For Seniors & Skeptics Thinking NutsIn 1967, Edward De Bono invented lateral thinking (edwdebono.com) and went on to write 100 books to explain it. (Would you believe 62?) It’s complicated.
In 2008, I invented virtual thinking myself and have since written 100 essays to explain it. (Would you believe 42?) It’s also creative thinking; it’s also complicated. Today, 10 blogs later, I have gained the insight that it’s not logical to explain creative thinking; I think it should only be demonstrated. And today, with Creative Circles, I think I’m ready for that.
To continue with my parallel story: From lateral thinking, De Bono went on and invented parallel thinking and, as a device invented Six Thinking Hats (edwdebono.com). They didn’t come from watching Harry Potter. From virtual thinking, I went on and invented Creative iQ the other day and, as a device, I invented Creative Circles just today. They didn’t come from looking at crop circles in England.
I’m one of the skeptics. I’ve never been interested in crop circles even if I’ve looked at them, those beautiful geometric patterns. You must have heard about crop circles that some people believe to be ‘messages from alien spacecraft’ (skepdic.com). If indeed crop circles are messages from extra-terrestrial beings, I can’t believe their sources are intelligent: all they know is draw crop circles!
I’ll tell you about intelligent circles. I’m Filipino; so, my Creative Circles have a message for you from an alien if you’re not Filipino. My message is clear: Crops are for drawing out the best in the soil; Creative Circles are for drawing out the best in you. Crop circles are distraction; creative circles are instruction, not to mention inspiration.
In a little while, I will show you that while crop circles flatten people’s fields, Creative Circles fatten people's minds with ideas. Technically, there are no fake crop circles, because not one has been shown to be merely a copy of an original. My Creative Circles are entirely original. Crop circles are static; Creative Circles are flexible. Once crop circles have been made, they stay that way; the seasons can only destroy them, not change them. I will teach you to make your own Creative Circles that change as your artistic reasons change. Whatever you say of them, crop circles are always destructive; in contrast, Creative Circles are always constructive.
Crop circles are made surreptitiously; Creative Circles are made serendipitously. Serendipity is, Horace Walpole had said, ‘the phenomenon of happy things happening when one is intent on doing something else.’ Creative Circles are the phenomenon of mindful serendipity, that is, creativity on-demand. It is the phenomenon of happy things happening when one is intent on doing nothing else. I know; been there, done that!
My lifelong quest has been to quaff the everlasting water contained in the Golden Chalice of Creativity. A self-taught writer, for the last 43 years, I have been trying to come up with my own nice-and-easy-does-it device for creative thinking, starting when I came across Rudolf Flesch’s 1965 book How To Write, Speak And Think More Effectively, a copy of which my good friend Manny Alkuino gifted me when we were still college students at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture, now UP Los Baños, in Laguna, some 63 km south of Manila. In 1974 or 1975, I came across Edward De Bono’s Lateral Thinking when another good friend, Orli Ochosa, gifted me with a copy of De Bono’s Mechanism Of Mind (published circa 1968). Sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s, I came across Tony Buzan’s mind mapping as a veritable tool for creative thinking. I liked them all, but my quest went on.
A device for creative thinking that De Bono had advocated was the sound and word Po (edwdebono.com). I read about it in a book I have forgotten; if I remember right, Po is essentially a device to suspend judgment on any suggestion or idea that comes out in a brainstorming session, even when, as I understand, you are brainstorming alone. With practice, Po can create the creative atmosphere so necessary in a team. (You can read more of De Bono’s Po in my May 2007 essay, De Bono Debugged,’ americanchronicle.com.)
Po is good, such as it is, but I have always wanted a visceral as well as visible tool, not simply virtual, not simply verbal, which Po is. I have always wanted, if possible, a handheld device as a magic wand to summon the genie of creativity.
At 69 I think now I have finally found it, 21 March 2009, not a mythical Golden Chalice but a Creative Circle, in my concept of Creative iQ and the handy tool I have just invented for anyone to invoke his own Creative iQ, the Creative Circle that multiplies itself into what I call Creative Circles. It is a device that works like a charm, as you will see.
‘Creative IQ' – Did I invent the term? Yes and no. I have checked and rechecked the Internet and found that the term ‘Creative IQ’ has been in use since at least 1986, by Simone Bibeau in her book Raise Your Child’s Creative IQ (realadventures.com).
