Concerning blogging, I was just thinking about the importance of establishing certain expectations and meeting them consistently…
In the last day or two I’m having trouble getting up stamina for the big, synoptic, sustained posts I tend to write when I’m on a roll, and which I’m developing a kind of discipline for. I’m just going to jam a little and avoid starting anything that might be frustrated (and frustrate me!) by the slowness of my computer or tiredness of my mind or emptiness of my wallet or the shortness of my free time…
My last post was an example of creative inconsistency. This post is starting out that way [but on revision I see it turned out to be superbly consistent with all my core themes]. Even silliness and humour and dangerous ideas are (not just useful but) essential for genuine creativity.
(Big hairy posts will resume shortly…)
I’m not here to argue against consistency but rather to simply point out that there may also be benefits of consistently undermining consistency as well.
Obviously that isn’t for everyone but it’s the style I naturally gravitate towards: doing something precisely because it isn’t expected — not necessarily doing that opposite of what’s expected (that would still be pretty predictable) but doing something that doesn’t even fit into that dichotomy and calls for a new attitude of appreciation.
This is essentially what creativity is all about: maximizing the number of stochastic associations… Check out the work of Dean Keith Simonton, one of the leaders in the field. Here’s a chapter on “Exceptional Creativity and Chance” from the volume, Beyond Knowledge: Extracognitive Aspects of Developing High Ability (ed. Shavinina and Ferrari, 2004)…
When I find myself doing something the same way I’ve done it before, I start making a deliberate effort to do it differently — to avoid getting into a habit.
This in itself turns out to be a habit… but I’m happy with this habit.
In the end (and the beginning) there’s no eminently rational case for doing things the way I do them, it’s just the way I’m naturally inclined: I hate doing things methodically, the way they’ve already been done, and I love discovering or creating new ways.
If I was 17 you could easily (and justifiably) write this off as youthful rebelliousness. Not saying I don’t lack there… but you can’t write off something with so much articulation and research to support it. (Another distinction of maturity is that I have a deep appreciation for structure, consistency, and rigour. I’ve got no grievance with that way of doing things — and I’ll argue forcefully for preserving it — as long as there is room somewhere in that for me to do this.)
Even if you pick apart my articulation and research, what ultimately matters is how effective it is. How well does it work? And in this kind of situation — when the methodless-method concerns thinking and knowledge and ideas — how well does it help us understand and manage our world?
To be continued…
