creative-writing course early. I strongly considered being a novelist or a writer or a poet, because I love words that much … [But for] the academics, it’s not so much about the beauty of the words. So I found that dissatisfying, and I took some biology courses, some quantum courses. I really clicked with biology. It seemed like a complex system that was tractable, beautiful, important. And so I chose biochemistry.

The arts and the sciences are seen as separate tracks, and students are encouraged to specialize in one or the other. If we wish to nurture creative students, this may be a serious error.

Creative people tend to be very persistent, even when confronted with skepticism or rejection. Asked what it takes to be a successful scientist, one replied:

Perseverance … In order to have that freedom to find things out, you have to have perseverance … The grant doesn’t get funded, and the next day you get up, and you put the next foot in front, and you keep putting your foot in front … I still take things personally. I don’t get a grant, and … I’m upset for days. And then I sit down and I write the grant again.

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June 28 2014: Part 2. “Secrets of the Creative Brain” by Nancy Andreasen is one of the finest articles on creativity that I have read to date. If she hasn’t determined all the secrets of creativity, she is certainly on the right track. And she writes with clarity and style.

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”

Erich Fromm

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The missing word in the above quote is “could.” It should be there instead of “will.”

No, I’m not being negative. I’m merely making the point that if the quote were true, our lives would already be very different. Creativity isn’t something that has just been invented. It has been around since man emerged.

Still, although intellectually I understand full well why we—meaning society as a whole—so under-utilize that amazing force we call “creativity,” emotionally it frustrates the hell out of me.

Every fiber of my being screams:”Creativity can solve just about every problem we humans face—and arguably do something about death and taxes”—and then my logical side cuts in ands says: “The movers and shakers are doing fine the way we are. The last thing they want is a bunch of fresh ideas which will change everything.”

The following are some further extracts from that great Atlantic piece SECRETS OF THE CREATIVE BRAIN by Nancy Andreasen. Best you click on the link and read the whole thing.  

And what are we even looking for when we search for evidence of “creativity” in the brain? Although we have a definition of creativity that many people accept—the ability to produce something that is novel or original and useful or adaptive—achieving that “something” is part of a complex process, one often depicted as an “aha” or “eureka” experience. This narrative is appealing—for example, “Newton developed the concept of gravity around 1666, when an apple fell on his head while he was meditating under an apple tree.” The truth is that by 1666, Newton had already spent many years teaching himself the mathematics of his time (Euclidean geometry, algebra, Cartesian coordinates) and inventing calculus so that he could measure planetary orbits and the area under a curve. He continued to work on his theory of gravity over the subsequent years, completing the effort only in 1687, when he published Philosophiœ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. In other words, Newton’s formulation of the concept of gravity took more than 20 years and included multiple components: preparation, incubation, inspiration—a version of the eureka experience—and production. Many forms of creativity, from writing a novel to discovering the structure of DNA, require this kind of ongoing, iterative process.

One possible contributory factor is a personality style shared by many of my creative subjects. These subjects are adventuresome and exploratory. They take risks. Particularly in science, the best work tends to occur in new frontiers. (As a popular saying among scientists goes: “When you work at the cutting edge, you are likely to bleed.”) They have to confront doubt and rejection. And yet they have to persist in spite of that, because they believe strongly in the value of what they do. This can lead to psychic pain, which may manifest itself as depression or anxiety, or lead people to attempt to reduce their discomfort by turning to pain relievers such as alcohol.

I’ve been struck by how many of these people refer to their most creative ideas as “obvious.” Since these ideas are almost always the opposite of obvious to other people, creative luminaries can face doubt and resistance when advocating for them. As one artist told me, “The funny thing about [one’s own] talent is that you are blind to it. You just can’t see what it is when you have it … When you have talent and see things in a particular way, you are amazed that other people can’t see it.” Persisting in the face of doubt or rejection, for artists or for scientists, can be a lonely path—one that may also partially explain why some of these people experience mental illness.

One interesting paradox that has emerged during conversations with subjects about their creative processes is that, though many of them suffer from mood and anxiety disorders, they associate their gifts with strong feelings of joy and excitement. “Doing good science is simply the most pleasurable thing anyone can do,” one scientist told me. “It is like having good sex. It excites you all over and makes you feel as if you are all-powerful and complete.”

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June 27 2014: Part 1. “Secrets of the Creative Brain” by Nancy Andreasen is one of the finest articles on creativity that I have read to date. If she hasn’t determined all the secrets of creativity, she is certainly on the right track. And she writes with clarity and style.

