Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => Time Out => Topic started by: fbloke on May 29, 2010, 06:35:52 PM
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Turns out it helps to be a bit mental if you want to be creative:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/10154775.stm
Does this have ramifications for us all? Are we at our least creative when we're trying to be too normal, rational or traditional? I think there may be something in this.
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Nothing really new here except for the scientific explanation of a long-time known phenomenon. Dali himself explains in his autobiography that at a time he felt he was about to cross the line and fall into real insanity, but with the help of Gala (who apparently really saved him) "decided" to "become a genius" instead (whether you like Dali or not is irrelevant here - this guy was a real genius, period). And yes, the most creative people I've ever met and / or worked with, whatever the field, were all borderline personnalities with an ability to stray out of "common sense" and conventional "wisdom" or "best practices". I've seen this in arts (music, painting, poetry...) of course, but also - and sometimes even more strikingly - in computer science.
One of my friends would be a perfect "cas d'école" to illustrate this paper. The guy - who's brother and first son are both suffering from severe schizophrenia - has more than once amazed me with crazy solutions to non-trivial technical problems - and when I say crazy, I mean (this me reacting to his latest brillant idea) : "err... Wait... Waht did you smoke ? You *can't* do that ! You're kidding me, aren't you ? No, wait, lemme think about it... Hey, wait, ok, this _looks_ insane, but, hey, yes you're right, it should JustWork, now why didn't I even think of this before, OMG it's so simply obvious, it WILL JustWork, how does it come I could not see it, man you're a f**** genius !!!" (here me slapping my head against my keyboard...). This guy would be rich and famous by now if he wasn't such a motorhead (and that's an understatement) himself :-/
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I think there is something in this, but also I think people play up to this kind of thing a bit too much sometimes to hint at their own genius.
I mean who would make a film about a genius that was not also slightly crazy? Just a normal genius, that didn't hear voices or go insane. It's just not as entertaining.
Consider this, there are 2 people (lets say computer scientists), they both come up with the same idea independently,
one is a well balanced individual who looks smart is quiet and the other is irratic, has mad hair appears to talk a lot of shite. Who is more likely to be called a genius?
I think there is a fine line between madness and genius sometimes but I'm sure there are plenty of pretty 'normal' people that come up with genius ideas in a less annoying way.
And I think there are much better guitarists on youtube that are not annoying w**kers :D
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I never met a normal person. Everybody's crazy except me.
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The article was certainly interesting ; and a few people I have since spoken to, either in the Teaching profession - and / or those in contact with ( creative ) relatives with Mental health issues , seem to agree that the 'minimum filtering' process outlined in the article certainly describes what they see on the outside. :)
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I never met a normal person. Everybody's crazy except me.
Indeed : The NHS now measure all Mental illness, on the 'Ratrod to Hat stand' scale. :mrgreen: