… said Picasso
Blog
Unraveling Genius
I’ve been thinking about this topic for awhile now, but have held myself back from writing about it because genius has such elevated connotations. We confer that term to people (usually men) after they have accomplished a large body of work, and typically after they’re dead (Einstein, Da Vinci, Picasso….) But what if genius was something we all had, we just don’t tap into it? I have studied how adults learn for 23 years and I believe genius is not necessarily so lofty. Let’s unravel it.
Because of the problematic way in which genius has been studied, some of our previously held beliefs about it are open to question. The problems are two-fold. First, scholars have selected isolated individuals who they believe to be geniuses (which may be true), but then these scholars deduce what genius is by listing the qualities that these men have. For example, Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci were both very visual thinkers. In fact, Einstein went on to claim that words don’t contribute much to his thinking process. Because of this, scholars have ascertained that “Geniuses make their thought visible.” I question that. A second problem is that scholars select individuals retroactively, looking back over the body of work an individual has produced over the course of his life. Scholars thus deduce that geniuses are highly productive people. That might be a true statement, but it’s not interesting, nor is it helpful for understanding how adults learn and operate in the world.
So let’s look at qualities of genius that are helpful:
(1) Geniuses look at problems in many different ways. Geniuses are people who can “rise above” a situation and explore many options. They are not stuck in one-way thinking.
(2) Geniuses can find and make connections between dissimilar things. Along with this, they can tolerate ambiguity, holding two incompatible subjects together until they find a connection. I would guess that geniuses enjoy the state of “not knowing” and waiting for the answer to appear.
(3) Geniuses think metaphorically. This follows from number 2 above. The physicist Neils Bohr believed that if you hold opposites together, then you suspend your thought and your mind moves to a new level. That’s what we do when we think metaphorically—metaphors are a bridge between two dissimilar things. (By the way, if you want to fall in love with Neils Bohr, watch the PBS documentary Copenhagen. I watched it months ago and it’s still “working” me.)
(4) Geniuses have the ability to play with concepts and ideas. They may juggle elements into impossible juxtapositions or shape wild hypotheses. (This is why we don’t often give them credit until they’re dead. When they’re alive, we’re too busy dis-crediting them.)
(5) Geniuses are open to unexpected thoughts, ideas and solutions. In Getting Messy, I discuss the importance of openness in learning. As adults, it’s easy to fall into the role of expert, or at least, “been there, done that.” Being open to learning is an important quality of genius.
(Funny how all these qualities apply to the creative process, as well. Imagine that.)
We can see then that genius has nothing to do with thinking harder or better or more rapidly. In fact, genius does not correspond to IQ. One of the most recent individuals awarded the title of genius was physicist Richard Feynman, whose IQ of 122 was far lower than many other run-of-the mill physicists. Genius involves stepping out of our typical thinking modes (since our minds are very good at looping through the same scenarios over-and-over; they are not very good at coming up with novel ideas.) What’s required is opening ourselves up to a more expansive place, where novel possibilities can be discovered. I call this the “fertile field.”
Although I don’t specifically use the term “genius” in my book, Getting Messy, I do explore these underlying qualities in much more depth. In Chapter Two I discuss the importance of openness in learning, and Chapter Three is about metaphorical thinking and the imagination. Chapter Six is all about bridging polarities and holding opposites, in order to reach a more expanded place within ourselves.
It’s 3:18 AM. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep now…
Sources: “A Theory about Genius” article by Michael Michalko, How to Think Like Leonard da Vinci by Michael Gelb.
Krishnamurti on discipline
Discipline is a tool that numbs the mind.
–Krishnamurti
It seems a little dramatic, but perhaps there’s some truth to it. I often hear writers (famous and not-so-famous) go on-and-on about how they get up at dawn EVERY day to write for a specified number of hours. “It’s a discipline,” they seem to be lecturing. I myself don’t work this way–I have to be inspired to write. Well…of course I can write without being inspired, but the words don’t have any energy behind them. The writing comes out sounding like concrete, and the ideas don’t jell. Sometimes it works for me to start writing and then I find inspiration for it, but in general, I’ll go with Krishnamurti on this one. I don’t believe that anything of much value happens by forcing it to happen. I believe that things of value happen when we first listen for the inspiration, and then act on what we’re inspired by. Any thoughts, anyone?