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?”

George Bernard Shaw

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Before I comment on Nancy Andreasen’s quite excellent—and highly readable—piece, SECRETS OF THE CREATIVE BRAIN, let me list some personal thoughts on creativity as they come to mind. 

Yes, I think about this stuff. It’s hugely important o me.

• Society, by and large, is neither led nor governed by creative people. This has important implications. If you believe in the power of creativity—as I do—they are largely negative.
• Creativity is an extraordinarily powerful force which society fails to utilize adequately. Indeed, to a great extent, it suppresses it. It’s an underutilized resource.
• Creativity is initially discouraged by  educational systems which, by and large, seek to socialize and educate though the imposition of disciplined conformity.
• Creative people are innately non-conformist.
• Creative people are often highly disciplined—but in their own way.
• The creative process, in itself, tends to be messy.
• Although everyone is creative to a certain extent, there are profound differences between most of us—and truly creative people. As a consequence, most people don’t truly understand creativity—and many, often unconsciously, resent it.
• Creativity often comes up with answers without questions being asked—in any conscious way—but, arguably, it would be even more effective if we were able to frame the right questions.
• Creativity—which is innately questioning—is socially disruptive.
• Creativity is almost invariably opposed by the the powerful interests who are vested in the status quo.
• Creativity is inherently risky—and creative people are rarely rewarded adequately, if at all, for the risks they take.
• Creative people are driven by the challenges of the work itself.
• Creativity—at its best—is holistic in its approach.
• Rigid, authoritarian organizations—whether they be corporate, government, military, academic, or religious—are hostile to creativity because they are the epitome of the status quo.
• Creative people do need support—and often a great deal of it—but that support needs to be loose, flexible, and open.
• Creativity is capable of resolving most of the problems society faces but only at the cost of disrupting the status quo.

I’ll continue on this theme tomorrow, but let me close with a teaser  extract from SECRETS OF THE CREATIVE BRAIN.

Although many people continue to equate intelligence with genius, a crucial conclusion from Terman’s study is that having a high IQ is not equivalent to being highly creative. Subsequent studies by other researchers have reinforced Terman’s conclusions, leading to what’s known as the threshold theory, which holds that above a certain level, intelligence doesn’t have much effect on creativity: most creative people are pretty smart, but they don’t have to be that smart, at least as measured by conventional intelligence tests. An IQ of 120, indicating that someone is very smart but not exceptionally so, is generally considered sufficient for creative genius.

I suspect the above reveals more about the limitations of the IQ test than creativity. It confirms what I have long thought.

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June 26 2014: A culture of self-promotion that makes me uneasy—even if it is required behavior for an author today. Are we forever doomed to have to try to out-promote each other? Or should we just chill, and enjoy the game?

“Don't think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine.”

Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered

“Well more than two thirds of the press releases from Douglas MacArthur's command reference only one person – himself.”

Stanley Weintraub, Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941

“Heroes must see to their own fame. No one else will.”

 Gore Vidal, Julian

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I feel like something of a hypocrite for even raising this matter because blogging—in itself—is clearly a form of self-promotion, so you could well argue that I’m protesting too much (being a hypocrite).

Not my intention. I’m more puzzled. I think we are faced with a genuine dilemma here and I wish I could see some answers.

On a national level, I do think there is a great deal we could do to rein in the unceasing barrage of promotion we are exposed to. Everything doesn’t have to be paid for through advertising. Europe has already demonstrated that commercialism—and promotion (its seemingly inevitable byproduct), can be restrained in numerous ways while still encouraging a vigorous economy. Here, it is worth mentioning that Northern Europe—despite its constraints on commercialism—is doing better than us economically, and has been doing so for some time.

What are such constraints? Here are a few examples:

• Limited shop opening hours.
• Superior consumer protection through legislation.
• Numerous restraints on advertising in the media.
• Alternative means of financing the media.

Where writers are concerned, I don’t see such straightforward solutions.

• The book market is over-crowded to a fault—and the situation only looks like getting worse for the indefinite future.
• There is abundant evidence that the quality of a book alone will not normally result in significant sales.
• Word of mouth is hugely important, but that rarely happens by accident.. It is a consequence of marketing. Best Sellers in the U.S. are largely made.

