‘… falling into patterns over and over again usually leads to thinking inside a box.’
CREATIVITY in a person and in a people is induced when the individual and collective brain patterns are disrupted. The disruption causes the brain to appreciate the situation in a new light, sparking a new insight, effectively broadening the mind. One of my favorite creativity-related sayings that I often quote when I talk about the creative thinking process is this: The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original shape.
For a time in my life I used to give one or two-day creative thinking seminars using the Six Thinking Hats technique of the late Dr Edward de Bono. In 1994, I was the first ever Filipino certified to teach his thinking method.
In creative-speak, the disruption I speak of above is called a provocation, and the Six Hats and other de Bono methods are ripe with provocations of many kinds. They’re meant to jar the mind out of its “complacency” and the tendency to think along safe patterns that help simplify life.
But there’s a catch to this: falling into patterns over and over again usually leads to thinking inside a box. And in groups of people the result is “groupthink.”
Nothing kills creativity more than these human tendencies, natural as they may be.
Exposing one’s self to “provocations” is central to constantly refreshing our thinking process and keeping creativity alive.
Unfortunately, the creeping influence of social media in our daily lives poses a serious and barely hidden threat to creativity. This is because social media, and its algorithms, make it easy for people to seek safe (virtual) spaces where they are exposed to people they like and read about issues they are concerned about from a perspective they share.
In the United States, for example, supporters of the Republican party patronize social media outfits that parrot the MAGA propaganda, while Democrats have their own outfits that patronize the liberal one. In the process, the world according to one viewpoint is a totally different world from the one you get to “see” from the other side. Worse, each side can be lapping up “news” that is actually fake or less than half truths. But how are they to know? And why would they like to know otherwise?
Seeking out people you like because they think like you is called homophilia, and it is a growing tendency thanks to today’s algorithms of the feeds we are exposed to on social media platforms. The more we are exposed to the choices the algorithms select for us, the more we sink deeper into hemophilia.
And the more the creative spirit in us is at risk.
It is a creeping threat, this rise of homophilia in all of us. Soon, no one will be brave enough to “dream things that never were and say, why not?”
