Pursuing original ideas, aka creativity, leads to social rejection. There's only so many times you can stand ridicule and disbelief before you disengage.
It was the other way around for me. Early childhood to high-school social rejection (via peer-bullying and such) naturally led me to focus on "things" and ideas thereby being creative with them.
However, being creative with "things" as opposed to people does lead to further social rejection thus reinforcing the formed identity. I guess this is how the nerd/geek identity is formed and maintained?
Ah yes, the "he/she must think they are rejected because others are too stupid to appreciate their brilliance" theory. Occasionally accurate, usually just used to bully those who think a bit differently.
This article deals with a romanticised and populist interpretation of creativity. Linking creativity and rejection is likely comforting to many isolated and rejected creatives. And while the Van Gogh archetype is a familiar one, it's important to understand that Van Gogh is the exception not the rule. Within the fine arts there are few similar examples. Picasso and Matisse were popular, social and anything but rejected or isolated (even in the beginning). Since 1945 hardly a single contemporary artist has achieved significant fame after death, with the vast majority of great contemporary artists actively engaged in dialogue with others.
"Since 1945 hardly a single contemporary artist has achieved significant fame after death, with the vast majority of great contemporary artists actively engaged in dialogue with others."
Doesn't that have a great deal more to do with the art industry than creativity itself?
Free time might be required, and there's danger in groupthink absolutely, but you can just ignore the noise of the group, rather than avoid the group. Be with the crowd sometime but not all the time. As there's also things to be learned from other people too. And it's great being able to be your own person and ignore that crowd.
Given, I greatly prefer Van Gogh to Picasso and Matisse, it's probably just as likely his mental state were an influence of his art, not the whole loneliness thing. Drawing the conclusion the other way seems dangerous, to encourage isolation. However it's good to say it's not ok, or not one's fault.
It's hard especially due to 'fake socialization' like Facetube and such, smartphones, and people's busy isolated schedules involving central air conditioning to expand a circle of people you know. It seems dangerous to say to be creative you must be lonely, it's very wrong. Yet it's also wrong to say it's wrong to be lonely, because of factors that make it a really hard thing.
I think we need to suggest to other people that aren't so isolated to reach out and be friendly to more people. In the south (of the US) it used to be increasingly common for people to say hi to people they met out walking, and increasingly as people move in from other places, it's rare when someone says hi back. Then people go back into their houses and you don't see them again.
The problems that cause society to be isolating are somewhat improveable, but it requires awareness of it. I think it's possible Van Gogh didn't really want to be isolated, but that was his way of justifying it and being ok with it, and that his feelings of isolation were rooted in deeper problems.
We'll never know. But if you are feeling isolated or whatever, don't feel you have to be that way. It's not your fault though something you have to fight for (because everybody is caught up in doing whatever they are doing), it's everybody else's fault to a degree, and you can be creative either way.
It depends on how obvious you are about it I think. You can ignore the noise of the group (not really process it, or spend time on it) while still pretending to care about it.
Perhaps you misunderstood. For instance, suppose you paint bridges and you want to hang out with people who think you should paint kittens. You don't have to paint the kittens, and can still be "you" when you are not around them. The article seemed to indicate that Van Gogh feared that the people would change him, and I'm saying this is not a reason to avoid people.
The software analogy here would be like "I'm not going to talk to people about my new startup idea because hearing their opinions and thoughts would taint my work" -- which doesn't make any sense to me, or possibly even more so "I don't want to be around other software people talking about anything because that will change the way I think".
The argument is drawing the argument of you-need-to-be-alone from Van Gogh ends up with it not being valid. Van Gogh is amazing (see his stuff in person if you can sometime, it doesn't photograph well), but these are seperate orthogonal things.
Interesting ideas, but Betteridge wins again. No hard data is provided, so anecdotes can be answered with anecdotes and the whole thing's a wash.
From everything I've read about creativity, one of the keys seems to be thinking about things differently than one normally thinks about them. This can mean intense states of depression, mania, loneliness or relationship. Any state of mind that's different and extreme can shift perspective enough to cause some people to be exceptionally creative, at least for a time.
It's herding cats, though. There are no proven techniques that will make someone more creative, only strategies that will work some times for some people. The best way to be more creative is to constantly try to create new things. Social rejection isn't a prerequisite for that.
The article has to lack data as that's the reason for why we are so impressed by creativity. 'True creativity' (as opposed to opposed to the shallow "We have to think outside the box" type of creativity) can not be measured by definition. That's what makes it so intriguing! As soon as something can be fully measured it becomes debatable whether it is still a creative effort or not.
If you accept what I wrote above then the headline of the article appears even more bonkers: How can something that is so complex that we can not fully measure it (yet) be caused (mostly) by a one-dimensional factor? I mean, sure, you could find a single factor if it is very vague one but that's not helpful. I.e. I could say: Being alive is a key factor for creativity. What's more, social rejection is surely also a key factor for becoming a dull person who watches TV all day.
"the whole thing's a wash" Truth. However, alternative theoretical models can be constructed for possible experimental tests or at least anecdote collection.
Surely all progress comes from the unreasonable man. Also we only hear about the most famous / rich creative geniuses. I have no particular problem switching off creativity and hanging out (going hiking or something), I am also not famous, not even internet famous. That would lead to the theoretical model that famous people can't shut off their unreasonableness, perhaps at all, which makes them completely cantankerous and anti-social yet also somewhat more productive than better balanced individuals. All kinds of interesting experiments could be devised. Are they able to shut anything at all off, or are they OCD/addicted personalities? If someone who can shut off is converted intentionally or otherwise into someone who looses control of their creativity, are they more successful? College binge drinking to emulate an alcoholic might be monkey see monkey do emulation of creatives... does someone naturally somewhat creative who gains an uncontrollable addiction have the bleed over into uncontrollable creativity?
