Augustus Woodward’s plan following the 1805 fire for Detroit’s baroque styled radial avenues and Grand Circus. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m a Detroiter, I was born in the city, and I love the city. I no longer live in Detroit, I now live about 30 minutes outside of the city, but still consider myself a Detroiter. It pains me to hear negative news stories of Detroit, but it seems that’s all we ever hear. Murder, Rape, miss use of Government powers, Kids killing Kids, Drugs and other horrid actions. It saddens me when I do venture to the City to see all the majestic buildings and homes is shambles to see the empty lots filled with trash and the parks and streets empty of life.
Detroit is a shell of its former self, many do not know the true Detroit, they only know the current Detroit. The one that is on a path to self destruction, the one that fills the national news with murder and deception. Detroit is more than that, Detroit has 300 years of history, of pride and accomplishments. No, not just Cars and Motown, but Art and Architecture, Culture and Innovation. Detroit is a city of many first, The first expressway, phone book and more. Detroit is not what you think she is, she is a diamond in the ruff.
Detroit…
• is home to the Motown sound founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in 1957
• is home to the first Van Gogh painting in a public collection in the U.S. at the Detroit Institute of Arts, "Self Portrait," Vincent Van Gogh, 1887
• installed the first mile of paved concrete road, just north of the Model T plant, on Woodward Avenue between McNichols and 7 Mile Roads in 1909
• built the nation’s first urban freeway, the Davison, in 1942
• is home to the oldest state fair in the nation — the Michigan State Fair, first held in 1849
• is the potato chip capital of the world, based on consumption
• has country’s largest island park within a city — Belle Isle Park
• is home to the world’s only floating post office, the J.W. Westcott II, can be found on the Detroit River
• is north of Canada
• is second in the nation in fishing rod sales
• shares the world’s first auto traffic tunnel between two nations – the Detroit/Windsor Tunnel
• is home to the tallest hotel in the Western Hemisphere – the Detroit Marriott Renaissance Center, at 727 feet/73 stories
• the nation’s first soda — Vernors — created in Detroit by pharmacist James Vernor in 1862. Detroit is also home to Sanders hot fudge, Better Made Potato Chips, Faygo soda pop, Stroh’s Ice Cream
• has the most registered bowlers in the United States
• was the first city in the nation to assign individual telephone numbers in 1879
History of Detroit
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ste. Anne de Détroit, founded in 1701 is the second oldest continuously operating Roman Catholic parish in the United States. The present Gothic Revival cathedral styled church was completed in 1887 and serves a largely Hispanic community.[1][2]
The city of Detroit, Michigan, developed from a French fort and missionary outpost founded in 1701 to one of the largest American cities by the early 20th century. As reflected by the emblems on its flag, Detroit has been governed by three world powers: France, Great Britain, and the United States. The city, settled in 1701, is one of the oldest cities in the Midwest. Detroit experienced a large scale fire in 1805 which nearly destroyed the city. After the fire, Justice Augustus B. Woodward devised a plan similar to Pierre Charles L’Enfant‘s design for Washington, D.C. Detroit‘s monumental avenues and traffic circles fan out in a baroque styled radial fashion from Grand Circus Park in the heart of the city’s theater district, which facilitates traffic patterns along the city’s tree-lined boulevards and parks.[3] Main thoroughfares radiate outward from the city center like spokes in a wheel.
During the 19th century, Detroit grew into a thriving hub of commerce and industry, the city spread along Jefferson Avenue, with multiple manufacturing firms taking advantage of the transportation resources afforded by the river and a parallel rail line. Beginning in the late 19th and early 20th century, many of the city’s Gilded Age mansions and buildings arose. Detroit was referred to as the Paris of the West for its architecture, and for Washington Boulevard, recently electrified by Thomas Edison.[1]
Following World War II, the Detroit area emerged as a global business center with the metropolitan area becoming one of the largest in the United States. The Detroit area is the second largest U.S. metropolitan area linking the Great Lakes system. Immigrants and migrants have contributed significantly to Detroit’s economy and culture. In the 1990s and the new millennium, the city has experienced increased revitalization. Many areas of the city are listed in the National Register of Historic Places and include National Historic Landmarks.
Beginnings
The first recorded mention of what became Detroit was in 1670, when the French Sulpician missionaries François Dollier de Casson and René Bréhant de Galinée stopped at the site on their way to the mission at Sault Ste. Marie.[4] Galínee’s journal notes that near the site of present-day Detroit, they found a stone idol venerated by the Indians and destroyed the idol with an axe and dropped the pieces into the river. Early French settlers planted twelve missionary pear trees "named for the twelve Apostles" on the grounds of what is now Waterworks Park.[5]
Statue of French officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac commemorating his 1701 landing along the Detroit River.
Siege of Fort Detroit during Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763.
The British surrender, following the American Siege of Detroit during the War of 1812.
The city name comes from the Detroit River (French: le détroit du Lac Érie), meaning the strait of Lake Erie, linking Lake Huron and Lake Erie; in the historical context, the strait included Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River.[6] Traveling up the Detroit River on the ship Le Griffon (owned by La Salle), Father Louis Hennepin noted the north bank of the river as an ideal location for a settlement. There, in 1701, the French officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, along with fifty-one additional French-Canadians, founded a settlement called Fort Ponchartrain du Détroit, naming it after the comte de Pontchartrain, Minister of Marine under Louis XIV. Ste. Anne de Détroit, founded July 26, 1701, is the second oldest continuously operating Roman Catholic parish in the United States and the church was the first building erected at Fort Ponchartrain du Détroit.[1][2][7][8]
France offered free land to attract families to Detroit, which grew to 800 people in 1765, the largest city between Montreal and New Orleans.[9] Francois Marie Picoté, sieur de Belestre (Montreal 1719–1793) was the last French military commander at Fort Detroit (1758–1760), surrendering the fort on November 29, 1760 to British Major Robert Rogers (of Rogers’ Rangers fame and sponsor of the Jonathan Carver expedition to St. Anthony Falls). The British gained control of the area in 1760 and were thwarted by an Indian attack three years later during Pontiac’s Rebellion. The region’s fur trade was an important economic activity. Detroit’s city flag reflects this French heritage. (See Flag of Detroit).[1]
The City of Detroit (from Canada Shore), 1872, by A. C. Warren
During the French and Indian War (1760), British troops gained control and shortened the name to Detroit. Several tribes led by Chief Pontiac, an Ottawa leader, launched Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763), including a siege of Fort Detroit. Partially in response to this, the British Royal Proclamation of 1763 included restrictions on white settlement in unceded Indian territories. Detroit passed to the United States under the Jay Treaty (1796). In 1805, fire destroyed most of the settlement. A river warehouse and brick chimneys of the wooden homes were the sole structures to survive.[10]
Father Gabriel Richard arrived at Ste. Anne’s in 1796. While the local priest, he helped start the school which evolved into the University of Michigan, started primary schools for white boys and girls as well as for Indians, as a territorial representative to U.S. Congress helped establish a road-building project that connected Detroit and Chicago, and brought the first printing press to Michigan which printed the first Michigan newspaper. After his death in 1832, Richard was interred under the altar of Ste. Anne’s.[1][2]
Detroit was the goal of various American campaigns during the American Revolution, but logistical difficulties in the North American frontier and American Indian allies of Great Britain would keep any armed rebel force from reaching the Detroit area. In the Treaty of Paris (1783), Great Britain ceded territory that included Detroit to the newly recognized United States, though in reality it remained under British control. Great Britain continued to trade with and defend her native allies in the area, and supplied local nations with weapons to harass American settlers and soldiers.
In 1794, a Native American alliance, that had received some support and encouragement from the British, was decisively defeated by General Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Wayne negotiated the Treaty of Greenville (1795) with many of these nations, in which tribes ceded the area of Fort Detroit to the United States. Detroit passed to the United States under the Jay Treaty (1796). Great Britain agreed to evacuate forts held in the United States’ Northwest Territory. In 1805, a fire destroyed most of the settlement. A river warehouse and brick chimneys of the wooden homes were the sole remains of the structures.[10] Detroit’s motto and seal (as on the Flag) reflect this fire.
God Bless
Paul Sposite
Guided Insight Life Coach
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I just finished “How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day” by Michael J. Gelb.This is a fantastic book, one that all should read. The information is useful no matter who or what you are. Leonardo’s life lessons are timeless and learning about how he looked at life how he saw life was fascinating. I will be looking up more books concerning his life. Managers, Teachers, Parents and everyone else needs to read this book, we need to return to being renaissance men and woman once again.
So what is a renaissance man? And why do we need them again?
As to the first question, what is it:
The common term Renaissance man is used to describe a person who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields.[3] The concept emerged from the numerous great thinkers of that era who excelled in multiple fields of the arts and science, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Copernicus and Francis Bacon; the emergence of these thinkers was likewise attributed to the then rising notion in Renaissance Italy expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472): that “a man can do all things if he will.” It embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered humans empowered, limitless in their capacities for development, and led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible. Thus the gifted people of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts. The term has since expanded from original usage and has been applied to other great thinkers before and after the Renaissance such as Aristotle, Johann Goethe, and Isaac Newton. (source)
Basically, it is a person well versed on many fields of study, what we would call today, a well rounded education. But really it is more than that. It is more than just getting your Liberal Arts degree.Well at least how we in modern times view it:
The phrase liberal arts (Latin: artes liberales) refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects (called the Trivium) were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy (which included the study of astrology). This extended curriculum was called the Quadrivium. Together the Trivium and Quadrivium constituted the seven liberal arts of the medieval university curriculum.
