Medias Res
Ever since I read Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (1997) last semester, I have been fascinated by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's notions of the creative individual and flow. The author frames creativity as a form of cultural evolution, an idea which also got me hooked on discussions involving cultural entropy, groupness, and meme transmission... I keep waiting for a break in assigned reading so I can finish the copy of Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine I started over Christmas break.
If all of this is not striking a bell and you can't get past the fact that there is indeed a person out there with eleven consonants in his last name; never fear, it's only expository set-up for the awesome car crashes and explosions that are soon to follow (Cue the sun!). Late in the text, Csikszentmihalyi develops a system to promote "openess" (A sort of self-help guide for the creatively challenged), in which he urges actors daily to identify two items which they find surprising and to perform one action which the actor finds surprising (You know, that "I can't believe I just did /said that" type of thing). I've tried doing this since I read about it, and I've found it a truly interesting exercise... uncomfortable, yes, but truly interesting nonetheless. What I haven't done is the next two steps: Record and later reflect on these surprises. But where would I do that?... hmmm.
Therefore, I propose to take this endeavor public. Everyday for the next couple weeks I am going to post two items I find surprising and one action undertaken that surprises me. Warning: Sometimes it's pretty astounding what surprises me (This might not be for the faint of heart, pregnant women, or those with bad backs). One day I was surprised by the way the cardboard folds came together on the bottom of a box, and I surprised myself by calling the mechanic working on my brakes by his first name... repeatedly (Thank God for shirts with nametags on them). Eh, I didn't say this was earth-shattering. However, I do invite you to participate in three ways: 1) Comment on my "surprises"... It will be interesting to see how this discourse shapes my reflections, 2) Post your own "surprises," and/or 3) Comment on someone else's surprises.
Like I said: Short, sweet, and distracting. The Official "Project Flow" Project (How cool is that name... two projects, double the flow?) begins tomorrow.
Stay sweet and have a great summer...
Posts
I've memorized the pronunciation: Tchik-SENT-mee-hai. You have to practice it in advance of actually saying it. Kind of like saying bluh-GOY-o-vitch.
ReplyDeleteCsikszentmihaly seems to view creativity in the every-day, using-language-is-creative kind of way. That's one school of thought; the other is that creativity is something much less common, to be found in the Mozarts and the Michelangelos and those who practice their art for years-decades.
My first surprise of the day: Seeing your blog and finding its content deeply familiar in an "I'm-going-to-be-a-doctoral-student-soon" kind of way. The names (Habermas, Dewey, Czsik), the intellectual curiosity, the photo of the books off to the left side of this post...Yep, I thought. Yep. Here I go.