Another interesting model revolves around the only socially rejected people the general public ever hears about, are the top of the line creatives. That probably tells a lot more about our culture than about the individuals. For example, I suspect the panhandler at my freeway onramp is socially rejected, at least by most, its just "we" will never hear about him unless he becomes a famous painter or poet. Given his cardboard signs I think he's not creative at all, at least not WRT the graphical arts, yet he's got more rejection than most of us. IF most people are socially rejected to some extent or another, thats kind of the purpose of mass media and big cities after all, and the only rejects we hear about are creatives, then a very weird conclusion could be drawn that creativity only comes from rejection, although the reality is almost everyone is somewhat rejected. Much like they all drink water and all creatives drink water so creativity obviously comes from drinking water.
Those that try to "fit in" might not be the right people to produce revolutionary ideas.
And those who don't already fit in have the least to lose by inviting rejection by being off-the-norm.
Add those two together, you have an intersection of those folks who don't fit in today and have nothing to lose by chasing their dream, choosing to chase their dreams instead of potential social acceptability.
Orthogonal and rational choices, even if those that always did this wasn't being rational.
and this what we see in most tech companies, they go out of the way to hire people that "fit". I wonder how much talent we leave out because of people's natural tendency to hire people like themselves...
No. At best maybe indirectly - having a lot of time on your hands and being very bored is often the key to creativity, and being socially rejected will give you that.
But I wouldn't start using this article a way to convince yourself it's OK to be antisocial because you're an undiscovered genius.
Nothing to be sorry about, it's a very common mistake.
And to be completely frank, "antisocial" seems to be losing the battle against descriptivism, much like "literally" [0, 1] :P
This title speaks to me, because lonely and creative are two of my main traits. I created so many projects, mostly startups, that people often can hardly believe it. Some of these have been successful, so I am leading an financial independent life. People constantly say that my work is based on unbelievable creativity. Yet, I am completely isolated.
With people, it just does not work. In no setting. Love, friends, business, family - you name it. I do not have a single person I am close with. The strange thing is - even though I consider myself very smart - I never was able to figure out why. People just disappear. Do not have time for me. Do not call me back. When I ask them straight away "is it because I am a somehow unpleasant person?" they say stuff like "No, I was just busy. And I am still busy. Bye.". I wonder if I will ever find out, what the underlying cause is.
In a perverse way this is a succinct restatement of what others have said in sibling comments about the GP needing to make themselves more vulnerable (and less intimidating, when they are seeing successes most people never see).
Whether or not the sibling commenters are right, I won't opine on. :)
It feels strange to say this here, and apologies if it's not etiquette, but if you're interested in discussing this and exchanging perspectives, don't hesitate to shoot me an email.
I've dedicated a significant part of my post-teens to trying to crack this nut and become more socially active and 'adjusted', at the expense of the solitary and creative endeavors that characterized my younger, lonelier years.
Sometimes I wish I hadn't, as my 'creative output' suffered and at my current age I sometimes wonder if it was worth it. I am also doing well financially, but I know I could've achieved much more in terms of projects if I had not focused on the 'social world' as much.
I'd very much like to exchange perspectives with someone who took the path I didn't take, so to speak. And maybe we can even be of help to each other.
You need to make yourself more vulnerable. You're not relateable to most people because 1) they're slightly intimidated by you: you've accomplished something that they've only ever dreamt of. And 2) you're not on their radar: they don't see you at work during the day, happy hour after work, or the football game on the weekends. Why? Well because you're working obviously.
Share your challenges and be completely open and transparent. Use social media to stay relevant and on people's radar. Show people you're just as human as they are.
I'm on the same boat. Achieved financial independence in college. Experienced the highs of having a ton of friends in university and my first job to the lows of not being able to make any good friends as an independent worker.
Thanks, this is probably good advice. People have an image of me that I am living a perfect life. With no problems at all. Little do they now, that I endure a situation they would consider hell.
I have a strong tendency to paint myself as bigger and better then I am. And to hide my problems.
Another problem is that I always think everybody should worship me and my big ideas. And forget about those boring little things they do themselves. This I find particularly hard to tackle. Because I really find it unbearable boring what most people do and think.
> Because I really find it unbearable boring what most people do and think.
This is not a healthy attitude to have, really. If you care about people you also care about the mundane stuff in their life. Because that's part of what makes them who they are.
Sounds like you suffer from an usually strong sense of entitlement. It's generally not bad but it doesn't help if you want friends, friends need to feel as though you are on the same level as them. Hard to solve in a forum but next time you interact with friends, try not to talk about yourself and spend that time finding mutual interest and learning about them. Study rapport building techniques. Find a hobby that requires interacting with others. It's about connecting on a topic other than yourself. Smart people are horrible at rapport, but it's a critical skill in life.
We sound eerily similar save the financial independence/measure of success. I've come to describe it as a "genius complex" though I don't think that's an actual phrase. It's basically that I think almost everything is ignorant, that is people choose to be dumb. I have absolutely no time for this behavior and when someone I consider neutral to smart ventures into ignorant territory, my care to continue interfacing with them drops to 0.
Conversely though, I don't consider anything others do to be boring even if everyone can agree that it is. I also won't offer an opinion because I have numerous examples in my own life. You would likely consider me very boring but it's largely because I've shut my mind off to cope with the lack of meaningful input. I think a large part of the population does this without even being able to articulate what's happening.