In modern times liberal arts is a term which can be interpreted in different ways. It can refer to certain areas of literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, psychology, and science.[1] It can also refer to studies on a liberal arts degree program. For example, Harvard University offers a degree of Master of Liberal Arts, which covers biological and social sciences as well as the humanities.[2] For both interpretations, the term generally refers to matters not relating to the professional, vocational, or technical curricula. (source)
The classical Liberal Arts is the definition of a Renaissance man, it is the study of Leonardo and many others. It is the study we need to return to, it is the study the will teach us to think. Modern-day Liberal Arts, modern-day education is not setup to teach thinking, it is set up to teach remembering. Students are not encouraged to think freely, but rather to retain what was told to them. The modern-day education system is one based on indoctrination not liberation. Leonardo’s education was geared towards discovery, experimentation and liberation. His disciplines ran across many areas of study, but he, as many renaissance men, had the ability to see the connections. The lines between art and science are blurred as are the lines between religion and science. The cross training and encouragement to push the envelope was the hallmark of renaissance training.
So why do we need a Renaissance man today? We have people who specialize in areas of study, so why should a rocket scientist care about the science of art? Why should an artist care about religion? Why would someone need to know about logic and rhetoric when they push a broom for a living?
Because life is connected, because the betterment of all starts with the betterment of one. Because life is more than what you do, it is who you are. And who you are is shaped by what you know. One of the main principles of Leonardo is connectedness, Leonardo saw the connections between seemingly non-connected objects. For example do you see the connection between a frog and the internet? Think about it… There is a connection. The frog has webbed feet and the internet is also called the World Wide Web. So both frog and internet have some sort of web. It is this connection, relationship that Leonardo saw, and it is this connectedness that we are missing in our lives.
Leonard saw the world not separate from humanity, but just a part of it. He saw the flow of the rivers to be the same as the flow of blood, the grass as the skin and the rock as the bones, he was a oneness between humanity and nature. Leonardo understood the connectedness of the clouds to the rain to the oceans, he saw the dependence of one upon the other. Leonardo is considered a great artiste, the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper among the greatest art works in all of humanity. Yet he was much more than that, he was a scientist and inventor, a caterer and party planner. Leonardo used his talents to enlighten and entertain, he was known for a beautiful singing voice and accomplished musician. He understood that a holistic lifestyle was a healthy life style. Leonardo understood the body and mind connectedness, he was physically and mentally fit, because Leonardo knew that one could not be truly whole if a part of him was left to waste.
The Renaissance man of antiquity needs to be restored. We need to nurture and grow our children with a desire and fascination for learning. To question and explore their surroundings and to see the world, the universe with the eyes of openness and wonder.
We need more Leonardo’s’ in todays world, we need men and woman who are willing to expand their horizons, to cross over disciplines and to not fear failure, for through failure comes discovery. We need to foster the exploration of connectedness, we need to discover the universe anew.
Leonardo, where are you? Where have you gone. When did we decide that men such as Leonard are obsolete? Why did we decide they are of no use? the enlighten of man has many casualties, and this is one. But all is not lost, we can return, we can learn to think like Leonardo, we can create a new Renaissance, we just have to try.
God Bless
Paul Sposite
Guided Insight Life Coach
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Today I read a few interesting articles, so I thought I would share one with you. This is from the WSJ, I hope you enjoy it and find some use out of it.
God Bless & Happy Lent
Paul Sposite
Guided Insight Life Coach
BY: JONAH LEHRER
Creativity can seem like magic. We look at people like Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan, and we conclude that they must possess supernatural powers denied to mere mortals like us, gifts that allow them to imagine what has never existed before. They’re "creative types." We’re not.
The myth of the "creative type" is just that–a myth, argues Jonah Lehrer. In an interview with WSJ’s Gary Rosen he explains the evidence suggesting everyone has the potential to be the next Milton Glaser or Yo-Yo Ma.
But creativity is not magic, and there’s no such thing as a creative type. Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It’s a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it. New research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing products and to solve the toughest problems. A surprisingly concrete set of lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves and our work.
The science of creativity is relatively new. Until the Enlightenment, acts of imagination were always equated with higher powers. Being creative meant channeling the muses, giving voice to the gods. ("Inspiration" literally means "breathed upon.") Even in modern times, scientists have paid little attention to the sources of creativity.
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But over the past decade, that has begun to change. Imagination was once thought to be a single thing, separate from other kinds of cognition. The latest research suggests that this assumption is false. It turns out that we use "creativity" as a catchall term for a variety of cognitive tools, each of which applies to particular sorts of problems and is coaxed to action in a particular way.
Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal; Illustrations by Serge Bloch
It isn’t a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed on us by the angels. It’s a skill that anyone can learn and work to improve.
Does the challenge that we’re facing require a moment of insight, a sudden leap in consciousness? Or can it be solved gradually, one piece at a time? The answer often determines whether we should drink a beer to relax or hop ourselves up on Red Bull, whether we take a long shower or stay late at the office.
The new research also suggests how best to approach the thorniest problems. We tend to assume that experts are the creative geniuses in their own fields. But big breakthroughs often depend on the naive daring of outsiders. For prompting creativity, few things are as important as time devoted to cross-pollination with fields outside our areas of expertise.
Let’s start with the hardest problems, those challenges that at first blush seem impossible. Such problems are typically solved (if they are solved at all) in a moment of insight.
Consider the case of Arthur Fry, an engineer at 3M in the paper products division. In the winter of 1974, Mr. Fry attended a presentation by Sheldon Silver, an engineer working on adhesives. Mr. Silver had developed an extremely weak glue, a paste so feeble it could barely hold two pieces of paper together. Like everyone else in the room, Mr. Fry patiently listened to the presentation and then failed to come up with any practical applications for the compound. What good, after all, is a glue that doesn’t stick?
On a frigid Sunday morning, however, the paste would re-enter Mr. Fry’s thoughts, albeit in a rather unlikely context. He sang in the church choir and liked to put little pieces of paper in the hymnal to mark the songs he was supposed to sing. Unfortunately, the little pieces of paper often fell out, forcing Mr. Fry to spend the service frantically thumbing through the book, looking for the right page. It seemed like an unfixable problem, one of those ordinary hassles that we’re forced to live with.
But then, during a particularly tedious sermon, Mr. Fry had an epiphany. He suddenly realized how he might make use of that weak glue: It could be applied to paper to create a reusable bookmark! Because the adhesive was barely sticky, it would adhere to the page but wouldn’t tear it when removed. That revelation in the church would eventually result in one of the most widely used office products in the world: the Post-it Note.
Mr. Fry’s invention was a classic moment of insight. Though such events seem to spring from nowhere, as if the cortex is surprising us with a breakthrough, scientists have begun studying how they occur. They do this by giving people "insight" puzzles, like the one that follows, and watching what happens in the brain:
A man has married 20 women in a small town. All of the women are still alive, and none of them is divorced. The man has broken no laws. Who is the man?
If you solved the question, the solution probably came to you in an incandescent flash: The man is a priest. Research led by Mark Beeman and John Kounios has identified where that flash probably came from. In the seconds before the insight appears, a brain area called the superior anterior temporal gyrus (aSTG) exhibits a sharp spike in activity. This region, located on the surface of the right hemisphere, excels at drawing together distantly related information, which is precisely what’s needed when working on a hard creative problem.
Interestingly, Mr. Beeman and his colleagues have found that certain factors make people much more likely to have an insight, better able to detect the answers generated by the aSTG. For instance, exposing subjects to a short, humorous video—the scientists use a clip of Robin Williams doing stand-up—boosts the average success rate by about 20%.
Alcohol also works. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago compared performance on insight puzzles between sober and intoxicated students. The scientists gave the subjects a battery of word problems known as remote associates, in which people have to find one additional word that goes with a triad of words. Here’s a sample problem:
Pine Crab Sauce
In this case, the answer is "apple." (The compound words are pineapple, crab apple and apple sauce.) Drunk students solved nearly 30% more of these word problems than their sober peers.
What explains the creative benefits of relaxation and booze? The answer involves the surprising advantage of not paying attention. Although we live in an age that worships focus—we are always forcing ourselves to concentrate, chugging caffeine—this approach can inhibit the imagination. We might be focused, but we’re probably focused on the wrong answer.
And this is why relaxation helps: It isn’t until we’re soothed in the shower or distracted by the stand-up comic that we’re able to turn the spotlight of attention inward, eavesdropping on all those random associations unfolding in the far reaches of the brain’s right hemisphere. When we need an insight, those associations are often the source of the answer.
This research also explains why so many major breakthroughs happen in the unlikeliest of places, whether it’s Archimedes in the bathtub or the physicist Richard Feynman scribbling equations in a strip club, as he was known to do. It reveals the wisdom of Google putting ping-pong tables in the lobby and confirms the practical benefits of daydreaming. As Einstein once declared, "Creativity is the residue of time wasted."
Of course, not every creative challenge requires an epiphany; a relaxing shower won’t solve every problem. Sometimes, we just need to keep on working, resisting the temptation of a beer-fueled nap.
There is nothing fun about this kind of creativity, which consists mostly of sweat and failure. It’s the red pen on the page and the discarded sketch, the trashed prototype and the failed first draft. Nietzsche referred to this as the "rejecting process," noting that while creators like to brag about their big epiphanies, their everyday reality was much less romantic. "All great artists and thinkers are great workers," he wrote.
