Everyone is born with creativity. If you watch children at play you will be in no doubt.
Creativity is one of those mercurial concepts. It’s a mystical and mythical thing that we grown-ups say we want and then do everything we can to kill.
Kids don’t buy into this madness, they allow themselves to be free and to be taken in any direction. They resist their ideas being hijacked by anything or more importantly by anybody. They have the skill to deal with uncertainty, ambiguity and they have no fear of failure.
There is an energy in us when we are young that is sadly sucked out of us over our years of adapting to a so called ‘civilised’ world.
“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”
Buddha said that.
“We’ve created (and defended) a bizarre system of thinking and working that sneers at anything that smells of risk, aimless discovery, mindful reflection, connecting things that aren’t obvious – anything that’s actually going to generate creativity.
I said that.
The result of our systemic stupidity is a mindless, automated and uninspiring environment for anything really valuable to emerge and nowadays we simply call that ‘the workplace’.
Mostly this is the unintended consequence of ‘unthinkingness’ – people blindly trying to do the right things – the right things according to previous eras and generations. And that’s the problem.
The upshot is layer upon layer of playing safe. And the result is that we seem incapable of ‘un’ learning these processes, rules and standards. We have forgotten what made us truly creative in the first place.
“Creativity is not only about divergent thinking but also about generating endless associations.”
Almost everybody said that.
That childish creativity, where wondrous things may happen at any time could be game changing in our society and applicable to every single enterprise on the planet. We need to get back to the source of endless associations.
Breakthrough innovation and step-change is required in so many of the worlds problems. The levels of creativity required need the freedom and mastery of our minds unencumbered by the layers of conditioning and prejudice drilled into every one of us.
We need to recover our childlike curiosity.
It’s urgent that we rediscover that time and space and ability to consider multiple ideas at once and where ambiguity is not a health risk. We need to set about the unlearning and decommissioning of old methods and teachings. For our species and planet to survive this may now be on the critical path.
With great thanks to Rachael and Peter Westgarth for giving the world the two creative geniuses (James and Emily) that built these images!
First published on johncaswell.com, 23 September 2013. See the copy in the Wayback Machine. Kept as John wrote it.
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