Lightbulb moments...
Here’s a thought…
Awake, there are times when the human brain can produce enough electricity to power a small, low-wattage lightbulb.
Maybe that’s where the phrase “Having a lightbulb moment” comes from.
That instant when the sparks are really flying between the neurons.
That micro-second of sudden realization and enlightenment when the pulse quickens, the eyebrows hitch themselves up, and the penny drops.
If so, then maybe we all have the capacity to be brighter than we think.
To be 100watt instead of just 60.
To be more intelligent than we give ourselves credit for.
Maybe there’s even an on/off or a dimmer switch hidden in there somewhere…for when we go to sleep and the neurons take five.
Maybe we all have the potential to be more creative than we realise.
Well…yes…and no.
Sir Ken Robinson, author, highly entertaining speaker, and government advisor on education, is in the blue (yes) corner.
Ken passionately argues that as children we are all naturally creative. However, by the time we grow up, our creativity has been educated out of us.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a way of keeping it in.
Then in the red (no) corner, we have author and former creative director Gordon Torr, who thinks Ken’s argument is a load of old tosh.
In his book Managing Creative People, he says that believing everyone has the capacity to be as creative as the next person is as ludicrous as believing everyone has the capacity to be just as intelligent as the next person.
Gordon passionately believes that creative folk are different from the get go and they stay that way…and that’s that!
I’d love to come down on the side of Sir Ken, but I think Gordon has a point.
And a pretty damned big one.
It would be nice to think that between everyone’s ears is a brain with the capacity to be an artist or a writer…not just a refuse collector or a politician.
But I think it would be nicer to think that every creative department is filled with rebels.
Folk who refused to have creativity educated out of them.
Folk whose grey cells can do things with words and pictures that nobody else can.
That’s not to say that only creative folk can be imaginative…can conceptualise…can have ideas.
Perish the thought.
I firmly believe that a great idea doesn’t care who it happens to.
A lightbulb moment should be free to attach itself to any passing Tom, Dick or Harry…Agnes, Sheila or Liz.
But here’s the thing…
It should be free to do it again…and again…and again…
It should be free to do it not because it feels like doing it, but because it can’t stop itself from doing it.
That’s the difference between acting creative and being creative.
It’s more than just what you do.
It’s who you are.
Cradle to grave…
I love this subject and this post. To be fair Sir Ken's campaign is to stop schools killing creativity - which they undoubtedly try to do with their Victorian British approach to creating bureaucrats. Creativity is relative - not everyone can be or would want to be 'a creative' but even the most rational members of the community might want to express their individuality sometime be it in the garden, kitchen or even maybe their bedrooms.
Interesting perspective. As a child, I was left handed. When I entered elementary education, the teacher demanded that I write with my right hand. I refused. Crawled under the art table and refused to come out no matter how frustrated and upset my teacher became. The school declared that I was not "mature enough" for kindergarten and sent me home. Yes, I failed kindergarten. For the next year, mother worked on my ability to write letters and words right-handed. She did not, however, force me to use only my right hand...she allowed me to use both, as I saw fit, but gave me the ability to placate the educational fascists. I'm an old man now, yet I am still wildly independent in thought and spirit. I believe this is a manifestation (and curse) of the creative mind.
Spot on Bryce, great post.