This relentless form of creativity is nicely exemplified by the legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser, who engraved the slogan "Art is Work" above his office door. Mr. Glaser’s most famous design is a tribute to this work ethic. In 1975, he accepted an intimidating assignment: to create a new ad campaign that would rehabilitate the image of New York City, which at the time was falling apart.
Mr. Glaser began by experimenting with fonts, laying out the tourist slogan in a variety of friendly typefaces. After a few weeks of work, he settled on a charming design, with "I Love New York" in cursive, set against a plain white background. His proposal was quickly approved. "Everybody liked it," Mr. Glaser says. "And if I were a normal person, I’d stop thinking about the project. But I can’t. Something about it just doesn’t feel right."
So Mr. Glaser continued to ruminate on the design, devoting hours to a project that was supposedly finished. And then, after another few days of work, he was sitting in a taxi, stuck in midtown traffic. "I often carry spare pieces of paper in my pocket, and so I get the paper out and I start to draw," he remembers. "And I’m thinking and drawing and then I get it. I see the whole design in my head. I see the typeface and the big round red heart smack dab in the middle. I know that this is how it should go."
The logo that Mr. Glaser imagined in traffic has since become one of the most widely imitated works of graphic art in the world. And he only discovered the design because he refused to stop thinking about it.
But this raises an obvious question: If different kinds of creative problems benefit from different kinds of creative thinking, how can we ensure that we’re thinking in the right way at the right time? When should we daydream and go for a relaxing stroll, and when should we keep on sketching and toying with possibilities?
The good news is that the human mind has a surprising natural ability to assess the kind of creativity we need. Researchers call these intuitions "feelings of knowing," and they occur when we suspect that we can find the answer, if only we keep on thinking. Numerous studies have demonstrated that, when it comes to problems that don’t require insights, the mind is remarkably adept at assessing the likelihood that a problem can be solved—knowing whether we’re getting "warmer" or not, without knowing the solution.
This ability to calculate progress is an important part of the creative process. When we don’t feel that we’re getting closer to the answer—we’ve hit the wall, so to speak—we probably need an insight. If there is no feeling of knowing, the most productive thing we can do is forget about work for a while. But when those feelings of knowing are telling us that we’re getting close, we need to keep on struggling.
Of course, both moment-of-insight problems and nose-to-the-grindstone problems assume that we have the answers to the creative problems we’re trying to solve somewhere in our heads. They’re both just a matter of getting those answers out. Another kind of creative problem, though, is when you don’t have the right kind of raw material kicking around in your head. If you’re trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed.
Steve Jobs famously declared that "creativity is just connecting things." Although we think of inventors as dreaming up breakthroughs out of thin air, Mr. Jobs was pointing out that even the most far-fetched concepts are usually just new combinations of stuff that already exists. Under Mr. Jobs’s leadership, for instance, Apple didn’t invent MP3 players or tablet computers—the company just made them better, adding design features that were new to the product category.
And it isn’t just Apple. The history of innovation bears out Mr. Jobs’s theory. The Wright Brothers transferred their background as bicycle manufacturers to the invention of the airplane; their first flying craft was, in many respects, just a bicycle with wings. Johannes Gutenberg transformed his knowledge of wine presses into a printing machine capable of mass-producing words. Or look at Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with their famous search algorithm by applying the ranking method used for academic articles (more citations equals more influence) to the sprawl of the Internet.
How can people get better at making these kinds of connections? Mr. Jobs argued that the best inventors seek out "diverse experiences," collecting lots of dots that they later link together. Instead of developing a narrow specialization, they study, say, calligraphy (as Mr. Jobs famously did) or hang out with friends in different fields. Because they don’t know where the answer will come from, they are willing to look for the answer everywhere.
Recent research confirms Mr. Jobs’s wisdom. The sociologist Martin Ruef, for instance, analyzed the social and business relationships of 766 graduates of the Stanford Business School, all of whom had gone on to start their own companies. He found that those entrepreneurs with the most diverse friendships scored three times higher on a metric of innovation. Instead of getting stuck in the rut of conformity, they were able to translate their expansive social circle into profitable new concepts.
Many of the most innovative companies encourage their employees to develop these sorts of diverse networks, interacting with colleagues in totally unrelated fields. Google hosts an internal conference called Crazy Search Ideas—a sort of grown-up science fair with hundreds of posters from every conceivable field. At 3M, engineers are typically rotated to a new division every few years. Sometimes, these rotations bring big payoffs, such as when 3M realized that the problem of laptop battery life was really a problem of energy used up too quickly for illuminating the screen. 3M researchers applied their knowledge of see-through adhesives to create an optical film that focuses light outward, producing a screen that was 40% more efficient.
Such solutions are known as "mental restructurings," since the problem is only solved after someone asks a completely new kind of question. What’s interesting is that expertise can inhibit such restructurings, making it harder to find the breakthrough. That’s why it’s important not just to bring new ideas back to your own field, but to actually try to solve problems in other fields—where your status as an outsider, and ability to ask naive questions, can be a tremendous advantage.
This principle is at work daily on InnoCentive, a crowdsourcing website for difficult scientific questions. The structure of the site is simple: Companies post their hardest R&D problems, attaching a monetary reward to each "challenge." The site features problems from hundreds of organization in eight different scientific categories, from agricultural science to mathematics. The challenges on the site are incredibly varied and include everything from a multinational food company looking for a "Reduced Fat Chocolate-Flavored Compound Coating" to an electronics firm trying to design a solar-powered computer.
The most impressive thing about InnoCentive, however, is its effectiveness. In 2007, Karim Lakhani, a professor at the Harvard Business School, began analyzing hundreds of challenges posted on the site. According to Mr. Lakhani’s data, nearly 30% of the difficult problems posted on InnoCentive were solved within six months. Sometimes, the problems were solved within days of being posted online. The secret was outsider thinking: The problem solvers on InnoCentive were most effective at the margins of their own fields. Chemists didn’t solve chemistry problems; they solved molecular biology problems. And vice versa. While these people were close enough to understand the challenge, they weren’t so close that their knowledge held them back, causing them to run into the same stumbling blocks that held back their more expert peers.
It’s this ability to attack problems as a beginner, to let go of all preconceptions and fear of failure, that’s the key to creativity.
The composer Bruce Adolphe first met Yo-Yo Ma at the Juilliard School in New York City in 1970. Mr. Ma was just 15 years old at the time (though he’d already played for J.F.K. at the White House). Mr. Adolphe had just written his first cello piece. "Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was doing," Mr. Adolphe remembers. "I’d never written for the instrument before."
Mr. Adolphe had shown a draft of his composition to a Juilliard instructor, who informed him that the piece featured a chord that was impossible to play. Before Mr. Adolphe could correct the music, however, Mr. Ma decided to rehearse the composition in his dorm room. "Yo-Yo played through my piece, sight-reading the whole thing," Mr. Adolphe says. "And when that impossible chord came, he somehow found a way to play it."
Mr. Adolphe told Mr. Ma what the professor had said and asked how he had managed to play the impossible chord. They went through the piece again, and when Mr. Ma came to the impossible chord, Mr. Adolphe yelled "Stop!" They looked at Mr. Ma’s left hand—it was contorted on the fingerboard, in a position that was nearly impossible to hold. "You’re right," said Mr. Ma, "you really can’t play that!" Yet, somehow, he did.
When Mr. Ma plays today, he still strives for that state of the beginner. "One needs to constantly remind oneself to play with the abandon of the child who is just learning the cello," Mr. Ma says. "Because why is that kid playing? He is playing for pleasure."
Creativity is a spark. It can be excruciating when we’re rubbing two rocks together and getting nothing. And it can be intensely satisfying when the flame catches and a new idea sweeps around the world.
For the first time in human history, it’s becoming possible to see how to throw off more sparks and how to make sure that more of them catch fire. And yet, we must also be honest: The creative process will never be easy, no matter how much we learn about it. Our inventions will always be shadowed by uncertainty, by the serendipity of brain cells making a new connection.
Every creative story is different. And yet every creative story is the same: There was nothing, now there is something. It’s almost like magic.
—Adapted from "Imagine: How Creativity Works" by Jonah Lehrer, to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on March 19. Copyright © 2012 by Jonah Lehrer.
10 Quick Creativity Hacks
1. Color Me Blue
A 2009 study found that subjects solved twice as many insight puzzles when surrounded by the color blue, since it leads to more relaxed and associative thinking. Red, on other hand, makes people more alert and aware, so it is a better backdrop for solving analytic problems.
2. Get Groggy
According to a study published last month, people at their least alert time of day—think of a night person early in the morning—performed far better on various creative puzzles, sometimes improving their success rate by 50%. Grogginess has creative perks.
Serge Bloch
#3 Don’t Be Afraid to Daydream
3. Daydream Away
Research led by Jonathan Schooler at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has found that people who daydream more score higher on various tests of creativity.
4. Think Like A Child
When subjects are told to imagine themselves as 7-year-olds, they score significantly higher on tests of divergent thinking, such as trying to invent alternative uses for an old car tire.
5. Laugh It Up
Serge Bloch
When people are exposed to a short video of stand-up comedy, they solve about 20% more insight puzzles.
When people are exposed to a short video of stand-up comedy, they solve about 20% more insight puzzles.
6. Imagine That You Are Far Away
Research conducted at Indiana University found that people were much better at solving insight puzzles when they were told that the puzzles came from Greece or California, and not from a local lab.