The best answer I have is empathy. My greatest connections come when I exercise high empathy levels and all I'm really doing there is engaging my imagination to try to understand how someone else feels in the situation they're in. I think most of us on the planet, and especially here, have this capacity but I think we see futile efforts a far ways off so we don't bother to engage. I'm stubborn enough to forgo that understanding to commit an insane act that in rare instances make me feel close to other people. I don't have all quality connections with people but the ones I do have tend to run pretty deep and I believe I owe it all to my ability to relate to how someone else feels.
practice a sport with an active community, anything from skydiving to Wednesday evening tennis club. If you are that successful, look for a club with a long or better yet, closed joining list. Make that your goal, you’ll have to work your contacts to get in, once in, keep showing up.
no lack of people wanting to connect with a successful mentor. Design your own mentorship in a way that it won’t consume more than an hour/week of your time but will consistently bring interesting new blood to you, run an open office, say from 5-6pm, make it accessible for anyone to book an hour with you and most importantly, to book again if they like the advice, and if they do, you must accept them, even if their idea sucks, keep seeing them until the idea doesn’t suck anymore or they give up, learn to be so pleasant that the ratio of people giving up is falling.
volunteer at your homeless shelter as a ‘socialiser’ (they need people to just come in and talk to folks) and to ‘sleepover’, they need someone awake at all times, this can give you a new perspective.
as others have pointed out, see a psychiatrist.
spend less time on the internet and more time talking to people face to face, anyone, from cashiers to hairdressers to the guy seating next to you, ask questions only about them, if they ask you a question, meld your answer into another question about them.
stop looking for friends and asking people why they disappeared, if you actually ask them "is it because I am a somehow unpleasant person?" don’t. Work on becoming pleasant. How well do you take criticism? How often do you positively criticise? Halt all criticism, even the extemely positive ones.
I had a similar conversation with a psychologist/economist friend who left Goldman Sachs to lead a more fulfilling life, she deals with over achievers in business and sometimes life, that find themselves struggling for a deeper meaning, her answer was, if you only have one or two close friends, it’s perfectly normal, if you don’t have a single person close to you, then you should act on it.
I emphasise your situation - being alone and creative can exacerbate being alone and creative. Being with a social group makes us worry we'll lose our individuality. I'll offer some tips.
People relate to those they perceive as similar. When you meet someone, there's two stages to making friends. 1. Attraction, demonstrating you are valuable, which is easy for you thanks to your business success, and 2. Rapport, where you must show the other person you're similar and am OK with making yourself vulnerable to them, and in trusting them, you earn their trust. I think you're OK with 1, not OK with 2. Tell stories, being completely emotionally honest, and in ways where you show, at times, you're just like they are. In the rapport stage where you're trading stories, use the word "we", avoid "you". "We" can make someone think you're already together, "I" can be used as an attempt to bring others to emphasise your situation, while "you" makes the other person compare differences with yourself. "You" can be useful for the attraction stage, but I don't find it useful for the "Rapport" stage. And make sure to listen, and synchronise your emotions with them - if they're happy be happy, if they're upset about something, be concerned.
If you're looking to find a romantic partner there's one more stage but I'll leave that up to you.
Your assessment is right. Triggering attraction is easy for me. And creating rapport is hard. Unbelievably hard. I read about it many times. And I understand it on a logical level. But my brain always snaps back into the loop "1: Demonstrate Value 2: Goto 1".
Lately I try to simply keep quiet more. Because usually I talk a lot. I always have so much ideas to talk about. It helps a bit. But not to the extend that people and I become friends.
Could it be that at time to socialize with other you are very focused on many interesting things and hardly other people follows you? (or even if they follow the topic, that means for them a very small part of their life?).
Do not worry much, focus on people from your interest, and remember that socialize is also waste your time unworried and speak about general things without take things actually serious.
From my personal experience I can tell you that being to much focused in very concrete topics is sometimes not the best way to find people to spend the time with. And it is nothing wrong; you just may need some common areas to share with others, where you can be just a bit unworried and comfortable (more to enjoy a while with good companions than develop an activity by itself).
What struck me the most in your comment is the fact that people just disappear. It's the same with me. If I don't call the other person won't either. If I call he/she is busy, on vacation, doing something else. If we meet we can stay up all night, chat, laugh, have a nice time. Then we both go on our separate ways.
I really didn't understand how this works. I know that now I work a lot. But I wasn't like that when I was younger. Nevertheless it was always me that had to keep a relationship going. If I didn't do anything things faded away pretty quickly. If I did the relationship agonized for a while before ceasing.
I know that I am not unpleasant - people don't talk with someone for hours just to be polite. And only one person has ever told me that she always hated me because of how annoyingly smart I was. But then again I went to university where one of my fears was that someone is smarter than I am (and probably a lot of folks actually were).
When not at work most people relax with a game of cards, small talk about repairing the car, the new update for the phone, etc. What I do for fun when I am not programming is read about consciousness studies, biology and nutrition, philosophy, physics. If the person is up for it we can talk for hours on such a topic. But most people most of the time are not. I have two kids and I like talking about them - kids are fascinating and incredibly funny at the same time. However people who don't have kids don't have a clue what I am talking about (I was the same when I didn't have kids). People who have kids usually just want a beer. I like running, hiking, riding a bike - good topics for a conversation. Until I say that it's fun to ride a bike at night, while it's raining.
So I was at lunch with my colleagues one day and it suddenly hit me - the problem is not that I am smarter or a genius or the like. It would be nice, but actually most of my colleagues are as smart as I am and some of them are smarter. The problem is that I cope with pain and hurdles differently. When people stop to rest I usually push some more. When they seek a shelter from the rain I want to ride more. When they need to chat with someone I need to read a book. I am a hyperactive introvert with a strange set of interests. I am a little different and because of that it's much harder for me to make friends.
You say that you have started so many projects. To me this means that you have a lot of energy and it's quite possible that people just don't want to play catch up with you – it’s tiring for them and they may actually prefer to just relax.
> The problem is that I cope with pain and hurdles differently. When people stop to rest I usually push some more. When they seek a shelter from the rain I want to ride more. When they need to chat with someone I need to read a book. I am a hyperactive introvert with a strange set of interests. I am a little different and because of that it's much harder for me to make friends.
Shared suffering & growth is how you form the strongest bonds.
If you're biking w/ people and they stop to rest (or b/c of rain). Time to make a choice. You can keep going, or stop with them.
If you keep going, you'll grow, your legs will get stronger.
