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The brilliant and visionary Audrey Kallander posted a comment too good to leave buried in Tuesday’s post, in which we asked for some advice on how to better practice collaboration and openness when your own ego is clenching hard.

I am reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, ‘Creativity’ (he also wrote, probably more famously, ‘Flow’). He defines creativity as happening in the intersection of an individual who sees a new pattern, a ‘field of accomplishment’ (the ‘experts’ who can understand and accept the individual’s creative idea or act), and a ‘domain of knowledge and action’ (a body of knowledge mediated by symbols and bundled into systems, like geometry, art, or legal systems, which makes up what we call a culture).

That makes every creative act an act of collaboration, or the property of a system, as opposed to a controlled (or controllable), specific act of an individual. Our current, western culture has an epistemological bias towards abstracting bits of reality from their context, which leads to a focus on the contribution of the individual. There is an underlying paradigm of linear thinking, i.e. we’re all marching along a time line from the past to the present, and there are lots of assumptions about what “progress” is, which is normally measured in terms of material abundance, technological virtuosity, economic growth, etc.

I’d say that by asking the question about “preaching collaboration” you are automatically practicing it. If you word the questions so that other people can get traction both thinking about the ideas and forming their own opinions which they feel comfortable sharing, the more ideas you’ll likely come up with and naturally, someone (or the group) might know better. That is basically a “brainstorm and filter” mentality. A balance between putting your idea out there, taking in comment and advice, and looking at your work with fresh eyes.

To remain open in my creative practice, I try to surround myself with people that I believe are ‘smarter’ or ‘more creative’ than I am, while keeping hold of a sense of my own smarts and creativity. I acknowledge that I essentially, even when working alone, “stand on the shoulders of giants” in that I have access to so much knowledge and experience and so many examples that have come before me. That my “container” (domain) and network (field) is an essential part of my own creativity.

And the first step in letting go is to acknowledge that you are holding on. Control (as opposed to ‘influence’) is an illusion, and you might note from your own past experience that struggling with it will cause you (and possibly others) to suffer. I repeat to myself, “I participate but do not control this situation.”

Amen.

06/21/07 by Axel Albin

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 9:33 am and is filed under Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.