Boy Are They Changing

I’ve been thinking on the subject of creativity and the fact that creative people do have a talent for thinking outside the box. Then I ran into an article on a proposed rearrangement of the dinosaur family tree. The proposal came from a grad student who’d found a few discrepancies in the accepted family tree, did a little research, and devised a new one. Paleontologists are looking at his proposal and finding things to like about it. His work is good enough and makes enough sense paleontology will most likely adopt it and textbooks will need to be revised. And here you thought science is about answering questions, not questioning answers.

How does this apply to you?

Consider how things are changing, how matters we once thought were settled really aren’t. Tasks we were once sure couldn’t be automated have been automated. Things we once thought as impossible have been proven possible. But we continue to insist that the world must continue to be as we have insisted that it be.

In the special issue of Scientific American Mind on creativity — do a search on it, your fingers ain’t broken — one article noted that some companies are teaching creativity to their employees. Part of being creative is thinking outside the box. That is, considering possibilities established authorities insist you can’t consider. So here’s my point; you can learn to think outside the box.

Why would you want to? To get out of your rut. Things are changing, you’re going to need to adapt to them and to do that you’re going to need to be able to think outside the box; to accept alternate possibilities because rejected them is counterproductive and counter-survival. It is the strange who will inherit the Earth.

If there are classes on creativity in your local schools see about signing up for one, and remember that there are no authorities on creativity. Anybody who insists that they are needs to learn how to be creative himself.

Those are my thoughts, keep in mind that I am hardly an authority on creativity or thinking outside the box, all I can ask of you is that you give this some thought.

Originally published at Mythusmage Today.