7. Keep It Generic
One way to increase problem-solving ability is to change the verbs used to describe the problem. When the verbs are extremely specific, people think in narrow terms. In contrast, the use of more generic verbs—say, "moving" instead of "driving"—can lead to dramatic increases in the number of problems solved.
Serge Bloch
According to a new study, volunteers performed significantly better on a standard test of creativity when they were seated outside a 5-footsquare workspace, perhaps because they internalized the metaphor of thinking outside the box. The lesson? Your cubicle is holding you back.
8. Work Outside the Box
According to new study, volunteers performed significantly better on a standard test of creativity when they were seated outside a 5-foot-square workspace, perhaps because they internalized the metaphor of thinking outside the box. The lesson? Your cubicle is holding you back.
9. See the World
According to research led by Adam Galinsky, students who have lived abroad were much more likely to solve a classic insight puzzle. Their experience of another culture endowed them with a valuable open-mindedness. This effect also applies to professionals: Fashion-house directors who have lived in many countries produce clothing that their peers rate as far more creative.
10. Move to a Metropolis
Physicists at the Santa Fe Institute have found that moving from a small city to one that is twice as large leads inventors to produce, on average, about 15% more patents.
—Jonah Lehrer
A version of this article appeared Mar. 10, 2012, on page C1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: How to Be CreativeHow To Be Creative.
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The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.
~William James (1842 – 1910)
Attitude…. What a powerful word.
manner, disposition, feeling, position, etc., with regard to a person or thing; tendency or orientation, especially of the mind: a negative attitude; group attitudes. (Source)
Notice the one little section that states “Especially of the mind” our attitude is just that, ours. We control it, it does not (or at least should not) control us. Yet all too often, we allow it to just that, our attitude all too often becomes a commentary on outside forces. We allow forces that we cannot control, friends, work, and weather, to control us. Attitude is not beyond our control, it is within our control, if we would only take control.
I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.
~Martha Washington (1732 – 1802)
Martha Washington, the wife of George Washington lived a hard life. A life of service to her country, a life of war and peace a life that called upon her many times to sacrifice. You will not read it in the history books, but she did. She had to be a woman of great courage and one of positive attitude. She had to be selfless in all she did, for she allowed her husband to go off to war and lead a revolution that, by all accounts, could not be won. She left to take care of the farm. She again offered her husband to our new and struggling nation to attend the constitutional conventions, a thankless and long task, leaving Martha to tend to the family farm, once again. Still more was asked of her, as she and George we honored with the task of becoming the first leader of this Great Nation, no simple task. No, hers was not a life of leisure and pleasure; hers was a life of service and attitude. Yep, Attitude… Martha, based on what I have read of her, was a remarkable woman, one of strong opinions and full of positive attitude. We all can learn a lot from not only George Washington, but his wife Martha as well.
Jesus has something to say about our attitudes as well, He provides us with the Beatitudes as a guide to follow.
(Source)
Reading the Beatitudes can be a hard task, if you do not understand how to read them. If you do not understand the meaning behind them. However, put simply, Jesus is telling us, we are in control or our outlook, our attitudes towards life and self. To the poor He promises the Kingdom, to those that mourn, comfort and so on. But what is He saying? Is Jesus saying that the poor are the only ones to see the Kingdom and the mournful the only ones to receive comfort? Nope, not at all. The poor is not referring to the lack of money, but rather the lack of faith, yet in this lack I should not despair, for Jesus states I will see the Kingdom. So rejoice and be glad, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.
It is our attitude we control, we have the power to see the glass as half full or half-empty, and the Beatitudes are lessons in seeing the glass as half full. What a valuable lesson. A lesson that has been taught over the centuries by many a great teacher, none greater than Jesus, but still many a great teachers. Yet it is a lesson we still need to learn. Knowing that I am poor in Spirit, yet will still see the Kingdom of God does not mean I stop trying to deepen my faith, sit back and just wait, rather it means I double down and study, learn and grow in my spirit, knowing that it will always fall short, but also knowing that Jesus understands, and the Kingdom will still be at hand. That is the power…
Dr. Wayne Dyer states, “Change the way you look at things, and the things you are looking at will change”, so true and so powerful, yet most of us refuse to do so. Changing our outlook, our attitude, is not easy, we have been programmed to accept that this is the way it is, outside forces determine our attitude, and we have no control over it. Such a false understanding, yet it is the understanding the majority of people have. How often I have heard “They can’t help it, that just how they are, that’s who they are”… To state it directly and simply, that’s just bull crap, a cop-out, we all have control of our lives, we all can change out attitudes, our outlook, and determine for ourselves what our future will be. We just have to work at it…
The task is hard, the journey long and the pitfalls will be many, your drive will wane and your ego will protest, but it can be done, you can change your attitude, you can see the glass as half full, if you only work at it. Yes, sometimes I do see that 1/2 empty glass, but in moments like this I know it is my ego driving my attitude and not my soul, not my being. At times like this I step back and breathe deeply, re-focus my thoughts and realign my attitude, and re-image the glass as 1/2 full yet again. It is a mammoth task at times, but the pay-off is always worth the effort. The feeling of control over the ego, the knowledge that I am in control on myself are well worth the effort.
Attitude, you got one. I am sure you do, but the bigger question is, Attitude, you like the one you got? Is it a healthy attitude? Does it contribute to your overall happiness or is it a source of depression and discontentment? Try this, try taking an attitude assessment, simple write down your attitude towards things, family, work, life, politics, religion, faith, money and so on, rate them based on a 1 to 10 scale, 1 being extremely bad attitude and 10 being extremely positive attitude. Once you have completed this, look at your list, anything with a 6 or more score, consider good for now. Everything with a five or below score consider as areas that need improvement. Start with the 5’s, pick one, let us say its Job, and create an action plan to help you change your attitude. What can you do to create a new and better attitude concerning your current job? To help with this, write down all the aspects of your job that seems to be the source of your bad attitude. Look at each one and determine what action you can take to rectify this. It may be as simple as having a conversation with your boss or as complex as having to try and be transfers to a new department. Nevertheless, whatever the solution, whatever the problem, remembers you are in control of your attitude, no one else is!
Once you have fixed the first on your list continue through the rest of the list, and before you know it, your attitude will be better. However, your work is not done yet, nope… Because you know that, your coworker or whatever the source off your discontentment was will not just roll over and play dead. So now, you need to learn tools to help you cope with issues that will pop up. Best advice, find a saying or prayer that you like, one that reminds of your ultimate goal, a more positive and productive attitude, make a copies of it, place on all your office wall, put one in your purse or wallet, tape one to your bathroom mirror and one on your car visor. Frame one to hang in your hall, in other words place this reminder all over the place, so when the need arrives, just look at, read it and take a step back to contemplate it. Refocus your thoughts and realign your attitude. It takes practice, but it can be done.
Good luck and God Bless
Paul Sposite
Guided Insight Life Coach
(Something to read, and help you with your attitude)
42.303780
-83.378959
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Something’s should not be messed with, some traditions are sacred and should remain untouched. But there are always some who feel a little twist here and a little change here makes things better. Take, for example all the restaurants that feels a need to “fix” the American classic, grilled cheese. A simple delight as it is, but some feel a need to “spice it up” change it around and make it “new and improved”. Hogwash! That’s what I say. It worked as it was, it was simple and delightful… Two slices of white bread, 2 slices of American cheese, slap some butter on the bread and grill… Simple and good as it is. No need to add aged cheese from the basement of some monastery in some obscure town in Europe, or artisan bread that coast as much as a new car. Sometimes simple is better.
When I travel to Germany and visit my good friends there, we always make time to have some nice home cooked foods. He is a marvelous cook, and can create some very fancy meals. We seem to always have one posh meal before I leave to return home. But off all the meals, the simple poor man dishes are the best. Simple pasta dishes or the working mans German dinners. They are simple, flavorful and, well, comforting. As food should be…
This also applies to other areas of life, such as family or religious traditions. Why mess with proven ways… Why change just for the sake of change? What progress is there in that?
Last weekend I took a coworker and friend from Mexico to Downtown Detroit, to show him the sights and he
wanted to get a hat from the Detroit Hard Rock Café. As part of my fifty cent tour of Detroit we walked to Fox Town, where the Fox Theater is. What a theater it is, it is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, it truly is the gem of Detroit. Currently the Fox has a production of Irving Berlin‘s “White Christmas”. One of my all time favorite movies. I mean what’s not to like, Bing sinning White Christmas, as only he can and Danny Kaye dancing and, well, being Danny Kaye. A simple story line, clean humor and best of all, it’s just a good plain simple feel good movie. One that I watch all year-long…
As part of our night in Detroit, we decided to take in the play, enjoy the sounds of Christmas and experience the Fox in all her glory. the Fox did not let us down, she is a majestic ornate theater and she was all done up for Christmas. What a sight!
But the same cannot be said about the play…
Why change a classic? Why make it what it is not? Why add to what is perfect?
All theses questions where running through my head as I watched this thing unfold. Was it a bad musical, not, the actors were fine and the singing was good, but was it “White Christmas”, nope, they could have called this play anything they wanted…. And maybe I would have enjoyed it more if it was not called White Christmas.
What did they do to it, they sexualized it, turned Bing’s character in to a fool and Danny’s into a sex hound, made the general an ass and the house keeper his love interest. Why? for what purpose? The story was fine as it was. Sure I understand that you need to rewrite the move for the stage, but why reinvent the characters? Like the grilled cheese, an American classic, so it White Christmas. It was simple, and decent, it was and is one of the finest movies made, yet the producers of the play felt a need to update it, to bring it into the 21st century. To what ends? For what purpose? None that I can see. Sometimes simple is well enough.
In a world full of complex situations and over sexed everything, sometimes sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket and watching White Christmas while eating a simple grilled cheese sandwich is all we need. Sometimes simple is the best way to go.
God Bless
Paul
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Friday was a good day for me, I had time to catch up on some of my reading. I subscribe to 3 different Catholic newspapers and 3 different magazines, two Catholic and one political. The problem is time, when do I have time to read them all. Well Friday night I was able to slam through all the newspapers, than Saturday a new one arrived… UGH! But such is life.
One of the newspapers is Our Sunday Visitor (OSV). I like this paper because of the brief sections, the snapshots as it were. Such as “By the numbers”. This section gives me brief snapshots of the Catholic faith. It gives me percentages and facts is a quick glance. Such as:
Snapshot of Catholic growth
The Catholic presence in the word is growing significantly, according to a recent edition of the Statistical Yearbook of the Church. the Vatican Publishing House released information for 2000-2008 period, which showed the number of Catholics increased worldwide, but in some areas, the number of priest is not keeping up.
Africa: 33% increase in Catholics 33.1% increase in Priest
Asia: 15.61% increase in Catholics 23.8% increase in Priest
Europe 1.17% increase in Catholics –7% increase in Priest
Oceania 11.39& increase in Catholics –4% increase in Priest
America 10.93% increase in Catholics no change in Priest
__________________#####____________________
That’s an over all 72.1% increase in Catholics and a 45.9% increase in Priest. Overall that good, but looking at the numbers we see that the Europe and Oceanic numbers are falling in the priesthood and Europe is hardly growing at all in the over all Catholic category. America is growing in the number of Catholics but holding still on new priest. The good news is we are not falling, we have not gone in to the negative yet, but the possibility exist.
I have a friend who figures the growth of the priesthood is due to the economy, in the countries were the poor outnumber the middle class and wealthy, that the priesthood is an attractive “career”. The thought to me is a little uhm, anti “called to the priesthoodish” for me but she holds to this idea. But to her the priesthood is really nothing more than a men’s club. the priesthood is not a calling as much as an escape from the economic hardships and a way to provide for yourself in what would be considered a good career move. Cynical at best and down right scandalest. But its her point of view. To me, well I look at it this way, the fall of the calling to the priesthood is a human condition. God has not stopped calling, we have stopped hearing.
At one time, in America as well as Europe, the call to the priesthood was considered noble and honorable. It was something that every Catholic family wished for and prayed for. That their little boy would grow up to become a priest. What an honor for the family. that family prayer was heard by God, and God would call the ones he chosen. The local parish would support and nurture the youngster and help develop his discernment skills. And the young lad would be encouraged to consider the priesthood. In today’s world if you were to say to a young Catholic lad that he should consider the priesthood he would look at you as if you were on drugs, the parents would ask you why you would say such a thing and the local priest would do all he could to discourage the lad. Now this is not all parents or priest or even parishes, but sadly it is most.
The life of the priest is not looked upon as a noble one, but rather a sad and lonely one. One with out family and friends, one with out purpose of reason. Ask many young men why they do not want to be priest and the response will be something along the lines of:
“I want a real job”
“I want to make money”
“I want respect”
“I want a wife and kids”
Ask any parents and they will respond:
“I want him to be happy”
“I want to be a grandparent”
“I want him to have a real career”
Notice that all the statements begin the same “I want”, none of them began with “God wants”. This is the main issue, we have become a society that places our needs before Gods wishes. We have taken our trust in Him and placed it in ourselves. God calls young men to the priesthood daily, God knows what is best for us and He knows were we need to be in our lives. We only have to allow Him to speak to us, and for us to hear His call.
The priesthood will survive, as will that Catholic Church. America and Europe along with the rest of the world will continue to grow in the faith and one day we will figure out that the problem of the lack of priest is not the economy of the country but the economy of the soul.
God Bless
Paul
| Romans 8:1-2“[Life Through the Spirit] Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) . All Rights Reserved. |
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As part of my job, my 9 to 5 job, the one that pays my bills, I get to travel the world. I love that aspect of my job, I love going to new places. Not only do I get to go to new places, I get to make new friends. I now have friends in five countries around the world and have traveled to seven different countries. So on this next trip I get to visit my friends I have not seen in over a year. It will be nice.
Sure, there is work involved, but still I get to visit with good friends. Sometimes its moments like these that make me thankful for all that I have. Not many people can claim to have traveled the world, not once but several times and even fewer can claim to have made very good friends. God has blessed me, of this I am sure.
But what does this have to do with anything about my faith, besides recognizing that God has blessed me? Well, the fact is, if I stopped there, just with the fact that God has blessed me, that would be enough. But I’m not going to stop there….
Sure Gods blessings is sufficient and I could blog about the blessings all day long. But there is something else at play here. I am reminded of St. Paul, and his travels. The book of Act’s is full of stories about Paul and his travels, and his friendships made. The letters of Paul to the other communities are because of his travels and the friendships he has made.
St. Paul was blessed by God, in many ways, but one way was through his friendships he was able to make on his travels. The friendships that lead to conversation. Sure Paul could have just arrived in each town, talked and left, and sure a few would have been converted, but not many. The words would have been the same, but the value behind them would have been lost on many. Friendship, true authentic friendship, is a powerful tool in conversation.
Words spoke without friendship, be they true or not, often fall to the ground. The hearers may be entranced for a time being, but they will fall. Jesus spent three years speaking the truth as only He could, and many were converted, but many more were not. Jesus also spent the three years cultivating His friendships with a few, getting to know each for who and what they were. If Jesus had not done this, upon His death the faith would have disappeared shortly after. It was the friendship of Jesus to the few that kept the faith burning. Mary Magdalene was the first to see her friend after His resurrection. It was the friendship that made Mary go to see the grave, and it was friendship that made her cry over the missing body. And the same friendship that allowed her to believe what her mind told her not too….
Friendship played an important roll in Jesus ministry, is not John referred to as the one whom Jesus loved? It was friendship that made the rag-tag followers of Jesus in to a community. Jesus understood the purely human need for friendship. He understood the need to make connections and the need for fellowship. The Christian community was founded on this very principle.
As a life long Catholic, I can say that one of the areas we fail in is creating a community, of fostering friendships with in the church and parish life. All to often attending a parish function is an obligation rather than a joy. All to often we have our “church” friends and our regular friends, as if the people we know at church are not regular people who dine out or play cards or other social activities. We, as Catholics, have segregated our lives into two compartments, the parish and the world. Yet are we not called to live in the world? Did not Jesus tell us to go to the ends of the earth and to all the nations? We failed Him…
The Catholic community can be and should be a vibrant one, one full of life. We have many talents hidden with in our community. Yet we fail to use them, we have many gifts, yet we fail to see them. It is a shame and in some sense it is a scandal that we, as Catholics, do not celebrate the community that Jesus gave us. Rather we squander it away, we hide it as if we are ashamed of it. Our faith, our Church, yes even in today’s world with all the scandals, needs to be celebrated. In-fact maybe just because of the current situation on the Church we should all be praising the good she does to the world. We should be joining together in friendship and our commonalities as Catholics and proudly stating our faith for all to hear. I believe that Jesus would be happy if we all would have the courage to do just that.
Yet we Catholics seem to be a scared bunch, we seem to be ashamed of our faith, even before the current scandal. We have always, in my life time, seemed to shy away from proclaiming our faith. We down play it, or totally ignore it when we are in the secular world.
Why? Because we have no community, we have no friendship, with each other but mostly with Christ. Anyone of of you would gladly defend a friend who was in need. And if asked why, you would reply “They are my friend”, and rightly so! Yet we fail to do this on a daily basis for the Catholic Church, the Church the Jesus himself established here on earth. We seem to forget that Jesus did stand up for His friends and defend them, He defended them, and us, upon the cross of friendship. Yet we are not even willing to defend the attacks upon the Holy Father or the Church.
The media is at war with the Catholic faith and the Holy father, yet we sit back. Sure, some of it is necessary, yet much of it is just plain mean spirited. Designed to harm the Church not help heal her. They attack based on false reports or fail to reveal the whole truth, they design the attacks to inflect the most damage, and we sit back and do nothing. Sure we may say “What a shame” or “That’s unfair” but we do nothing. friends defend friends when that friend is being attacked. Yet we fail to do so.
Judas did the something, he failed his friend. He sat back and allowed the attacks to go on until it was to late. Are we going to allow that to happen to our faith, to our Church, the one and true Church established by Jesus himself?
“But what can I do?” is the question you most likely have, “I’m just little old me”. Yes you are, but there are millions of “Little old me’s” out there, and if all of us stand up in friendship for the Church the media will take notice. Write letters to the editor, hold Catholic and proud marches boycott the media, money talks, and in this economy it
talks loudly. Form a prayer group to pray for the healing of the Church or blog about it. There are hundreds of actions that can be taken, and each and everyone one of them should be taken. It is time that the world understands that the Catholic faith is not a monster, it is not a predator and her people are a community of friends.
God Bless
Paul
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The scandal of the Church has been on the front pages of the papers and lead stories on the nightly news. Over all this is a good thing, the Church needs to deal with this scandal. But what confuses me is the pure joy they, meaning the media, seem to get from all this. The catholic priest who molested young boys need help and prayers for sure, the bishops who allowed this to carry on and moved them from parish to parish need to be reprimanded, they need to step down. But why al the joy in the media?
It is good that the media is investigating the scandal, or should I say it would be good if they were investigating the scandal fairly. But that is not the case, they are on a witch hunt and they are willing to take down the innocent as well as the guilty, and at the same time look the other way when it comes to our school systems or other faiths. This to me is a misuse of power and an injustice to children.
The current scandal in the Church is a scandal from twenty or thirty or more years ago, by no means lessening the travesty of it all, the over all population of priest involved is 2% at most. Once again not taking anything away from the harm caused, 2% is way to much, .0001% is to much, but over all 2% of our priest is not a large number.
Such figures led her to contend "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests." (Source)
Family members — fathers, stepfathers, uncles, older siblings — commit 47% of all reported sexual assaults against children in their own homes.
49% of all sexual assaults against children are committed by persons known either by the child or the child’s family — teachers, coaches, physicians, ministers, priests, neighbors, youth leaders. (Source)
I am not using the statistics to take the spot light off of the Catholic Church, but rather to point it also on public education and other areas of concern.
Over all the reporting on the scandal in the Church has been a scandal unto itself. And with the current wave of anti-Catholic feelings I expect it will continue for sometime to come. But we as Catholics can do something about we can fight back, promote the positive aspects of the Church, the good She does for youth and the community She resides in. We can also point out, in letters to the editors, the injustice of the persecution of the Church over our public schools.
In a way the abuse at the public schools is an even greater evil than the priest. We have no choice but to send our youth to school, and we allow teachers to have full access to our youth 8 hour per day, five days a week. And if they are involved in sports, we also allow them to change in front of grown adults. We, in some ways are asking for it,
The scandal involving the priest is sickening at best, but we hold some of that responsibility ourselves. We places the parish priest upon pedestals and made them gods in there own rights, we allowed our children to spend the night at the rectory or to go on trips with them. Sure some parents were good friends with the priest, and as the statistics above state 49% of abuse is by someone they know and trust. But do we have to allow the percentage to go up? Do we have to feed in to it?
The problem of abuse is a social problem and it is not a new problem, it is as old as time (article). The Greek society is full of stories of young boys and me, by no means justifying the actions, just pointing out the reality. The issue is social. Contrary to popular belief most people who sexually abuse youth are not gay. As stated above they are mostly family members or close family friends.
[M]ost men who molest little boys are not gay. Only 21 percent of the child molesters we studied who assault little boys were exclusively homosexual. Nearly 80 percent of the men who molested little boys were heterosexual or bisexual, and most of these men were married and had children of their own.27
These scientists have concluded that pedophilia is a separate orientation from homosexuality and that the vast majority of molesters who target boys have either no interest in mature males or are heterosexual men who are attracted to the feminine characteristics of young boys.(source)
Homosexuality and homosexual pedophilia are not synonymous. In fact, it may be that these two orientations are mutually exclusive, the reason being that the homosexual male is sexually attracted to masculine qualities whereas the heterosexual male is sexually attracted to feminine characteristics, and the sexually immature child’s qualities are more feminine than masculine. . . . The child offender who is attracted to and engaged in adult sexual relationships is heterosexual. It appears, therefore, that the adult heterosexual male constitutes a greater sexual risk to underage children than does the adult homosexual male.19 .(source)
My over all point to this blog, we need to look at facts and we need to understand what we are dealing with. Sexual abuse of children is not a “Catholic” thing, nor is it a “gay” thing, it is a society thing and one that needs to be understood. The media is not doing its job, rather it is conduction a man hunt, if you will, on Catholics.
As Catholics we need to educate ourselves so we can better defend the Church in these times of turmoil. We need to know facts so we are not just shooting from the hip but rather using facts to fight our cause. God willing the Church will survive and come out stringer when this persecution is over.
God Bless
Paul
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The scandal of the Church has been on the front pages of the papers and lead stories on the nightly news. Over all this is a good thing, the Church needs to deal with this scandal. But what confuses me is the pure joy they, meaning the media, seem to get from all this. The catholic priest who molested young boys need help and prayers for sure, the bishops who allowed this to carry on and moved them from parish to parish need to be reprimanded, they need to step down. But why al the joy in the media?
It is good that the media is investigating the scandal, or should I say it would be good if they were investigating the scandal fairly. But that is not the case, they are on a witch hunt and they are willing to take down the innocent as well as the guilty, and at the same time look the other way when it comes to our school systems or other faiths. This to me is a misuse of power and an injustice to children.
The current scandal in the Church is a scandal from twenty or thirty or more years ago, by no means lessening the travesty of it all, the over all population of priest involved is 2% at most. Once again not taking anything away from the harm caused, 2% is way to much, .0001% is to much, but over all 2% of our priest is not a large number.
Such figures led her to contend “the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.” (Source)
Family members — fathers, stepfathers, uncles, older siblings — commit 47% of all reported sexual assaults against children in their own homes.
49% of all sexual assaults against children are committed by persons known either by the child or the child’s family — teachers, coaches, physicians, ministers, priests, neighbors, youth leaders. (Source)
I am not using the statistics to take the spot light off of the Catholic Church, but rather to point it also on public education and other areas of concern.
Over all the reporting on the scandal in the Church has been a scandal unto itself. And with the current wave of anti-Catholic feelings I expect it will continue for sometime to come. But we as Catholics can do something about we can fight back, promote the positive aspects of the Church, the good She does for youth and the community She resides in. We can also point out, in letters to the editors, the injustice of the persecution of the Church over our public schools.
In a way the abuse at the public schools is an even greater evil than the priest. We have no choice but to send our youth to school, and we allow teachers to have full access to our youth 8 hour per day, five days a week. And if they are involved in sports, we also allow them to change in front of grown adults. We, in some ways are asking for it,
The scandal involving the priest is sickening at best, but we hold some of that responsibility ourselves. We places the parish priest upon pedestals and made them gods in there own rights, we allowed our children to spend the night at the rectory or to go on trips with them. Sure some parents were good friends with the priest, and as the statistics above state 49% of abuse is by someone they know and trust. But do we have to allow the percentage to go up? Do we have to feed in to it?
The problem of abuse is a social problem and it is not a new problem, it is as old as time (article). The Greek society is full of stories of young boys and me, by no means justifying the actions, just pointing out the reality. The issue is social. Contrary to popular belief most people who sexually abuse youth are not gay. As stated above they are mostly family members or close family friends.
[M]ost men who molest little boys are not gay. Only 21 percent of the child molesters we studied who assault little boys were exclusively homosexual. Nearly 80 percent of the men who molested little boys were heterosexual or bisexual, and most of these men were married and had children of their own.27
These scientists have concluded that pedophilia is a separate orientation from homosexuality and that the vast majority of molesters who target boys have either no interest in mature males or are heterosexual men who are attracted to the feminine characteristics of young boys.(source)
Homosexuality and homosexual pedophilia are not synonymous. In fact, it may be that these two orientations are mutually exclusive, the reason being that the homosexual male is sexually attracted to masculine qualities whereas the heterosexual male is sexually attracted to feminine characteristics, and the sexually immature child’s qualities are more feminine than masculine. . . . The child offender who is attracted to and engaged in adult sexual relationships is heterosexual. It appears, therefore, that the adult heterosexual male constitutes a greater sexual risk to underage children than does the adult homosexual male.19 .(source)
My over all point to this blog, we need to look at facts and we need to understand what we are dealing with. Sexual abuse of children is not a “Catholic” thing, nor is it a “gay” thing, it is a society thing and one that needs to be understood. The media is not doing its job, rather it is conduction a man hunt, if you will, on Catholics.
As Catholics we need to educate ourselves so we can better defend the Church in these times of turmoil. We need to know facts so we are not just shooting from the hip but rather using facts to fight our cause. God willing the Church will survive and come out stringer when this persecution is over.
God Bless
Paul
| Galatians 2:20“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) . All Rights Reserved. |
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One of my favorite people to look to or to quote is Albert Einstein. I think is because we both are so much a like…. (I’ll let that one sink in a bit before I move on…….)
Truthfully I do see a lot of similarities between us, no I am not as smart as him, no were near, but we both share a thinking pattern. For anyone who reads my blogs or knows me personally will know that I am a person with an imagination and a positive attitude. Albert also has this trait, and I have quoted him several times, in fact I have a small postcard of his hanging in my office and I have read biographies on him. I find him to be a very interesting person. I have no ability to understand his math or his logic (most of the time), but I can understand his outlook and his way of dealing with the world. Today as I was thinking I should blog about something, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t want to blog about politics again, not because I don’t have anything to say, because I do, but because both of my blogs are not primary political they are primarily spiritual. So my latest rant concerning Obama will have to wait…. So what than do I blog about. As I often do when I don’t have a solid idea I will look up quotes on the internet (God’s gift for writers block). What I found was this quote from Mr. Einstein:
The important thing is not to stop questioning. -Albert Einstein
I like that, in fact I teach that… I have from the start, I have always valued questions. To me if you are not questioning that you are dead, dead to the topic at hand, dead to the presenter, dead to the faith, dead to what ever it is you are not questioning.
To an insecure presenter or teacher the questions may come across as attacks, 
as if the questioner is challenging there domain. And they very well may be doing just that, and that’s ok. Hell if it was good enough for old Albert, than it’s good enough for me!
