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“This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd.
It’s not that the network itself is smart; it’s that the individuals get smarter because they’re connected to the network.”
Steven Johnson
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Well. I had a great conversation with a young person last week and at the end of it he said “I envision you live your life free of constraints and the rules that inhibit the majority of people.”
I hesitated <slightly taken aback> and responded “I’m sorry I gave you that impression … I think Life, as well as business, is best lived within a construct and while I believe society and some experts try and establish some silly rules … rules, in general, are good and boundaries typically enhance creativity.”
In the McTague ingredients of Life these are two basic ones:
Unconstrained Construct is good.
Unconstrained Chaos is bad.
People who claim being good, or prosper, in chaos are confused <and wrong>. They confuse the fact that most often one survives in chaos, not thrives in chaos.
No one, and nothing, thrives in chaos.
** Note: as I have stated a number of times, business thrives on the edge of chaos, or, bedlam as I have called it.
In fact. The best creativity, thinking & ideas, happens within a construct.
Well established boundaries, ones that supply some restriction without being restrictive, create an environment in which the mind can roam freely within a realm provided some focus for that freedom.
Think about it.
Football fields, rodeo rings, Broadway stages – any finite space creates a construct for someone to maximize the space, be and think creatively, in a multi-dimensional way.
Thinkers take the 2 dimensional traditional constructs and seek to build within any and all dimensions.
Sounds weird, but, fences offer freedom.
As a corollary, no fences encourages aimless unfocused wandering.
** Note: the ‘no fences wandering’ could be construed as freedom by some but it isn’t really … freedom in and of itself only has value where it is attached to some purpose or construct or intent. No fences freedom sounds good <on occasion> but inevitably is extremely dissatisfying.
Look. I’m not suggesting unfocused wandering doesn’t have some value, but rather that the great ideas and thinking don’t come from the unfocused but rather the focused.
Also.
Please note that when I refer to fences and boundaries I have also very clearly stated ‘nonrestrictive’ in association with my reference to fences and boundaries.
Too restrictive is most often a reflection of someone or something imposing philosophical and/or ideological control over others.
More often than not tight space fence builders see people as a a single unit, or think of population as an engine to run, in which all the people are parts of a whole rather than autonomous individuals.
They believe that if any part acts outside of the boundaries the entire unit could break and the engine stops running.
They build their boundaries not seeking to enhance creativity and innovation, but rather to control each individual’s behavior in order to ensure that what you do as an individual does no harm to the whole. It is meant to rein in and not let free and meant to create conformity and unity <albeit it is actually “oneness’>.
It is a faulty premise and a defensive constrictive premise.
Why is it faulty? Rather than share my ideological thought behind my belief let me quickly share an academic point of view:
… provide an extended definition of creativity that embraces potential cross-cultural variations in this construct.
Creativity is defined as a 4-criterion construct, which includes attributes of novelty, utility, aesthetics, and authenticity. Novelty attribute stipulates that a creative work brings something new into being, which presents a new conceptual framework and/or modifies or violates an existing one. Utility attribute stipulates that a creative work is what a producer or a recipient considers creative, what represents an important landmark in spiritual, cultural, social, and/or political environment, and what addresses moral issues. The aesthetics attribute stipulates that a creative work presents the fundamental truth of nature, which is reflected in a perfect order, efficiently presents the essence of the phenomenal reality, and is satisfactorily complex, expressing both tension and intrinsic contradiction. Authenticity attribute stipulates that a creative work expresses an individual’s inner self and relates one’s own values and believes to the world.
These attributes establish a comparison matrix, which can be used to evaluate and compare the levels of creativity of works from different areas of human endeavor.
Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin
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Creativity of the mind is exactly the same as creativity of innovation … it is multidimensional and needs a balance of construct and freedom in order to maximize potential.
I will remind everyone of one of my favorite thinking & ideas books – A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young. He suggests that producing new ideas is one big part process and lots of little freedom parts baked in. James Webb Young suggests two general principles behind producing ideas:
– 1. an idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements
– 2. the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships
Well. If he is correct <and, in general, I think he is>, than true creative freedom is found within fences … not without.
This also suggests chaos is unproductive.
Ah.
Once again.
Unconstrained Chaos bad.
Unconstrained Construct good.
Anyway. As I said in the beginning: “Life, as well as business, is best lived within a construct and while I believe society and some experts try and establish some silly rules … rules, in general, are good and boundaries typically enhance creativity.”
Freedom is a loosely used word and not all freedom is created equal.
I would suggest that the highest quality freedom <in and of anything>, the most satisfying freedom, is not found without fences, but within fences.
Last note.
Before anyone quarrels with me on this please remember I am the author of “I have a lover’s quarrel with the world”. Yeah. I do, typically, chafe within some of the silly rules & boundaries society & business seems to demand we ‘roam’ within. But. I do typically thrive within the non silly rules & boundaries.