The Acquisition of Creative Energy

With our present knowledge, even an expert neuroanatomist could not tell Einstein's brain from yours or mine. In terms of the capacity for processing information, all healthy brains are extremely alike. The limits on how many bits of information we can process at any given time are also similar. Nor is the speed of information processing noticeable different from one brain to the next. In principle, because of the similarity in cerebral hardware, most people could share the same knowledge and perform mental operations at similar levels. Yet what enormous differences there are in how people think and what they think about!

In terms of using mental energy creatively, perhaps the most fundamental difference between people consists in how much uncommitted attention they have left over to deal with novelty. In too many cases, attention is restricted by external necessity. We cannot expect a man who works two jobs, or a working woman with children, to have much mental energy left over to learn a domain, let alone innovate in it. Einstein is supposed to have written his classic papers on the kitchen table of his small apartment in Berne, while rocking the pram of his baby. But the fact is that there are real limits to how many things a person can attend to at the same time, and when survival needs require all of one's attention, none is left over for being creative.

But often the obstacles are internal. In a person concerned with protecting his or her self, practically all the attention is invested in monitoring threats to the ego. This defensiveness may have very understandable causes: Children who have been abused or who have experienced chronic hunger or discrimination are less likely to be curious and interested in novelty for its own sake, because they need all the psychic energy they have simply to survive. Taken to the extreme, a sense of being too vulnerable results in the form of neurosis known as paranoia, where everything that happens is interpreted as a threatening conspiracy against the self. A paranoid tendency is one obstacle to the free deployment of mental energy. The person who suffers from it usually cannot afford to become interested in the world from an objective, impartial viewpoint, and therefore in unable to learn much that is new.

Another limitation on the the free use of mental energy is an excessive investment of attention in selfish goals. Of course, we all must first and foremost take care of our own needs. But for some people, the concept of "need" is inflated to the point that it becomes an obsession that devours every waking moment. When everything a person sees, thinks, or does must serve self-interest, there is no attention left over to learn about anything else.

It is difficult to approach the world creatively when one is hungry or shivering from cold, because then all of one's mental energy is focused on securing the necessities one lacks. And it is equally difficult when a person is rich and famous but devotes all of his or her energies to getting more money and fame. To free up creative energy we need to let go and divert some attention from the pursuit of the predictable goals that genes and memes have programmed in our minds and use it instead to explore the world around us on its own terms.

Vocabulary

• neuroanatomist - one who studies the brain
• cerebral - relating to the brain
• innovate - to introduce something new
• neurosis - any of various mental or emotional disorders
• paranoia - characterized by delusions of persecution
• obsession - a compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea

Questions

1. What would a neuroanatomist say about all the brains in the classroom?

2. In terms of using mental energy creatively, what is the most fundamental difference between people?

3. What are three internal obstacles to the deployment of creative energy?

4. What does Mihaly suggest we do to free up creative energy?

5. Assignment: Write a three paragraph essay describing something in the world you are interested in exploring and what the obstacles are to that goal.