THINK INSIDE THE BOX

MATH IS NOT MY FRIEND. It is at best an acquaintance, at worst a nemsis, and nearly always an awkward guest in my home. We sit across the room from each other, nervously crossing and uncrossing our legs, searching for something in common to talk about. For Kathleen McDaniel (the youngest of my three sisters) however, math is a friend, a constant companion and even a source of comfort. Math can come into her house without knocking and sometimes they even laugh together.

So I was surprised but pleased when Kathleen and I found ourselves agreeing about the relationship between creativity and math in an email exchange yesterday. Kathleen teaches math at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, and formerly taught advanced math at a private school for the gifted. Somehow our emails shifted from planning our dad’s 80th birthday party to the challenges those of us in PR frequently face in trying to make something meaningful result from the assignments our clients bring us. Its not always obvious, for example, how to combine banks and rock concerts, potatoes and parades, greeting cards and cancer research, kids and taxes, sandwiches and New Years, and so on and so on.

IT’S SUPPOSED TO MAKE SENSE

I mentioned to Kathleen that at the root of the creative impulse is the need or desire to make sense out of things that don’t seem to make sense at first blush. Truly creative people are constantly trying to identify, break or create patterns to find connections between things; they are people for whom “making meaning” is a necessity. Here’s what Kathleen wrote back:

“People who achieve great success in any discipline — science, business, education, the arts, etc. are always creative. It makes sense to define the creative part of any intellectual endeavor as ‘looking for patterns and relationships or trying to create them.’ This is very much what mathematicians do. I once had a friend who was an educator whom I greatly respected say to me ‘I had trouble with algebra until I figured out that it’s not supposed to make sense. It’s just a set of rules you follow.’ She was astounded to hear that algebra did make sense to me. It was an interesting moment because I never considered that people actually believed that math isn’t supposed to make sense. Now I’m always telling my classes ‘MATH IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE SENSE!’”

I really liked Kathleen’s belief that creativity is part of, and not necessarily separate from, intellectual efforts. She’s spot on. One of my frustrations with perceptions of creativity (especially in the work place) is that it is the icing and not the cake. There’s a tendency to equate “being creative” with “being whacky.” This does nothing for making meaning. It perpetuates what I call “popcorn impact” — If someone pelts you with popcorn, you’ll feel something, and it may even be oddly entertaining, but its not going to make a lasting impression.

That’s probably why I’m especially passionate about one of the five “Marketplace Mandates” (mentioned in a previous post) I helped develop for the Fleishman-Hillard Marketing Communications Practice I belong to. The mandate “Do Something Real” states:

“Consumers just want what they want. And that doesn’t include having relationships with brands just because brands want them to. We are relentless advocates for saying, showing, giving, or doing something that matters to them, that brings them value, that makes a difference in their lives. That doesn’t mean it has to be serious, because consumers are serious about having fun, too.What they won’t take seriously, though, are obvious attempts to get their attention without a real investment in their needs. We’re here to create news and experiences that give something of real value to consumers while they’re getting our clients’ messages, because you can’t fight clutter with clutter. You can fight clutter only with relevance.”

Simply put, it’s about striving for PR programs and communications that are meaningful to people.

COMBINATORIAL PLAY AND GROUND WORK

One of my favorite illustrations of creativity as an intellectual search for meaning comes from the fascinating book “E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation.” Einstein coined the phrase “combinatorial play” to describe his own ongoing search for patterns that yielded new meaning. Not a student of physics, I had no idea that Einstein didn’t simply create his theory of relativity “from scratch.” It resulted, in fact, from his “combinatorial play” with two existing theories that had been accepted, but never previously considered in relation to each other: the theory of conservation of mass, and separately, the theory of conservation of energy.

Kathleen surprised me with another interesting idea when I shared that story with her:

” … a mathematician named Liebniz discovered calculus independently from Newton, but he didn’t publish so Newton got the credit. But the idea that two people discovered calculus pretty much simultaneously points at that idea that certain ground work had to be laid first. Both Newton and Liebniz had some good stuff in their boxes.”

I’d never really thought about simultaneous-but-independent creation as validation of the “Think Inside The Box” philosophy, but I think it does sugest that the defintion of “idea” as “a new combination of existing elements” is indeed true.

MEANING MAKERS

All of this prompted me to consider what’s really going on when people say “some people are born creative and others just aren’t.” It seems to me what we’re really talking about is less about an inherent skill than it is about an inherent disposition. No doubt just about anyone can be taught basic techniques that will increase their ability to be creative, but ultimately acting creative and being creative are different states. The first is concious, periodic and primarily externally motivated. The second is unconcious, ongoing and primarily internally motivated. Truly creative people create not because they want to, but because they have to. They are in a constant state of wondering why, asking what if, and looking for meaning. When meaning isn’t apparent, they have to find a way to create it. Creators are meaning makers. It’s an admittedly neurotic pursuit of existential stasis.

That’s why the downside of creativity is that the search for meaning is emotionally and psychologically volatile. In fact, as Eric Maisel points out in his intriguing book “The Van Gogh Blues,” it’s a cliche that creativity and depression go hand-in-hand. But cliches are the children of truth. Maisel writes:

“… creators are not necessarily afflicted with some biological disease or psychological disorder that causes them to experience depresssion at the alarming rates we see. They experience depression simply because they are caught up in a struggle to make life seem meaningful to them. People for whom meaning is no problem are less likely to experience depression. But for creators, losses of meaning and doubts about life’s meaningfulness are persistent problems — even the root causes of their depression. … Creators have trouble maintaining meaning. Creating is one of the ways they endeavor to maintain meaning. In the act of creation, they lay a veneer of meaning over meaninglessness and sometimes produce work that helps others maintain meaning. … Not creating is depressing because [creators are] not making meaning when [they are] not creating.”

The good news is that the creative process helps reveal, create and share meaning with individuals or entire groups of people. Sometimes it’s in the service making of consumers fall in love with a brand. Sometimes it’s in the service of improving our understanding of the universe. And sometimes it’s simply in the service of adding something beautiful to our lives, like music, art, literature, or even, I suppose, math.

© 2008 John Armato
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