|
Passages Of The Day |
|
| |
| The Time Sequence Trap |
Imagine a system that collects information over time. The information does not all arrive at once but in dribs and drabs. Suppose that at every moment the system tries to make the best use of the information available. Obviously this sort of system resembles individuals, institutions, corporations, cultures, and so on. Information is gathered over time and the system tries to make the best use of what has become available.
We can play a simple game in which letters are presented one at a time. The task is always to form a known word.
The first letter is A.
This is followed by T to give the word AT.
The next letter is R, which is simply added to give RAT.
The letters represent incoming information and the total available information, is used to make up a word.
The next letter is E to give the word RATE.
The next letter is G, which gets added to give GRATE.
So far the new information has been easily added on to the existing structures.
The next letter is T. There is no easy way this can be added on. A new word can only be formed by going back and disrupting existing structures to reassemble the letters to give TARGET.
In this simple example we can see how the time sequence of arrival of information sets up structures which have to be disrupted in order to put things together in a different way. This process is a useful definition of creativity. Without creativity we cannot move forward in such a system.
It might be argued that at each stage all the letters should be freed up and then the new letter added to the jumble and a new word formed. In real life, of course, it is impossible to disrupt all existing concepts, perceptions, words, or institutions in order to put the old information and the new information together in the best possible way.
After a while the items of information are no longer as separable as the letters in the game. For example, the cluster RAT has survived so long that it has now become a solid piece and resists disruption. In exactly the same way, basic perceptions resist disruption.
We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.
As I suggested, perceptive readers will see that the time sequence effort is the same as the patterning effect. It is the time sequence of experience that sets up the routine patterns of experience; we need to escape from these to put together new sequences.
Most people will accept these points. The difficulty arises when a person believes that it is a simple matter of rearranging the existing pieces into a new format. This might seem easy in the tabletop model of passive information systems but it is extremely difficult in self-organising information systems because the information is no longer separable but becomes an integrated part of the pattern. Changing patterns is just as difficult as trying to give a word a totally new meaning whenever you choose to. Words are patterns of perception and experience.
So we see that there is an absolute need for creativity in any self-organising system and indeed, in any system in which new information is added to existing information in an integrating fashion.
If the human mind were to work like a library, new information could simply be stacked on empty shelves with no attempt to integrate it into the existing system. That would then be a waste of the new information. This, of course, is what we do when we do not use creativity and when the new information cannot be integrated into the old information.
Creativity is not simply a way to make things better. Without creativity we are unable to make full use of the information and experience that is already available to us and is locked up in old structures, old patterns, old concepts, and old perceptions. |
-----
Passage taken from: "Serious Creativity," by Edward de Bono, ISBN 0006379583 Copyright © The McQuaig Group Inc. 1992
|
|
|
