The "about us" page; more or less, kinda like.

                                                           Me on 9 May 2006........me Birthday.                           Me on December 1942...London.

                                                                            Brooklyn, NY                                                 A serious scientist even then!

 Deserve Victory!

Creativity

by

 D. Deak

Creative work is self-expression, self-fulfillment. As such it is a pleasure that ranks with sport and love and laughter and all the other better things of life.

Distaste for work and consequent deadness to inspiration often can be traced to a hatred of problems, ingrained since early childhood and probably the result of an educational system that emphasizes 'solutions' rather than process. To be open to inspiration, one must cultivate a learning for the problematic, a chronic attraction to things that do not totally fit, agree, or make sense. Inspired ideas are less often solutions to old problems; than newly discovered or totally reformulated problems: problems 'created' like brilliant works of art.

Many creative people initially are seen as troublemakers, simply because their vigorous and uncompromising analysis exposes problems that previously had been ignored.

This in a sense brings about wholeness to the human spirit. To honour wholeness is to understand that every distinct object or phenomenon -- a living cell, a musical tone, a thought, a brush stroke, a kiss -- is, on the one hand, a special combination of interacting elements, and that it is, on the other hand, itself an element interacting in larger forms. To think holistically is to presume the continuity of experience: to appreciate wholeness in the areas one knows well and to seek it in other areas.

Holistic thinkers are more open to inspiration than others because they instinctively ask questions that others do not: What inner components give this thing its form? Question; of what larger forms is this thing an element? How does its participation in these larger forms affect the identity? These questions open up a variety of perspectives, make the mind fertile for new ideas, and equip us to appreciate the apparent discontinuities -- the surprising anomalies -- that can result in important discoveries.

In thinking the original, we risk thinking the ridiculous. In opening the way for a few good ideas, we open the way for many bad ones: lopsided equations, false syllogisms, and pure nonsense dished up by unhindered impulse.

This is why I, and others like myself, haven't stepped in synchronization to that common drum beat of the status quo have trouble in our everyday lives. We are shepherds in a nation of sheep, "behold I bring you excitement" is the cry, "Stay me with inspiration, for I am sick of pretense," is my matin song.

History assures us that some great innovators have been highly competitive individuals, self-centered, quick to anger, grasping for honours, jealous of others' success. But it would be inaccurate to conclude that these stormy propensities are basic elements of creativity, and it would be a gross error to presume that ill feeling, even if it is harboured toward competitors, is innate in innovators' attitude toward their own work. Whether or not they are polite to their associates, great innovators address their own studies with appreciation, deference, and even humility; they excel in activities, like the revision or destruction of their own inferior work, that suggest the willing suppression of ego.

An analogous form of civility seems to operate in innovators' attitude toward detail. With the courtesy of a host who gives equal welcome to prince and beggars, the creative mind gives respect and patience to the smallest detail. Such a mind is reluctant to subordinate detail to principle, recognizing that detail is the basis of principle, and that even tiny anomalies in detail can inspire revisions in general laws. The imperious generalizations in which creative people revel would be, psychologically and methodologically, impossible without patient regard for detail.

Cogito ergo sum,

Dr. David Deak