If you stop, they'll grow, their legs will get stronger. But you have to keep stopping to see it happen. In time they'll stop less often. You'll love watching them get stronger, and they'll love that you were there to witness their growth. You're sharing in their suffering, even if you're not winded or uncomfortable yourself.
Fast forward to the future, now you're struggling with something physically or emotionally, and one of them may stop to be by your side. They could've pushed past you but they want to be there for you. You were there for them.
What I actually meant is that people are usually not up for the challenge at all.
That being said I have found a few people that may be ready to walk with me. Since I am very grateful I am willing to wait for them and help them whenever they need it.
I too find myself in the same conundrum. People and contacts just disappear if I don't put effort in it. It is always me who have to follow up for some reason. How did you get over this?
Well, to be honest I didn't. I just started dedicating my time and efforts only for a few select people that are worth it. Otherwise social interaction can be too tiring and even lead to depression. Empty conversations, not loneliness, are what I hate the most.
In this context, it's not what you say that matters. Communicating your accomplishments do not matter - It's the way you make people feel. Do people feel 'good' after interacting with you?
Its not periods. It is always like that. I almost never reach out to anybody. I just work on my projects. Its common for me to not speak to anybody for one or several weeks.
Well, no. I've been reading this book about the daily schedules of the greats [1] and there are many artists who had very active social lives while in their prime. Some more so than others - Francis Bacon would wake at 7am and work hard until lunchtime, when he'd share a bottle of wine with a friend in his studio and then drink, eat and party until the middle of the next morning, getting to bed at 3am. Rinse and repeat.
Not to get off track, but the book looks at Francis Bacon the 20th century painter, not the 16th century philosopher. I once had a confusing conversation with a room full of artists before I realized that we had no idea who the "other" Francis Bacon was.
From van Gogh to Huxley, and lots of subjective questions but it's lacking data. So we can't answer this empirically, or at least, the article doesn't. And it's hard to read because of it, just jumping around the various, well, anekdotes. I guess the only really valid answer that follows is this:
Social rejentom is highly connected with creativity - and not because one has more time to make art. Creativity is something which means the ability of creating new things. And there's the key. The person living around others will most probably think in a similar manner, therefore cannot be really creative. Lonely people are not affected by the society. That's why they are truly creative.
Could it be because solitude back then was similar to meditation? That you had no interruptions, no internet to make your mind run around like a puppy chasing the next tasty bone, and this in turn made you listen to thoughts and ideas rising from the subconscious more often?
I find when I'm developing my own view on something, and I discuss it with someone (or think about discussing it, or even be near someone), that I somehow feel a compulsion to either agree with them or disagree with them along the dimension they conceptualize it - and my own perspective/terms are lost. Like being interrupted when building up a model of code in your mind.
I think this is our herd instinct, needing to fit in, in how a situation is conceived, disagreeing only in terms of that conception. Changing the theory is deeply anti-social.
The best quote on this topic I've read has come from the eccentric French Mathematician, Alexander Grothendieck:
"To state it in slightly different terms: in those critical years [roughly from age 17 to 20] I learned how to be alone.
This formulation doesn't really capture my meaning. I didn't, in any literal sense learn to be alone, for the simple reason that this knowledge had never been unlearned during my childhood. It is a basic capacity in all of us from the day of our birth. However these 3 years of work in isolation, when I was thrown onto my own resources, following guidelines which I myself had spontaneously invented, instilled in me a strong degree of confidence, unassuming yet enduring, in my ability to do mathematics, which owes nothing to any consensus or to the fashions which pass as law...
By this I mean to say: to reach out in my own way to the things I wished to learn, rather than relying on the notions of the consensus, overt or tacit, coming from a more or less extended clan of which I found myself a member, or which for any other reason laid claim to be taken as an authority. This silent consensus had informed me, both at the lyé and at the university, that one shouldn't bother worrying about what was really meant when using a term like "volume", which was "obviously self-evident", "generally known", "unproblematic", etc. I'd gone over their heads, almost as a matter of course, even as Lesbesgue himself had, several decades before, gone over their heads. It is in this gesture of "going beyond", to be something in oneself rather than the pawn of a consensus, the refusal to stay within a rigid circle that others have drawn around one - it is in this solitary act that one finds true creativity. All others things follow as a matter of course."
The title speaks the truth, at least on some level. I can't help but think how talented my cousin is in creating 3D characters, and how she recently objected to filing her taxes.
Like it was suggested in The Programmers Stone and elaborated in The Art Of Scientific Investigation, there are different modes of training of certain areas of the brain (clusters of Neural Networks or whatever crude model you like). The common sense term for resulting structures is "mental maps". Notice the correct intuition about having a structure (made out of neurons) and that it supposed to be traversed (insight from the AI spring).
In other words, you will traverse (or pattern match against) what you have managed to train, and different resulting structures will result in different processes - different modes of "thinking".
Social rejection (which usually an effect, not a cause) is beneficial due to much less distraction and more time for myself, but unless you have appropriate habits of reflective thinking (to understand hows and whys and realizing multiple causation) no amount of social rejection will make it.
The benefits of solitude has been noticed even by Vedic seers but it is definitely not enough.
BTW, creativity is a packer's term. For mappers it is a default mode which need not to be named.
I was unfamiliar with the terms(packers, mappers) you used in your last sentence. Having done a quick read on them, I find the concepts interesting.
It looks like at least a couple books talk about these concepts. Where would you recommend reading more about them?
It must be noted that I am not convinced from my <1 page of reading that people are truly divided into only two camps in this category, like the philosophy seems to suggest so far.
There are a lot of support for this crude model. Look at writings of J. Krishnamurti, Nabokov, Huxley, Chomsky, the guys who invented NLP (before it has been ruined by adopters), there are a lot of consensus among insights of thinkers with completely different background..
If by "creativity" we mean to do things in the most informative way, in the sense of high entropy, (creativity is thus by this assumption equivalent to the capability of producing the most information), I feel "thinking independently" is the key to creativity -- as an event independent of all other events would produce the highest amount of information, for this matter...