My overriding passion is my faith and teaching my faith to youth. In fact this will be the first time since 1990 that I will not be actively involved in a teaching ministry, but back to my point… My passion is my faith and the passing on of my faith (teaching). Part of this passion is also learning more about my faith on my own and taking formal classes. It is the process of questioning my teachers and my students that grow and learn more. It is the process of questioning that allows my mind to explore other areas it normally would not travel. It allows me the freedom to play the “devils” advocate in the name of knowing.
Questions are what makes America a land of the free, if were are not allowed to question of government, than we are no better than and no different than present day Cuba. Our ability to place our public officials under the microscope of public questioning is our key to freedom. My ability to question my faith is what makes my faith mine is my ability to question her teachings and to question my understanding.
Albert got it right, The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Think about a toddler and there constant why? why? why?, it is their ability to ask why that allows them to grow, why should that be any different for a pre-teen or teen, a parent of grandparent. Our ability to grow never ceases, just our own limitations placed on ourselves do. We have that same power as the curious 3 year old, the power of WHY… That power to change the course of events is not limited to the mind of a 3 year old, it is innate in all of us, it is our nature to question. God created us to question and he celebrates us when we do so.
A single question has changed the course of history, a single question can place common scene on it’s ear and turn right to wrong and evil to good. The power of a question should never be over looked nor should it be played down or belittled.
The question was asked of Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the King of the Jews?” and all of history was changed for ever. The question was asked, “What is the price of liberty” and a new nation was born.
The ability to question is our basic right as part of humanity, to stop questioning is to stop participating in humanity. Teacher and politicians and parents that stifle the questions of those they are charged with not only stifle that individual but also all of humanity.
Just imagine if:
- Edison never question electricity
- Ford never question the assembly line
- Jefferson never questioned Liberty
It is the questions that have created the humanity we know today. With each stifled question our next Ford, Edison, Einstein or Jefferson might never be able to ask that all important, life changing question.
If we do not allow questions, than who will question poverty, hunger, global war’s and the outer limits of space or the inner limits of the mind? Sniffle one is the same as stifling all.
Just something to question….
Paul
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How to be Creative–WSJ
Today I read a few interesting articles, so I thought I would share one with you. This is from the WSJ, I hope you enjoy it and find some use out of it.
God Bless & Happy Lent
Paul Sposite
Guided Insight Life Coach
BY: JONAH LEHRER
Creativity can seem like magic. We look at people like Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan, and we conclude that they must possess supernatural powers denied to mere mortals like us, gifts that allow them to imagine what has never existed before. They’re "creative types." We’re not.
The myth of the "creative type" is just that–a myth, argues Jonah Lehrer. In an interview with WSJ’s Gary Rosen he explains the evidence suggesting everyone has the potential to be the next Milton Glaser or Yo-Yo Ma.
But creativity is not magic, and there’s no such thing as a creative type. Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It’s a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it. New research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing products and to solve the toughest problems. A surprisingly concrete set of lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves and our work.
The science of creativity is relatively new. Until the Enlightenment, acts of imagination were always equated with higher powers. Being creative meant channeling the muses, giving voice to the gods. ("Inspiration" literally means "breathed upon.") Even in modern times, scientists have paid little attention to the sources of creativity.
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But over the past decade, that has begun to change. Imagination was once thought to be a single thing, separate from other kinds of cognition. The latest research suggests that this assumption is false. It turns out that we use "creativity" as a catchall term for a variety of cognitive tools, each of which applies to particular sorts of problems and is coaxed to action in a particular way.
Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal; Illustrations by Serge Bloch
It isn’t a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed on us by the angels. It’s a skill that anyone can learn and work to improve.
Does the challenge that we’re facing require a moment of insight, a sudden leap in consciousness? Or can it be solved gradually, one piece at a time? The answer often determines whether we should drink a beer to relax or hop ourselves up on Red Bull, whether we take a long shower or stay late at the office.
The new research also suggests how best to approach the thorniest problems. We tend to assume that experts are the creative geniuses in their own fields. But big breakthroughs often depend on the naive daring of outsiders. For prompting creativity, few things are as important as time devoted to cross-pollination with fields outside our areas of expertise.
Let’s start with the hardest problems, those challenges that at first blush seem impossible. Such problems are typically solved (if they are solved at all) in a moment of insight.
Consider the case of Arthur Fry, an engineer at 3M in the paper products division. In the winter of 1974, Mr. Fry attended a presentation by Sheldon Silver, an engineer working on adhesives. Mr. Silver had developed an extremely weak glue, a paste so feeble it could barely hold two pieces of paper together. Like everyone else in the room, Mr. Fry patiently listened to the presentation and then failed to come up with any practical applications for the compound. What good, after all, is a glue that doesn’t stick?
On a frigid Sunday morning, however, the paste would re-enter Mr. Fry’s thoughts, albeit in a rather unlikely context. He sang in the church choir and liked to put little pieces of paper in the hymnal to mark the songs he was supposed to sing. Unfortunately, the little pieces of paper often fell out, forcing Mr. Fry to spend the service frantically thumbing through the book, looking for the right page. It seemed like an unfixable problem, one of those ordinary hassles that we’re forced to live with.
But then, during a particularly tedious sermon, Mr. Fry had an epiphany. He suddenly realized how he might make use of that weak glue: It could be applied to paper to create a reusable bookmark! Because the adhesive was barely sticky, it would adhere to the page but wouldn’t tear it when removed. That revelation in the church would eventually result in one of the most widely used office products in the world: the Post-it Note.
Mr. Fry’s invention was a classic moment of insight. Though such events seem to spring from nowhere, as if the cortex is surprising us with a breakthrough, scientists have begun studying how they occur. They do this by giving people "insight" puzzles, like the one that follows, and watching what happens in the brain:
A man has married 20 women in a small town. All of the women are still alive, and none of them is divorced. The man has broken no laws. Who is the man?
If you solved the question, the solution probably came to you in an incandescent flash: The man is a priest. Research led by Mark Beeman and John Kounios has identified where that flash probably came from. In the seconds before the insight appears, a brain area called the superior anterior temporal gyrus (aSTG) exhibits a sharp spike in activity. This region, located on the surface of the right hemisphere, excels at drawing together distantly related information, which is precisely what’s needed when working on a hard creative problem.
Interestingly, Mr. Beeman and his colleagues have found that certain factors make people much more likely to have an insight, better able to detect the answers generated by the aSTG. For instance, exposing subjects to a short, humorous video—the scientists use a clip of Robin Williams doing stand-up—boosts the average success rate by about 20%.
Alcohol also works. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago compared performance on insight puzzles between sober and intoxicated students. The scientists gave the subjects a battery of word problems known as remote associates, in which people have to find one additional word that goes with a triad of words. Here’s a sample problem:
Pine Crab Sauce
In this case, the answer is "apple." (The compound words are pineapple, crab apple and apple sauce.) Drunk students solved nearly 30% more of these word problems than their sober peers.
What explains the creative benefits of relaxation and booze? The answer involves the surprising advantage of not paying attention. Although we live in an age that worships focus—we are always forcing ourselves to concentrate, chugging caffeine—this approach can inhibit the imagination. We might be focused, but we’re probably focused on the wrong answer.
And this is why relaxation helps: It isn’t until we’re soothed in the shower or distracted by the stand-up comic that we’re able to turn the spotlight of attention inward, eavesdropping on all those random associations unfolding in the far reaches of the brain’s right hemisphere. When we need an insight, those associations are often the source of the answer.
This research also explains why so many major breakthroughs happen in the unlikeliest of places, whether it’s Archimedes in the bathtub or the physicist Richard Feynman scribbling equations in a strip club, as he was known to do. It reveals the wisdom of Google putting ping-pong tables in the lobby and confirms the practical benefits of daydreaming. As Einstein once declared, "Creativity is the residue of time wasted."
Of course, not every creative challenge requires an epiphany; a relaxing shower won’t solve every problem. Sometimes, we just need to keep on working, resisting the temptation of a beer-fueled nap.
There is nothing fun about this kind of creativity, which consists mostly of sweat and failure. It’s the red pen on the page and the discarded sketch, the trashed prototype and the failed first draft. Nietzsche referred to this as the "rejecting process," noting that while creators like to brag about their big epiphanies, their everyday reality was much less romantic. "All great artists and thinkers are great workers," he wrote.
This relentless form of creativity is nicely exemplified by the legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser, who engraved the slogan "Art is Work" above his office door. Mr. Glaser’s most famous design is a tribute to this work ethic. In 1975, he accepted an intimidating assignment: to create a new ad campaign that would rehabilitate the image of New York City, which at the time was falling apart.
Mr. Glaser began by experimenting with fonts, laying out the tourist slogan in a variety of friendly typefaces. After a few weeks of work, he settled on a charming design, with "I Love New York" in cursive, set against a plain white background. His proposal was quickly approved. "Everybody liked it," Mr. Glaser says. "And if I were a normal person, I’d stop thinking about the project. But I can’t. Something about it just doesn’t feel right."
So Mr. Glaser continued to ruminate on the design, devoting hours to a project that was supposedly finished. And then, after another few days of work, he was sitting in a taxi, stuck in midtown traffic. "I often carry spare pieces of paper in my pocket, and so I get the paper out and I start to draw," he remembers. "And I’m thinking and drawing and then I get it. I see the whole design in my head. I see the typeface and the big round red heart smack dab in the middle. I know that this is how it should go."
The logo that Mr. Glaser imagined in traffic has since become one of the most widely imitated works of graphic art in the world. And he only discovered the design because he refused to stop thinking about it.