Before & After Inc has what it calls ‘The 2-Minute Creative Thinking IQ Test’ (before-after.com) – it’s really an IQ test, not Creative IQ test. David Hymans has a website he calls Creative IQ but he doesn’t explain his idea of it (undated, creativeiq.co.uk). Anna L Conti has her website Working Artist’s Journal and she titles her post on 22 July 2006 ‘Creative IQ,’ but it’s all about IQ really. A website uploads a post it calls ‘Creative Iq’ and hesitates, saying ‘It will soon be possible to expand it and add details’ (bizwiki.com). There is a ‘Creative IQ Ltd’ in London engaged in Internet Web Design & Development (listed in yell.com); they won’t teach you – they will do things for you. There is a website that calls itself creative-iq.com but I, creative genius, can’t get in. TeachStreet talks about Creative IQ, but it’s only really about Howard Gardner’s MI, multiple intelligences (‘9 Kinds of Smart’) (teachstreet.com). MI is a mixed bag: each one of us is limited to only one kind of preeminent creative intelligence, your dominant intelligence or smarts: either musical, linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist, existential or whatever. Corbis has what it calls ‘Creative IQ Trends’ but it’s all about ‘periodic studies on emerging cultural trends responsible for current and projected future visual image needs’ (cache.corbis.com). If I don’t understand it, it’s probably what I wasn’t looking for anyway.
Not only that. None of the above is about developing your Creative IQ as a whole you. Gardner’s multiple intelligences is near enough, but he insists on the dominance of an intelligence for each of us, and rejects a whole, unified system of intelligences for you or me.
Ian Mitroff equates Creative IQ with out-of-the-box thinking (as quoted in portal.acm.org). Vijai P Sharma says of Tony Buzan: ‘acclaimed to possess the highest Creative IQ ever assessed’ (mindpub.com). No Sir, you can assess IQ (intelligence quotient) as they do everyday, but not Creative IQ – it would be a contradiction in terms. I don’t care if Tony Buzan has the highest IQ in the world; that’s not Creative IQ. By the way, since Vijai spells ‘genius’ as ‘genious’ (‘Buzan’s Book of Genious’), I know he forgot to use his spelling checker when he wrote his article ‘The Genius of Leonardo da Vinci’ (as of 11:52 Manila time, 21 March 2009, same webpage). I’m 69; I don’t forget.
Seemingly differently, Nita Jatar Kulkarni debunks emotional IQ and Creative IQ and believes only in IQ tests (nitawriter.wordpress.com). Her idea of Creative IQ is not my idea.
Actually, from what I have read so far, in all of the above, Creative IQ is nothing but a glamorized concept of IQ.
What about Tony Buzan’s bestselling concept called mind mapping – isn’t that Creative IQ whether he calls it that or not? Not my Creative iQ. A mind map is exactly that, a map of ideas; it’s graphic, therefore it’s logical, sequential, horizontal (on paper), vertical (hierarchical) thinking – it’s essentially critical thinking; it’s limited creative thinking. The best proof that it’s essentially programmed thinking and only a little creative is that there are several computer programs designed to help you create mind maps: Compendium, FreeMind, Pimki, WikkaWiki, VUE, XMIND (Wikipedia). You can program creativity but it would be very limited; in fact, it’s a contradiction in terms.
Judith Tramayne has written about Creative IQ that comes close to my idea of Creative iQ and in fact has written an ebook free to download if you click here (agoodread.com); the book is ‘Your Five-Step Path To Creativity’ (see also my post ‘Creative iQ. Create first before you criticize!’ creativeiq.blogspot.com). In essence, my idea of Creative iQ includes Judith’s path to creativity, but not as steps: ‘Make lists and relax. Focus. Allow your mind to free-float. Daydream. Act on your creative idea.’ She is describing the creative mood, which is as it should be.
I agree with Michael Bloomfield’s assertion that ‘Creative Intelligence’ or Creative IQ can be developed. Nonetheless, I do not agree that it ‘requires two basic things: deep knowledge and the counter-intuitive transcendence of that knowledge’ (cii.no). Criticality is not deep knowledge, not wisdom; it’s simply logic being used; it’s reason; it’s sequential thinking or, as Edward De Bono likes to put it, it’s ‘vertical thinking.’ Creativity is immanent knowledge, if I may put it that way; it’s insight you gain even if you don’t have much knowledge of something or some situation; it’s intuition. Creativity is not ‘counter-intuitive’ to criticality; it is a complement of it; creativity is not ‘transcendence of that knowledge’ whatever it is – it is a different perspective of it, a different view.