My concerns about self-promotion are:

• It takes up a vast amount of time which I feel should be spent on writing.
• I feel our efforts are largely self-canceling.
• I’m not innately comfortable doing it. I was brought up to regard self-promotion was bad form—“just not done”—so I have something of a cultural problem here.
• I don’t feel I have a natural talent for it.

But here is the twist. Over time, I find I’m becoming vastly more comfortable with the whole crazy business. I still have the strongest reservations, but I have learned to love blogging—and now regard it as an essential part of my writing life.

Recently, I have been carrying out a series of tests in social media—and, lo and behold, have suddenly found I’m comfortable in the milieu.

As for my new web site, I have put huge effort into it, and am downright excited about it. No, it is not uploaded yet.

I guess the bottom line is that, deplore self-promotion though I do intellectually; I now accept its inevitability—and the fact that it’s all communication.

And communication—normally by way of the written word—is what I do—and enjoy.

As for radio, TV, press interviews, and public speaking, these have not become an issue as yet. However, I’m not entirely inexperienced in these areas—and actually like engaging an audience. It gets the adrenalin going.

Watch this space.

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June 25 2014: My friend, GI Wilson (combat veteran, retired Marine colonel, military thinker and reformer, distinguished academic, man of integrity and character) and clan.

“Hardness," I was learning, was the supreme virtue among recon Marines. The greatest compliment one could pay to another was to say he was hard. Hardness wasn't toughness, nor was it courage, although both were part of it. Hardness was the ability to face an overwhelming situation with aplomb, smile calmly at it, and then triumph through sheer professional pride.”

Nathaniel Fick

“Great Marine commanders, like all great warriors, are able to kill that which they love most -- their men.”

Nathaniel Fick, One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer

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For a host of reasons, including extensive family associations, a military orientation in my education, and having been brought up in the shadow of WW II, I have long been interested in military matters—everything from military history to strategy and tactics.

To this day, I remain fascinated, intrigued, skeptical, curious—and constructively (so I would like to think) critical. The military do not handle criticism well regardless of the merits of what is said. They condition themselves to think they are the repository of all military wisdom and will do just about anything to preserve that myth. Their unwillingness to listen and learn is not a strength.

Either way, one would be foolish and ill informed, indeed, to deny the significance of war, and its warriors, in world events. In fact, without war, there would be no United States of America. Correction: Without war, there would be no U.S. in its current form. Who knows what would have happened with Britain over time. Canada, for instance, was not born out of a revolution. That thought is worth pondering.

This interest in matters military now goes back nearly six decades—and has led me to read extensively about such matters, to spend time with units whenever possible, and occasionally to put myself in harms way. But, for all that, I have never wanted to be a soldier (or even a Marine). I doubt I have the temperament, am ambivalent about my courage, and value my independence too much. I also have a problem following orders unless I respect the person giving those orders—and that is not the way the military work. In all too many cases, it is a not a merit-based culture. It is a mindless bureaucracy run, not infrequently, by mediocre people, which breaks things and kills people for morally dubious ends.

Look no further than Iraq to illustrate that point. The courage and commitment of our troops is beyond denial, but neither are the consequences of our actions and our occupation. Was this really a just war? Was Vietnam? Can we really stand behind most of our military adventures since WW II? I have the strongest doubts that we can, yet we have killed millions and inflicted untold misery during such wars (whether called such or not)

We need a strong military—and it’s a good thing that ours is the strongest in the worlds—but a strong military should not be confused with a system for extracting extraordinarily large sums of money from the real economy for the benefit of the MICC (Military Industrial Congressional Complex) while neglecting the very real needs of the American public. And they certainly have been neglected. Whereas real household income has increased significantly for most in the developed world, most Americans have received a miniscule overall increase—and currently, real household income is actually in decline.

At the same time, the U.S. military world, at its best, can—and does—throw up some marvelous people, who somehow manage to overcome the innate limitations of their disciplined and structured world—and to think and act constructively, creatively, and courageously.

As a consequence of my research into the U.S. military in the Nineties, I have been privileged to meet many such people whom I’m now proud to call friends.

GI is such a one. He is a prince of a man.

I have been very tempted to phone him up and kid him with: “GI, is that all?” (referring to the size of his clan) but I’m not that brave.

They look delightful.

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June 24 2014: What have Hollywood and the U.S. Army got in common? Both take a truly alarming length of time to get an idea into production—think a decade or two (could be longer)--and ruin many an interesting concept in the process. Sometimes, the result deserves an Oscar!

“Do we need weapons to fight wars? Or do we need wars to create markets for weapons?

Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story

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Today’s infantry make extensive use of both air and ground transportation—everything from helicopters to armored fighting vehicles—but, in the final analysis, are foot soldiers who, more often than not, fight in  difficult, demanding, and exhausting terrain—with urban terrain arguably being the most treacherous. That means that, not infrequently,they have to carry everything they need—so weight is critical.

If, as the Air Force claim: “Speed is life,” then, as far as the foot soldier is concerned: “Lightness is life.” Weight exhausts and tired soldiers react slower, and die faster.

As far as the infantry are concerned, just about everything the Army develops takes far too long, and weighs far too much. As far as the taxpayer is concerned, it is almost certainly too expensive as well. The MICC (Military Industrial Congressional Complex is deeply corrupt.)

How long is “too long?” Well, the Army seems to think nothing of spending 20 years on developing something—and still scrapping it—sometimes after billions of dollars have been spent.

Why is the Army so bad at development?

• The powers that be rarely know exactly what they want—even if they have a fair idea in general terms. The devil lies in settling on the details—and the Army consists of a series of competing fiefdoms, each with with an agenda of its own. Appreciate that, first and foremost, the Army is a bureaucracy—and that it spends more time fighting bureaucratically than against the Nation’s enemies. Internally, the branches compete (branches being airborne, armor etc.) and then comes the real war without end—the fight between the services.
• They keep on changing the specifications of what is required. Oversight is maintained by a group and since Amy postings are relatively short, and development time long, there is always some new arrival who wants to make his or her mark.
• No one person is responsible for anything. This isn’t quite true technically—because there is normally a specific officer in charge of a program—but, since the PEO (Project Executive Officer) is rotated so often, and, anyway, reports to higher, it is almost impossible to determine who is really responsible for what.
• No one want to make a decision in case it be proved wrong.
• There is no incentive to make any decision.
• Defense contractors love open ended programs—especially if they are cost plus.
• Since contractors have a tendency to provide post retirement jobs for those who treat them well, the officers in charge of a project tend to be overly lenient with contractors.
• Conflicts of interest are rife throughout the process.
• The development process itself is bureaucratic and extremely slow.
• Almost no one seems to care about the needs of the soldier in the field. Indeed, the field soldier is rarely involved in the development process except at the end when evaluation is concerned.

The photographs illustrate as vastly lighter SAW—Squad Automatic Weapon—which would have proved invaluable in Afghanistan—and  significantly lighter case telescoped ammunition.

American ingenuity at its best—yet caught in development hell. The combat soldier deserves to be better served.

Why do I write about these issues? Because I’m interested and concerned, because many of my friends are combat veterans, and because I have a major military novel in the pipeline.

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June 23 2014: Do we really need the written word—or will we go back (or forward) to pictograms?

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

“If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”
Edward Hopper

“A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.”
Henry Hazlitt, Thinking as a Science

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I have long pondered the ever increasing importance of the visual compared to the written word—and am not exactly happy with my conclusions.

The visual seems to be winning out even though it can’t do the same job—and can scarcely handle nuance and complexity at all. The visual appeals primarily to our emotions—with intellect scarcely getting a look in. It also distracts from the writing—which is one of the reasons why enhanced books have not been more successful (except in niche areas). People naturally gravitate to the easy—so, if there are plenty of pictures, they will tend to focus on those. In contrast, reading takes effort—sometimes considerable effort.

Strange how we talk about reading as if it was the complete skill. Doubtless, we don’t mean to because we do also teach comprehension—but my sense is that, all too often, we pay lip service to the latter. Reading—in the sense that one really understands both meaning and context—is a major skill and less than common.

I love the visual—but I love writing more. How to reconcile this? I seem to spend my life dealing with such conundrums? Throughout my life, I have had people telling me I think too much.

They really mean “question too much.”

Since I have great respect for the intellect I have been gifted with, I am of the opinion that the truth is that I think—and question—far too little.

Your brain is there to be used!

Focused thought is a force of extraordinary power (because the logic of such thought tends to lead towards execution as well since an idea left unexecuted is of limited utility), but the trouble is that it means facing up to much that is unpalatable—both about oneself, and elsewhere. Of course, that assumes intellectual honesty.

On the other hand, how can one really think without intellectual honesty—which means focusing solely on the best information available, bypassing your own prejudices, recognizing your own weaknesses, and ignoring your own beliefs (unless those beliefs are supported by the evidence). The answer is that you can’t. Which may explain a great deal.

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