But this raises an obvious question: If different kinds of creative problems benefit from different kinds of creative thinking, how can we ensure that we’re thinking in the right way at the right time? When should we daydream and go for a relaxing stroll, and when should we keep on sketching and toying with possibilities?
The good news is that the human mind has a surprising natural ability to assess the kind of creativity we need. Researchers call these intuitions "feelings of knowing," and they occur when we suspect that we can find the answer, if only we keep on thinking. Numerous studies have demonstrated that, when it comes to problems that don’t require insights, the mind is remarkably adept at assessing the likelihood that a problem can be solved—knowing whether we’re getting "warmer" or not, without knowing the solution.
This ability to calculate progress is an important part of the creative process. When we don’t feel that we’re getting closer to the answer—we’ve hit the wall, so to speak—we probably need an insight. If there is no feeling of knowing, the most productive thing we can do is forget about work for a while. But when those feelings of knowing are telling us that we’re getting close, we need to keep on struggling.
Of course, both moment-of-insight problems and nose-to-the-grindstone problems assume that we have the answers to the creative problems we’re trying to solve somewhere in our heads. They’re both just a matter of getting those answers out. Another kind of creative problem, though, is when you don’t have the right kind of raw material kicking around in your head. If you’re trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed.
Steve Jobs famously declared that "creativity is just connecting things." Although we think of inventors as dreaming up breakthroughs out of thin air, Mr. Jobs was pointing out that even the most far-fetched concepts are usually just new combinations of stuff that already exists. Under Mr. Jobs’s leadership, for instance, Apple didn’t invent MP3 players or tablet computers—the company just made them better, adding design features that were new to the product category.
And it isn’t just Apple. The history of innovation bears out Mr. Jobs’s theory. The Wright Brothers transferred their background as bicycle manufacturers to the invention of the airplane; their first flying craft was, in many respects, just a bicycle with wings. Johannes Gutenberg transformed his knowledge of wine presses into a printing machine capable of mass-producing words. Or look at Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with their famous search algorithm by applying the ranking method used for academic articles (more citations equals more influence) to the sprawl of the Internet.
How can people get better at making these kinds of connections? Mr. Jobs argued that the best inventors seek out "diverse experiences," collecting lots of dots that they later link together. Instead of developing a narrow specialization, they study, say, calligraphy (as Mr. Jobs famously did) or hang out with friends in different fields. Because they don’t know where the answer will come from, they are willing to look for the answer everywhere.
Recent research confirms Mr. Jobs’s wisdom. The sociologist Martin Ruef, for instance, analyzed the social and business relationships of 766 graduates of the Stanford Business School, all of whom had gone on to start their own companies. He found that those entrepreneurs with the most diverse friendships scored three times higher on a metric of innovation. Instead of getting stuck in the rut of conformity, they were able to translate their expansive social circle into profitable new concepts.
Many of the most innovative companies encourage their employees to develop these sorts of diverse networks, interacting with colleagues in totally unrelated fields. Google hosts an internal conference called Crazy Search Ideas—a sort of grown-up science fair with hundreds of posters from every conceivable field. At 3M, engineers are typically rotated to a new division every few years. Sometimes, these rotations bring big payoffs, such as when 3M realized that the problem of laptop battery life was really a problem of energy used up too quickly for illuminating the screen. 3M researchers applied their knowledge of see-through adhesives to create an optical film that focuses light outward, producing a screen that was 40% more efficient.
Such solutions are known as "mental restructurings," since the problem is only solved after someone asks a completely new kind of question. What’s interesting is that expertise can inhibit such restructurings, making it harder to find the breakthrough. That’s why it’s important not just to bring new ideas back to your own field, but to actually try to solve problems in other fields—where your status as an outsider, and ability to ask naive questions, can be a tremendous advantage.
This principle is at work daily on InnoCentive, a crowdsourcing website for difficult scientific questions. The structure of the site is simple: Companies post their hardest R&D problems, attaching a monetary reward to each "challenge." The site features problems from hundreds of organization in eight different scientific categories, from agricultural science to mathematics. The challenges on the site are incredibly varied and include everything from a multinational food company looking for a "Reduced Fat Chocolate-Flavored Compound Coating" to an electronics firm trying to design a solar-powered computer.
The most impressive thing about InnoCentive, however, is its effectiveness. In 2007, Karim Lakhani, a professor at the Harvard Business School, began analyzing hundreds of challenges posted on the site. According to Mr. Lakhani’s data, nearly 30% of the difficult problems posted on InnoCentive were solved within six months. Sometimes, the problems were solved within days of being posted online. The secret was outsider thinking: The problem solvers on InnoCentive were most effective at the margins of their own fields. Chemists didn’t solve chemistry problems; they solved molecular biology problems. And vice versa. While these people were close enough to understand the challenge, they weren’t so close that their knowledge held them back, causing them to run into the same stumbling blocks that held back their more expert peers.
It’s this ability to attack problems as a beginner, to let go of all preconceptions and fear of failure, that’s the key to creativity.
The composer Bruce Adolphe first met Yo-Yo Ma at the Juilliard School in New York City in 1970. Mr. Ma was just 15 years old at the time (though he’d already played for J.F.K. at the White House). Mr. Adolphe had just written his first cello piece. "Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was doing," Mr. Adolphe remembers. "I’d never written for the instrument before."
Mr. Adolphe had shown a draft of his composition to a Juilliard instructor, who informed him that the piece featured a chord that was impossible to play. Before Mr. Adolphe could correct the music, however, Mr. Ma decided to rehearse the composition in his dorm room. "Yo-Yo played through my piece, sight-reading the whole thing," Mr. Adolphe says. "And when that impossible chord came, he somehow found a way to play it."
Mr. Adolphe told Mr. Ma what the professor had said and asked how he had managed to play the impossible chord. They went through the piece again, and when Mr. Ma came to the impossible chord, Mr. Adolphe yelled "Stop!" They looked at Mr. Ma’s left hand—it was contorted on the fingerboard, in a position that was nearly impossible to hold. "You’re right," said Mr. Ma, "you really can’t play that!" Yet, somehow, he did.
When Mr. Ma plays today, he still strives for that state of the beginner. "One needs to constantly remind oneself to play with the abandon of the child who is just learning the cello," Mr. Ma says. "Because why is that kid playing? He is playing for pleasure."
Creativity is a spark. It can be excruciating when we’re rubbing two rocks together and getting nothing. And it can be intensely satisfying when the flame catches and a new idea sweeps around the world.
For the first time in human history, it’s becoming possible to see how to throw off more sparks and how to make sure that more of them catch fire. And yet, we must also be honest: The creative process will never be easy, no matter how much we learn about it. Our inventions will always be shadowed by uncertainty, by the serendipity of brain cells making a new connection.
Every creative story is different. And yet every creative story is the same: There was nothing, now there is something. It’s almost like magic.
—Adapted from "Imagine: How Creativity Works" by Jonah Lehrer, to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on March 19. Copyright © 2012 by Jonah Lehrer.
10 Quick Creativity Hacks
1. Color Me Blue
A 2009 study found that subjects solved twice as many insight puzzles when surrounded by the color blue, since it leads to more relaxed and associative thinking. Red, on other hand, makes people more alert and aware, so it is a better backdrop for solving analytic problems.
2. Get Groggy
According to a study published last month, people at their least alert time of day—think of a night person early in the morning—performed far better on various creative puzzles, sometimes improving their success rate by 50%. Grogginess has creative perks.
Serge Bloch
#3 Don’t Be Afraid to Daydream
3. Daydream Away
Research led by Jonathan Schooler at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has found that people who daydream more score higher on various tests of creativity.
4. Think Like A Child
When subjects are told to imagine themselves as 7-year-olds, they score significantly higher on tests of divergent thinking, such as trying to invent alternative uses for an old car tire.
5. Laugh It Up
Serge Bloch
When people are exposed to a short video of stand-up comedy, they solve about 20% more insight puzzles.
When people are exposed to a short video of stand-up comedy, they solve about 20% more insight puzzles.
6. Imagine That You Are Far Away
Research conducted at Indiana University found that people were much better at solving insight puzzles when they were told that the puzzles came from Greece or California, and not from a local lab.
7. Keep It Generic
One way to increase problem-solving ability is to change the verbs used to describe the problem. When the verbs are extremely specific, people think in narrow terms. In contrast, the use of more generic verbs—say, "moving" instead of "driving"—can lead to dramatic increases in the number of problems solved.
Serge Bloch
According to a new study, volunteers performed significantly better on a standard test of creativity when they were seated outside a 5-footsquare workspace, perhaps because they internalized the metaphor of thinking outside the box. The lesson? Your cubicle is holding you back.
8. Work Outside the Box
According to new study, volunteers performed significantly better on a standard test of creativity when they were seated outside a 5-foot-square workspace, perhaps because they internalized the metaphor of thinking outside the box. The lesson? Your cubicle is holding you back.
9. See the World
According to research led by Adam Galinsky, students who have lived abroad were much more likely to solve a classic insight puzzle. Their experience of another culture endowed them with a valuable open-mindedness. This effect also applies to professionals: Fashion-house directors who have lived in many countries produce clothing that their peers rate as far more creative.
10. Move to a Metropolis
Physicists at the Santa Fe Institute have found that moving from a small city to one that is twice as large leads inventors to produce, on average, about 15% more patents.
—Jonah Lehrer
A version of this article appeared Mar. 10, 2012, on page C1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: How to Be CreativeHow To Be Creative.
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Posted by Paul Sposite on March 22, 2012 in Change, Improvement, life coach, Self, selfhelp
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