Michael also says, ‘Semetics is the primary tool we use to generate new ideas for our clients,’ and describes Semetics as ‘the world’s first true creative thinking system.’ No, Michael, the human brain is the world’s first true creative thinking system. Of course, if you believe (I don't) in splitting into left-brain and right-brain thinking, then the brain is not that of a thinking system; it's a dichotomy.
And Michael, you claim you developed Semetics ‘over the last decade.’ Not minding the brain, yours can’t be the world’s first true creative thinking system. Based on his own concept of parallel thinking, De Bono developed ‘Six Thinking Hats’ a decade earlier than yours, in 1985 and, yes, it is a true creative thinking system, if I may say so myself, and I don’t know De Bono from Adam.
Do I believe in lateral thinking? Yes, but even De Bono isn’t finding it easy teaching it; in fact, he equates ‘lateral thinking’ with ‘creativity’ (edwdebono.com). Lateral thinking is a paradigm of creative thinking, not creativity itself. If you equate lateral thinking with creativity, you are saying I can’t be creative except via lateral thinking.
Lateral thinking: I have long wanted to easify it since 1974-1975, when I first read De Bono’s book about it, Mechanism Of Mind. (I’ve retained the philosophy of it in my mind, though I’ve lost my copy of it, the book from my friend Orli like I said, a copywriter like me at that time at Pacifica Publicity Bureau. Creative thinking is the bread and butter of copywriters; and once a copywriter, always a copywriter.)
iQ vs IQ. My idea of iQ is different from anybody else’s IQ, and the difference is great. Now then, from all of the above, let me enumerate how my Creative iQ differs from everybody else’s Creative IQ – subtly and qualitatively.
Their Creative IQ is nothing but IQ presented as if ‘Creative IQ’ and ‘IQ’ were different. They’re not. Their Creative IQ is only critical intelligence; my Creative iQ is both creative and critical; Creative iQ is creativity combined with critical intelligence - it is creative intelligence. Their Creative IQ is logical; my Creative iQ is both logical and out of the box of logic.
Their Creative IQ is measurable, because it’s really only IQ; my Creative iQ is both measurable (the critical aspect, the IQ part) and un-measurable (the creative aspect). You can’t measure the Creative iQ of Leonardo da Vinci or Albert Einstein or Tony Buzan or Barack Obama.
Their Creative IQ is structured; my Creative iQ is without structure – that’s why there are no steps to Creative iQ. Immediately, you’re there, as I explain below with the Creative Circles. It’s a leap of faith; the journey of the leap is the reward.
Don’t get me wrong; we need the concept of the IQ to develop our faculty for critical thinking. But we also need to develop our faculty for creative thinking, which does not lend itself to any kind of measurements. Even Howard Gardner will tell you that; that’s why he invented the portfolio as a measure of creativity for his educational theory of multiple intelligences. A portfolio is a collection of a student’s work over time (Kent Richardson & Felicia A Dixon, 2006, bsu.edu). It’s a good measure for creative intelligence, but it’s not good enough for me.
Let me emphasize that my concept of the Creative iQ brings together our twin faculties of creative thinking and critical thinking. As I wrote earlier (‘The Franciscan Flip,’ creativeiq.blogspot.com):
Flip a coin, and it all comes down to 2 sides, Tails and Heads. Flip a thought, and it all comes down to 2 sides of thinking, critical and creative. You need both to make a complete coin; you need both to make a complete thought.
IQ is only half of the genius of man; it’s his critical mindset. The other half and, I might say, the better half, is creativity, his creative mindset – I have combined them into my concept of Creative iQ. Creative iQ is not a re-invention of Creative IQ, as I have explained above. My Creative iQ is in fact a repudiation of their Creative IQ, as I have explained in an earlier post (‘Creative iQ. Create first before you criticize!’ creativeiq.blogspot.com).
Creative iQ – Creative comes first, IQ next. In fact, in a proper brainstorming, which should be a time for creative thinking, critical thinking is suspended. (Try it sometime!)
No, I did not start by modifying somebody’s idea of ‘Creative IQ’ – merely modifying is not very creative, is it?
With my Creative iQ, now you have creativity at your fingertips; now you can send a summons to your Muse, and she will come: ‘Come into my parlor, and you can give me your best!’
And how do you that? To exercise Creative iQ, we need a device. And I have it today, the Creative Circles as I mentioned above. With the Creative Circles, there are 10 entry points eagerly waiting for your inputs to any creative piece of your red desire. You begin with any of the 10 entry points, no sequence required; you proceed at your leisure. So, how can you possibly have Thinker’s Block?