Quite often, "thinking independently" could lead to social rejection, as being independent means being non-related with other people's thinking, and hence with much less likelihood of being agreeable with other people's opinion. If we define (roughly) social acceptance as the property of sharing common opinions among the crowd, then we can infer that thinking independently would unlikely lead to social acceptance.
Hence creativity would unlikely lead to social acceptance.
Perhaps that's why a tolerant environment that allows different ideas and different opinions (even those you don't agree with) to coexist is also very crucial to creativity -- as otherwise intolerance would simply kill it.
>If we define (roughly) social acceptance as the property of sharing common opinions among the crowd, then we can infer that thinking independently would unlikely lead to social acceptance.
Thinking independently doesn't necessarily entail sharing one's independent opinions with whomever one meets. Creativity implies the ability to create humour, and making people laugh is one of the easiest ways to get them to like you. Combined with intelligence, which makes it easier to work out what people want to hear, I'd argue that creativity actually brings a significant social advantage, at least when it's consciously directed towards achieving social ends.
Feynman represents a good example of this, achieving social success by using his creativity as a fount of humour.
> Creativity implies the ability to create humour, and making people laugh is one of the easiest ways to get them to like you...
Well, regarding jokes, if all people are making a same joke repetitively, so you heard about it many many times, do you still feel that you could laugh out naturally? (I mean laugh not for the sake of laugh, alone)
I just feel that the reason why a joke is a joke, is because you have never heard of it (or at least have never got it) in the past...So this difference -- or this independence from the past -- is the creativity in your sense...
> Feynman represents a good example of this, achieving social success by using his creativity as a fount of humour.
If, there have already been 500 people making jokes in the same way as Feynman did -- for instance, if before reading his book, everyone already played prank on some waitress girl in a restaurant by putting the tips under an upside-down filled cup, would they still find the description in the book funny? Just like what I typed, do you still find this re-description of Feynman's joke funny, like the first time you read about it?
>If, there have already been 500 people making jokes in the same way as Feynman did -- for instance, if before reading his book, everyone already played prank on some waitress girl in a restaurant by putting the tips under an upside-down filled cup, would they still find the description in the book funny? Just like what I typed, do you still find this re-description of Feynman's joke funny, like the first time you read about it?
I was making the implicit assumption that there is an unbounded quantity of potential jokes. 500 Feynmen wouldn't all be making the same jokes; they'd all make different jokes. Just like how 500 Feynmen wouldn't all be writing the same books or making the same scientific discoveries.
The model above actually doesn't directly contradict with the examples you gave...
You can easily create a seemingly dilemma case within the model -- for instance, use the independent creativity to create more common ground (much of which was not visible/observable before) between people, and hence make them more agreeable with each other.
But actually this is not a dilemma, as it is only crucial for the process to be independent, not the ending result -- especially when the goal of your independent creativity process is to make the ending result to be more correlated to some preconceptions.
In the past I would say yes. The best work of my life, nobody around me understood. I was crazy while doing it against everybody around me. When you succeed it is obvious in retrospect, but while doing it you doubt in yourself if everybody doubts about you because they can't see what does not exist yet like you do.
But at the time I didn't know what I know now: That there is other crazy people out there, and you have to find them. With Internet is not that hard.
Hollywood, Silicon Valley or even YC is all about putting crazy enough creative people together so saying something like "I am going to change the world" sounds totally normal.
Two crazy geniuses walk into a bar; minutes later they both storm out claiming the other is a crazy crackpot. Two people are not similar just because they are both different.
Ya, we can find allies, but these relationships are fragile and often limited. The problem is that we often cannot find common ground to explore our ideas together (though we can and do offer moral support). When working with other creatives, someone or all of them have to tone it down a few notches to get anything done at all. Studio models attempt to deal with this by providing a decent balance between independence and review.
The article may be fudged. I studied creativity and found from journals/papers with social rejection we see higher levels of divergent creativity, it's as if the brain does everything it can to think about how to socially include. With social inclusion we see higher levels of convergent creativity. We need both in society!
You can have an active social life and be creatively productive. But you have to schedule.
The more time I poured into IT, the better I got. When it was a 24/7 thing, I left all my mates at school behind. When I started playing guitar, going to parties and play too many games, the others caught up.
Now I'm mediocre at all of those things, but I've seen a bit more of the world.
If you put your time in as few things as possible, one can be "social activity" and you still can be a creative mastermind.
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 282 ms ] threadHowever, being creative with "things" as opposed to people does lead to further social rejection thus reinforcing the formed identity. I guess this is how the nerd/geek identity is formed and maintained?
Doesn't that have a great deal more to do with the art industry than creativity itself?
Elvis dead has made more money than Elvis alive. (Leading to litigation amongst the heirs.)
Free time might be required, and there's danger in groupthink absolutely, but you can just ignore the noise of the group, rather than avoid the group. Be with the crowd sometime but not all the time. As there's also things to be learned from other people too. And it's great being able to be your own person and ignore that crowd.
Given, I greatly prefer Van Gogh to Picasso and Matisse, it's probably just as likely his mental state were an influence of his art, not the whole loneliness thing. Drawing the conclusion the other way seems dangerous, to encourage isolation. However it's good to say it's not ok, or not one's fault.
It's hard especially due to 'fake socialization' like Facetube and such, smartphones, and people's busy isolated schedules involving central air conditioning to expand a circle of people you know. It seems dangerous to say to be creative you must be lonely, it's very wrong. Yet it's also wrong to say it's wrong to be lonely, because of factors that make it a really hard thing.
I think we need to suggest to other people that aren't so isolated to reach out and be friendly to more people. In the south (of the US) it used to be increasingly common for people to say hi to people they met out walking, and increasingly as people move in from other places, it's rare when someone says hi back. Then people go back into their houses and you don't see them again.