The Wisdom of Not Knowing
My working life has always been diverse. Over the past thirty years I’ve developed and taught seminars, worked as a coach and consultant, and facilitated many groups on an assortment of topics. My clientele have ranged from Senior citizens to troubled teenagers to creatively blocked adults and everything in between. I’ve developed and taught computer training courses for Fortune 500 corporations, led tours for wine connoisseurs at a local farmers market, facilitated creative writing workshops at a yoga center, organized focus groups for educational institutions, taught swimming lessons for children and grown adults, hosted community poetry readings at the public library, presented technical expertise at corporate meetings, and mentored troubled teens at a high-priced boarding school. I’ve also taught a range of university courses for undergraduate and graduate students. In all cases, diverse as they may be, the same principles of teaching and learning applied.
I didn’t know this ten years ago when I was hired to teach an “Instructional Strategies” course in a teacher credentialing program. I presumed, of course, that teaching was about standing in front of a group of students as an expert, delivering content information. The problem I had, however, was that the roles were switched. My students, with a couple exceptions, were experienced teachers who simply needed to acquire a course credit and I—I had never taught a class in a formal classroom before. I wasn’t even sure what instructional strategies were. I was frightened.
What did I do? I went on a search for tools and techniques. I wanted to know how to teach. I wanted someone to tell me everything I needed to know to be a good teacher. I would then memorize this information, practice it at home, and hope the students in my classes would never know that I was inexperienced. One of my first stops was a workshop on how to facilitate groups. However, on the third day of this five-day workshop, we still had not gotten to techniques. I still did not have anything to arm myself with when I walked into the classroom to teach for the first time. I was frustrated and when the workshop resumed after lunch I spoke up. “This isn’t what I came here for. I need to know how to teach.” The instructor looked at me for a moment and then turned around and drew this diagram on the flip chart:
“Everything rests on who you are,” he told me, “Once you have that, the ‘how’ is easy.”
So I started teaching a classroom of experienced teachers with no techniques under my belt. The only real method I had was to be a learner, to try things out and learn along with the students whether they worked or not. After all, the title of the course was Instructional Strategies—what better way to learn than to use the course itself as our laboratory?
My class was a required course in a teacher-credentialing program at a large university, a program that provided teaching certificates to vocational and adult educators. Students came from dramatically diverse backgrounds and teaching situations, and most of them had been teaching for years. There were high school and junior high teachers, but also medical educators, corporate trainers, social workers, teachers who worked with disabled populations, in senior centers, prisons, nursing homes, and so on. It was clear that there was no way I could provide these people with a pre-packaged set of information. My task was to pursue a deeper inquiry into teaching along with my students. It would be an adventure.
I was not an expert on the subject of classroom teaching and I certainly couldn’t offer these students specialized expertise regarding their own particular teaching situations. But I soon discovered that I had a skill that was much more important: I was an expert learner. I didn’t need to present myself to the class as someone who had all the answers. My real job was to be a guide, to initiate with my students a conversation about the subject of teaching. I would enter into this inquiry along with the students and I would be fluid with whatever arose from that conversation. I would draw the wisdom out of the room and I would learn along the way. I have since come to discover that no matter what situation is in front of me, whether it be a group of rambunctious teens or weary adults, being a learner is the only thing that really works. Being a learner is what allows creative insight to happen.
Excerpted from Chapter 1 of Getting Messy: A Guide to Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination.
Concrete Poetry and the “Creating” Space
I taught a Concrete Poetry class last weekend at Book Passage. It was a lot of fun. I have to admit that I’ve never actually taken a poetry class myself, either in college or post-college, although I’ve read a lot of books by poets about poetry. My favorite is Steve Kowit’s In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop. Someday I’d like to teach a class where we use his book. His writing exercises are amazing, and really get you into that poetic space where poems flow. A lot of books about creative writing are written from a “heady” place…they’re about techniques and concepts. They’ll give you a subject and tell you to write about it.
From my experience, creative writing comes naturally when we put ourselves into a rich place where images, metaphors, and feelings emerge naturally. My classes are all about being in that place where the making of the poem is natural, inevitable–there’s nothing else we can do but put the words and images we are receiving down on the page. That’s the space I want to live in in my everyday life, as well. When I get too busy, I have to remember that that’s the place I need to go back to–that place where art (my creative process) is happening naturally.
What I do in my classes is create a space and then see what wants to emerge…and something always wants to emerge. Life is naturally generative. It’s a fertile field. I sometimes call it third space or metaphoric space, and it’s available to us all the time. A piece of writing or art can always be tweaked or modified later, but nothing can bring richness to your words and images, except being in that rich, fertile place. The creative space from which the urge to write happens, can’t be forced.
BTW, I’ll be speaking about my book, Getting Messy: A Guide to Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination, at Pegasus Bookstore in downtown Berkeley on Thursday November 12th at 7:30. See you there!