With the Creative Circles as device, Creative iQ is excellent for artists: writers, painters, sculptors, poets, biographers, autobiographers, lecturers, seminar speakers, sharers, preachers, students, even housewives. If you are an author, you can say goodbye to Writer’s Block.
The Creative Circles is designed for productive, fruitful, inventive, original, pleasant intellectual play; I now give you the 10 letters that refer to those circles, in alphabetical order: A, C, E, I, I, T, T, R, V, Y.
Copy the image above and print; assign the letters to the little circles that represent those bigger circles. Now, with your forefinger, touch any of the little circles. Any. No, you are not required to begin with the first letter in the alphabet, A; and no, you are not supposed to alphabetize them – that’s encouraging critical thinking, not creative thinking. You start anywhere, with any little circle. For instance, touch first the T, touch first the I, touch first the Y, or touch first the C; begin anywhere but begin! Let the thoughts that come when you touch one circle be independent of the thoughts that visit on you when you touch another circle. That’s why I said there are no steps to Creative iQ.
You can enlarge the image as much as you like; high-definition prints are not required, that’s why I had the circles fractured.
Note: Rearranged, those letters spell REACTIVITY – they await your reaction, response. They invite you to creativity.
The Creative Circles is handy for any type of creative session with a group or team – including a session of 1. That needs some explaining. However, since the world I’m most familiar with is science writing, I shall confine my examples and explanations in that universe.
Later, when you’ve gotten the spirit of the Quest for Creativity, you can change the letters and their meanings; in the meantime, here is my example of a Creative iQ session using the Creative Circles. For the sake of illustration, I’m assuming the subject was roses. So now I give you the concepts that those letters represent; now, I touch the little circles one after the other in this sequence; if you pay a little attention, you might catch an insight or two:
I for Information – Never think you know everything, because you never do, whoever you are. In any case, it’s more creative to find out more about things, to read, to surf the Internet, to ask questions of people expert and non-expert alike. The more you know, the more creative you can be. And, along the way, you will probably gain an insight of your own. I always do.
Y for Yes! – Watch your attitude, watch your language. A Yes attitude encourages creativity; a No attitude encourages criticality – and there are too many critical people around already you don’t want to be one of them. Always be able to say ‘Yes’ to a thought. If a thought evokes a No, go on until you get a Yes. The Yes is not only important – it’s the heart of the creative process.
R for Recognition – Perhaps there is a problem, concern, issue, need, or demand that some people (rose growers, experts) feel must be resolved or met. It may be that fertilizers have become too expensive, or that some pest or disease has attacked plantations of roses, or the cost of production has gone so high, or the rose growers don’t know to cut costs, or that the market price for roses is good for the traders and bad for the growers. Go and find out.
A for Awareness – You are writing for your target readers to know enough of certain things, to be attentive to such. So you have to be sure to give them an adequate background on the matter, for them to have a good grasp of the situation.
C for Comparison - A metaphor is a comparison, an analogy. Metaphors are very powerful evokers of thoughts and feelings: Batman, Superman, Joker, Sandman, Wandering Jew, Hanging Judge. The Creative Circles is itself a metaphor for creativity.
Here are unforgettable metaphors from literature:
‘Oh Captain, My Captain! / Our fearful trip is done!’ (Walt Whitman on Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated)
‘Two roads diverged in a wood and I - / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.’ (Robert Frost on making choices in life)
‘No man is an island, entire of itself ... any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ (John Donne meditating on man)
‘And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.’ (1 Corinthians 13: 13, NRSV Bible)
V for Value-Adding – Look for any number of benefits that your target reader can enjoy if they considered the subject matter the way you think they should. For instance, if you are selling the idea of rose growers banding themselves so that they can gather market information faster and more inexpensively, you also have to indicate how having that information can become a leverage for the growers to get what they deserve from out of the sweat of their brows. I know that having the market information is not enough!
E for Enumeration – What are the specific problems of the rose growers? List them down. Then list down what can they possibly do for themselves to solve those problems. List down what they can ask other groups, even Government to do for them.
T for Title – Think of a title, 2 or 3 or more titles. Consider them all tentatively. ‘A Rose for Emily’ (borrowing from William Faulkner). ‘Organic Roses in Banaue.’ ‘Can Roses Be Grown With Little Or No Fertilizer?’ ‘The Rose Growers’ Thorn On Their Side’ and ‘A Bunch Of Rose Gardeners.’