The problems that cause society to be isolating are somewhat improveable, but it requires awareness of it. I think it's possible Van Gogh didn't really want to be isolated, but that was his way of justifying it and being ok with it, and that his feelings of isolation were rooted in deeper problems.
We'll never know. But if you are feeling isolated or whatever, don't feel you have to be that way. It's not your fault though something you have to fight for (because everybody is caught up in doing whatever they are doing), it's everybody else's fault to a degree, and you can be creative either way.
I don't see how this is a reasonable thing to believe. If you act like this around people, they will eventually stop spending their time with you.
The software analogy here would be like "I'm not going to talk to people about my new startup idea because hearing their opinions and thoughts would taint my work" -- which doesn't make any sense to me, or possibly even more so "I don't want to be around other software people talking about anything because that will change the way I think".
The argument is drawing the argument of you-need-to-be-alone from Van Gogh ends up with it not being valid. Van Gogh is amazing (see his stuff in person if you can sometime, it doesn't photograph well), but these are seperate orthogonal things.
From everything I've read about creativity, one of the keys seems to be thinking about things differently than one normally thinks about them. This can mean intense states of depression, mania, loneliness or relationship. Any state of mind that's different and extreme can shift perspective enough to cause some people to be exceptionally creative, at least for a time.
It's herding cats, though. There are no proven techniques that will make someone more creative, only strategies that will work some times for some people. The best way to be more creative is to constantly try to create new things. Social rejection isn't a prerequisite for that.
The article has to lack data as that's the reason for why we are so impressed by creativity. 'True creativity' (as opposed to opposed to the shallow "We have to think outside the box" type of creativity) can not be measured by definition. That's what makes it so intriguing! As soon as something can be fully measured it becomes debatable whether it is still a creative effort or not.
If you accept what I wrote above then the headline of the article appears even more bonkers: How can something that is so complex that we can not fully measure it (yet) be caused (mostly) by a one-dimensional factor? I mean, sure, you could find a single factor if it is very vague one but that's not helpful. I.e. I could say: Being alive is a key factor for creativity. What's more, social rejection is surely also a key factor for becoming a dull person who watches TV all day.
Surely all progress comes from the unreasonable man. Also we only hear about the most famous / rich creative geniuses. I have no particular problem switching off creativity and hanging out (going hiking or something), I am also not famous, not even internet famous. That would lead to the theoretical model that famous people can't shut off their unreasonableness, perhaps at all, which makes them completely cantankerous and anti-social yet also somewhat more productive than better balanced individuals. All kinds of interesting experiments could be devised. Are they able to shut anything at all off, or are they OCD/addicted personalities? If someone who can shut off is converted intentionally or otherwise into someone who looses control of their creativity, are they more successful? College binge drinking to emulate an alcoholic might be monkey see monkey do emulation of creatives... does someone naturally somewhat creative who gains an uncontrollable addiction have the bleed over into uncontrollable creativity?
Another interesting model revolves around the only socially rejected people the general public ever hears about, are the top of the line creatives. That probably tells a lot more about our culture than about the individuals. For example, I suspect the panhandler at my freeway onramp is socially rejected, at least by most, its just "we" will never hear about him unless he becomes a famous painter or poet. Given his cardboard signs I think he's not creative at all, at least not WRT the graphical arts, yet he's got more rejection than most of us. IF most people are socially rejected to some extent or another, thats kind of the purpose of mass media and big cities after all, and the only rejects we hear about are creatives, then a very weird conclusion could be drawn that creativity only comes from rejection, although the reality is almost everyone is somewhat rejected. Much like they all drink water and all creatives drink water so creativity obviously comes from drinking water.
Those that try to "fit in" might not be the right people to produce revolutionary ideas.
And those who don't already fit in have the least to lose by inviting rejection by being off-the-norm.
Add those two together, you have an intersection of those folks who don't fit in today and have nothing to lose by chasing their dream, choosing to chase their dreams instead of potential social acceptability.
Orthogonal and rational choices, even if those that always did this wasn't being rational.
But I wouldn't start using this article a way to convince yourself it's OK to be antisocial because you're an undiscovered genius.
[0]: "1.1 informal" http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/literal...
[1]: "2 : in effect" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
With people, it just does not work. In no setting. Love, friends, business, family - you name it. I do not have a single person I am close with. The strange thing is - even though I consider myself very smart - I never was able to figure out why. People just disappear. Do not have time for me. Do not call me back. When I ask them straight away "is it because I am a somehow unpleasant person?" they say stuff like "No, I was just busy. And I am still busy. Bye.". I wonder if I will ever find out, what the underlying cause is.
Whether or not the sibling commenters are right, I won't opine on. :)
I've dedicated a significant part of my post-teens to trying to crack this nut and become more socially active and 'adjusted', at the expense of the solitary and creative endeavors that characterized my younger, lonelier years.
Sometimes I wish I hadn't, as my 'creative output' suffered and at my current age I sometimes wonder if it was worth it. I am also doing well financially, but I know I could've achieved much more in terms of projects if I had not focused on the 'social world' as much.
I'd very much like to exchange perspectives with someone who took the path I didn't take, so to speak. And maybe we can even be of help to each other.
Share your challenges and be completely open and transparent. Use social media to stay relevant and on people's radar. Show people you're just as human as they are.
I'm on the same boat. Achieved financial independence in college. Experienced the highs of having a ton of friends in university and my first job to the lows of not being able to make any good friends as an independent worker.
This seems to be working for me.
I have a strong tendency to paint myself as bigger and better then I am. And to hide my problems.
Another problem is that I always think everybody should worship me and my big ideas. And forget about those boring little things they do themselves. This I find particularly hard to tackle. Because I really find it unbearable boring what most people do and think.
This is not a healthy attitude to have, really. If you care about people you also care about the mundane stuff in their life. Because that's part of what makes them who they are.
There are all kinds of people in the world. Very smart ones are a rarity.
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?langu... [2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1604078588
This sounds very narcissistic.
Conversely though, I don't consider anything others do to be boring even if everyone can agree that it is. I also won't offer an opinion because I have numerous examples in my own life. You would likely consider me very boring but it's largely because I've shut my mind off to cope with the lack of meaningful input. I think a large part of the population does this without even being able to articulate what's happening.
The best answer I have is empathy. My greatest connections come when I exercise high empathy levels and all I'm really doing there is engaging my imagination to try to understand how someone else feels in the situation they're in. I think most of us on the planet, and especially here, have this capacity but I think we see futile efforts a far ways off so we don't bother to engage. I'm stubborn enough to forgo that understanding to commit an insane act that in rare instances make me feel close to other people. I don't have all quality connections with people but the ones I do have tend to run pretty deep and I believe I owe it all to my ability to relate to how someone else feels.
no lack of people wanting to connect with a successful mentor. Design your own mentorship in a way that it won’t consume more than an hour/week of your time but will consistently bring interesting new blood to you, run an open office, say from 5-6pm, make it accessible for anyone to book an hour with you and most importantly, to book again if they like the advice, and if they do, you must accept them, even if their idea sucks, keep seeing them until the idea doesn’t suck anymore or they give up, learn to be so pleasant that the ratio of people giving up is falling.
volunteer at your homeless shelter as a ‘socialiser’ (they need people to just come in and talk to folks) and to ‘sleepover’, they need someone awake at all times, this can give you a new perspective.
as others have pointed out, see a psychiatrist.
spend less time on the internet and more time talking to people face to face, anyone, from cashiers to hairdressers to the guy seating next to you, ask questions only about them, if they ask you a question, meld your answer into another question about them.
stop looking for friends and asking people why they disappeared, if you actually ask them "is it because I am a somehow unpleasant person?" don’t. Work on becoming pleasant. How well do you take criticism? How often do you positively criticise? Halt all criticism, even the extemely positive ones.
I had a similar conversation with a psychologist/economist friend who left Goldman Sachs to lead a more fulfilling life, she deals with over achievers in business and sometimes life, that find themselves struggling for a deeper meaning, her answer was, if you only have one or two close friends, it’s perfectly normal, if you don’t have a single person close to you, then you should act on it.
I’m going for a walk.
People relate to those they perceive as similar. When you meet someone, there's two stages to making friends. 1. Attraction, demonstrating you are valuable, which is easy for you thanks to your business success, and 2. Rapport, where you must show the other person you're similar and am OK with making yourself vulnerable to them, and in trusting them, you earn their trust. I think you're OK with 1, not OK with 2. Tell stories, being completely emotionally honest, and in ways where you show, at times, you're just like they are. In the rapport stage where you're trading stories, use the word "we", avoid "you". "We" can make someone think you're already together, "I" can be used as an attempt to bring others to emphasise your situation, while "you" makes the other person compare differences with yourself. "You" can be useful for the attraction stage, but I don't find it useful for the "Rapport" stage. And make sure to listen, and synchronise your emotions with them - if they're happy be happy, if they're upset about something, be concerned.
If you're looking to find a romantic partner there's one more stage but I'll leave that up to you.
Lately I try to simply keep quiet more. Because usually I talk a lot. I always have so much ideas to talk about. It helps a bit. But not to the extend that people and I become friends.
Will try to use "we" and see if that helps.
Do not worry much, focus on people from your interest, and remember that socialize is also waste your time unworried and speak about general things without take things actually serious.
From my personal experience I can tell you that being to much focused in very concrete topics is sometimes not the best way to find people to spend the time with. And it is nothing wrong; you just may need some common areas to share with others, where you can be just a bit unworried and comfortable (more to enjoy a while with good companions than develop an activity by itself).
I really didn't understand how this works. I know that now I work a lot. But I wasn't like that when I was younger. Nevertheless it was always me that had to keep a relationship going. If I didn't do anything things faded away pretty quickly. If I did the relationship agonized for a while before ceasing.
I know that I am not unpleasant - people don't talk with someone for hours just to be polite. And only one person has ever told me that she always hated me because of how annoyingly smart I was. But then again I went to university where one of my fears was that someone is smarter than I am (and probably a lot of folks actually were).
When not at work most people relax with a game of cards, small talk about repairing the car, the new update for the phone, etc. What I do for fun when I am not programming is read about consciousness studies, biology and nutrition, philosophy, physics. If the person is up for it we can talk for hours on such a topic. But most people most of the time are not. I have two kids and I like talking about them - kids are fascinating and incredibly funny at the same time. However people who don't have kids don't have a clue what I am talking about (I was the same when I didn't have kids). People who have kids usually just want a beer. I like running, hiking, riding a bike - good topics for a conversation. Until I say that it's fun to ride a bike at night, while it's raining.
So I was at lunch with my colleagues one day and it suddenly hit me - the problem is not that I am smarter or a genius or the like. It would be nice, but actually most of my colleagues are as smart as I am and some of them are smarter. The problem is that I cope with pain and hurdles differently. When people stop to rest I usually push some more. When they seek a shelter from the rain I want to ride more. When they need to chat with someone I need to read a book. I am a hyperactive introvert with a strange set of interests. I am a little different and because of that it's much harder for me to make friends.
You say that you have started so many projects. To me this means that you have a lot of energy and it's quite possible that people just don't want to play catch up with you – it’s tiring for them and they may actually prefer to just relax.
Shared suffering & growth is how you form the strongest bonds.
If you're biking w/ people and they stop to rest (or b/c of rain). Time to make a choice. You can keep going, or stop with them.
If you keep going, you'll grow, your legs will get stronger.
If you stop, they'll grow, their legs will get stronger. But you have to keep stopping to see it happen. In time they'll stop less often. You'll love watching them get stronger, and they'll love that you were there to witness their growth. You're sharing in their suffering, even if you're not winded or uncomfortable yourself.
Fast forward to the future, now you're struggling with something physically or emotionally, and one of them may stop to be by your side. They could've pushed past you but they want to be there for you. You were there for them.