You will notice that each title helps you focus on different aspects of the subject matter you are considering. With a title, you can go deeper into it. A title gives you direction; it limits your research; it prevents you from tackling too-broad a topic you can’t handle at this time – unless you’re writing a manual or a book.
I for Innovation – If the subject is science, it’s almost always something new. Even then, many others may be writing or talking about the same thing, so you still have to find something different to say about what everybody is talking about. Even if my subject is about a common, long-standing product or service, I always find something new to say about something old, something borrowed, something blue. It takes practice. One thing you can do is research on the subject and note what people have talked about and then you talk about what others have not considered.
T for Truth – What you say must be true, or verifiable, or logical, reasonable, or according to. The more people you can check or cite for their statements or opinions, the better for your thinking and, therefore, your writing. You think what you know is true? If you don’t open your eyes to other points of view, you’ll never know the truth and will never be able to tell your reader.
Rearranged, those letters spell REACTIVITY, like I told you. Actually, REACTIVITY is itself an anagram; if you rearrange the letters, they spell
(C)
(R)
(E)
(A)
(T)
(I)
(V)
(I)
(T)
(Y)
To the artist, the Creative Circles presents 10 golden opportunities to be creative every time with anything you have on hand.
And Yes, the Creative Circles is good for creating artwork for the children at home and in school.
Each circle is a vacuum, if you didn’t notice. Each one awaits its filling up with gray matter coming from you or somewhere else.
And what makes the circle a useful basic device for creativity? The circle has no beginning and no end, an invitation for wholeness, for inclusion, not exclusion. When writers or critics talk of Beginning, Middle and End – as I myself did not too long ago, the last time on 13 May 2008 to be exact, in The Franciscan Mindster – they don’t realize they are talking critical thinking; when you think like that, you are giving yourself a stumbling block to your own creative thinking.
And why do I have it as iQ (lower case & cap) and not IQ (all caps)? The small i stands for inspiration, insight. Also, with the small i, I want you to know that first, it is your attitude towards your self, the i, that is important: do you regard yourself too high or too low? Neither attitude encourages creativity. If you are a writer, the big question, the big Q stands for your attitude towards your reader. Your reader is bigger than you; you are writing for him, meaning you are serving him, so don’t patronize him, don’t insult him by assuming he doesn’t know much. I know many people in media – mostly boys – who assume that farmers, for instance, don’t know anything. Well, they don’t know anything.
Let me emphasize that in Creative iQ, Creative comes first, IQ comes next. To be creative, you have to do creative thinking first and allow the creative process to spend itself out before you proceed with critical thinking.
Look at it this way: Why don’t we interrupt a man playing a musical piece on a violin? Because it’s rude; because it goes against the grain of civility; because it’s against the virtue of creativity. It isn’t right. After the playing, then you can criticize, if only to your companion as you go out of the concert hall.
As in a stage play, you don’t interrupt the soliloquy of the creative act; you allow it to go on. When the actor goes offstage, that’s when you can criticize his aside in your mind.
Now then, did you notice? Like I said, I’m 69. My invention of The Creative Circles the other day is proof that age doesn’t matter!
Remember Grandma Moses? American celebrity painter, self-taught, began painting in her 70s. Norman Maclean, retired English professor, began writing at 70; he wrote the enchanting tale A River Runs Through It. My favorite painter Michelangelo started painting ‘The Last Judgment’ in 1536, when he was 61 years old, finishing in 1541; he painted the ‘Conversion of St Paul’ and ‘Martyrdom of St Peter’ 1542-1550 (artchive.com). In 1922, when legendary photographer Alfred Stieglitz was 58, he began taking photographs of clouds; over the next 12 years, he continued to do that – and ‘they remain some of his most powerful photographs’ (Wikipedia). Science writer & genius Isaac Asimov wrote his 300th book when he was 65 (Edwin McDowell, nytimes.com). My favorite wit of a writer George Bernard Shaw won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 when he was 69. When Robert Frost was 87, US President John F Kennedy made him US Poet Laureate, asking him to recite one of his poems, and he did, ‘The Gift Outright,’ which he had written when he was 68 – he recited it from memory! (kirjasto.sci.fi).
About Creative iQ and Creative Circles, I’m talking to seniors seriously now. If they are into computers, the file they save is their own; the creative life they make is shared by all. At the very least, a computer file is a redundancy; a creative life is a continuing pleasure.