That being said I have found a few people that may be ready to walk with me. Since I am very grateful I am willing to wait for them and help them whenever they need it.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-Work/dp/0307...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon_(artist)
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon
"who knows..."
I think this is our herd instinct, needing to fit in, in how a situation is conceived, disagreeing only in terms of that conception. Changing the theory is deeply anti-social.
"To state it in slightly different terms: in those critical years [roughly from age 17 to 20] I learned how to be alone.
This formulation doesn't really capture my meaning. I didn't, in any literal sense learn to be alone, for the simple reason that this knowledge had never been unlearned during my childhood. It is a basic capacity in all of us from the day of our birth. However these 3 years of work in isolation, when I was thrown onto my own resources, following guidelines which I myself had spontaneously invented, instilled in me a strong degree of confidence, unassuming yet enduring, in my ability to do mathematics, which owes nothing to any consensus or to the fashions which pass as law...
By this I mean to say: to reach out in my own way to the things I wished to learn, rather than relying on the notions of the consensus, overt or tacit, coming from a more or less extended clan of which I found myself a member, or which for any other reason laid claim to be taken as an authority. This silent consensus had informed me, both at the lyé and at the university, that one shouldn't bother worrying about what was really meant when using a term like "volume", which was "obviously self-evident", "generally known", "unproblematic", etc. I'd gone over their heads, almost as a matter of course, even as Lesbesgue himself had, several decades before, gone over their heads. It is in this gesture of "going beyond", to be something in oneself rather than the pawn of a consensus, the refusal to stay within a rigid circle that others have drawn around one - it is in this solitary act that one finds true creativity. All others things follow as a matter of course."
source: michael_nielsen @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8604814
Like it was suggested in The Programmers Stone and elaborated in The Art Of Scientific Investigation, there are different modes of training of certain areas of the brain (clusters of Neural Networks or whatever crude model you like). The common sense term for resulting structures is "mental maps". Notice the correct intuition about having a structure (made out of neurons) and that it supposed to be traversed (insight from the AI spring).
In other words, you will traverse (or pattern match against) what you have managed to train, and different resulting structures will result in different processes - different modes of "thinking".
Social rejection (which usually an effect, not a cause) is beneficial due to much less distraction and more time for myself, but unless you have appropriate habits of reflective thinking (to understand hows and whys and realizing multiple causation) no amount of social rejection will make it.
The benefits of solitude has been noticed even by Vedic seers but it is definitely not enough.
BTW, creativity is a packer's term. For mappers it is a default mode which need not to be named.
It looks like at least a couple books talk about these concepts. Where would you recommend reading more about them?
It must be noted that I am not convinced from my <1 page of reading that people are truly divided into only two camps in this category, like the philosophy seems to suggest so far.
Quite often, "thinking independently" could lead to social rejection, as being independent means being non-related with other people's thinking, and hence with much less likelihood of being agreeable with other people's opinion. If we define (roughly) social acceptance as the property of sharing common opinions among the crowd, then we can infer that thinking independently would unlikely lead to social acceptance.
Hence creativity would unlikely lead to social acceptance.
Perhaps that's why a tolerant environment that allows different ideas and different opinions (even those you don't agree with) to coexist is also very crucial to creativity -- as otherwise intolerance would simply kill it.
Thinking independently doesn't necessarily entail sharing one's independent opinions with whomever one meets. Creativity implies the ability to create humour, and making people laugh is one of the easiest ways to get them to like you. Combined with intelligence, which makes it easier to work out what people want to hear, I'd argue that creativity actually brings a significant social advantage, at least when it's consciously directed towards achieving social ends.
Feynman represents a good example of this, achieving social success by using his creativity as a fount of humour.
Well, regarding jokes, if all people are making a same joke repetitively, so you heard about it many many times, do you still feel that you could laugh out naturally? (I mean laugh not for the sake of laugh, alone)
I just feel that the reason why a joke is a joke, is because you have never heard of it (or at least have never got it) in the past...So this difference -- or this independence from the past -- is the creativity in your sense...
> Feynman represents a good example of this, achieving social success by using his creativity as a fount of humour.
If, there have already been 500 people making jokes in the same way as Feynman did -- for instance, if before reading his book, everyone already played prank on some waitress girl in a restaurant by putting the tips under an upside-down filled cup, would they still find the description in the book funny? Just like what I typed, do you still find this re-description of Feynman's joke funny, like the first time you read about it?
I was making the implicit assumption that there is an unbounded quantity of potential jokes. 500 Feynmen wouldn't all be making the same jokes; they'd all make different jokes. Just like how 500 Feynmen wouldn't all be writing the same books or making the same scientific discoveries.
You can easily create a seemingly dilemma case within the model -- for instance, use the independent creativity to create more common ground (much of which was not visible/observable before) between people, and hence make them more agreeable with each other.
But actually this is not a dilemma, as it is only crucial for the process to be independent, not the ending result -- especially when the goal of your independent creativity process is to make the ending result to be more correlated to some preconceptions.
But at the time I didn't know what I know now: That there is other crazy people out there, and you have to find them. With Internet is not that hard.
Hollywood, Silicon Valley or even YC is all about putting crazy enough creative people together so saying something like "I am going to change the world" sounds totally normal.
Ya, we can find allies, but these relationships are fragile and often limited. The problem is that we often cannot find common ground to explore our ideas together (though we can and do offer moral support). When working with other creatives, someone or all of them have to tone it down a few notches to get anything done at all. Studio models attempt to deal with this by providing a decent balance between independence and review.
You can have an active social life and be creatively productive. But you have to schedule.
The more time I poured into IT, the better I got. When it was a 24/7 thing, I left all my mates at school behind. When I started playing guitar, going to parties and play too many games, the others caught up.
Now I'm mediocre at all of those things, but I've seen a bit more of the world.
If you put your time in as few things as possible, one can be "social activity" and you still can be a creative mastermind.