Back Off, Man, I'm a Pslackologist!

 You'll never guess which cerebral hemisphere is more involved in creativity:

Creativity involves a number of elements in which the RH is superior to the left: breadth of vision, the capacity to forge distant links, flexibility rather than rigidity, a willingness to respond to a changed, or changing, context, a tolerance of ambiguity, and an ability to work with knowledge that is, for the most part, inherently both imprecise and implicit. 

I love the whole subject of creation, creativity, and Creator, and this chapter did not disappoint. Well, nothing yet about the Creator, but if my RH doesn't deceive me, the whole subject of creativity is incoherent and inexplicable if not anchored in the principial realm, or in other words, at the top, not the bottom. But we'll have plenty of time to spookulight later on the deiformity of human creativity. 

This is a long chapter, so I'll just hit some highlights, but what is creativity, anyway?  We know it when we see it, but there seems to be a qualitative difference between garden variety creativity and the genius kind. And "Creativity is such an elusive phenomenon that one has to be creative oneself in how to approach it."

An LH approach to creativity will get us nowhere, and the RH approach is like using consciousness to study consciousness, or a flashlight to tell us what darkness looks like.  

Real creativity "is a rare trait" requiring "the simultaneous presence" of a number of other traits. These are all necessary conditions, and even then, may or may not be sufficient. 

At any rate, they include high intelligence but also perseverance and (woo hoo) unconventionality. None of these alone will guarantee creativity, but put them together and you might just have something.  

Oh yes. You will also need a modality or means of expression. This of course will require some persistence, but mastery is no guarantee of creativity.  Everyone can write, but how many writers are there?

McGilchrist describes a certain stagewise movement from preparation to incubation to illumination. We have a lot of control over the first, a lot less over the second, and pretty much none over the third. It's very much as if we can till the soil and plant the seeds, but the rest is up to... x:

You can't make the creative act happen. You have to do certain things, otherwise it won't happen. But it won't happen while you are doing them.

Certainly one must be open, but to what? Who knows? If we knew, it wouldn't be creative, rather, an AI algorithm, something a machine could do:

It involves remaining open, and yet being able to receive something which is, in the end, quite specific and particular. (In this, it is somewhat like prayer.)

Now, there's a thought: openness (o), silence (---), aspiration (↑), and grace (↓), or something. 

There are two types of thinking, one of which sees only two types of thinking. That was a joke, but not far from the truth, since "convergent" thinking is the type that finds a single, unambiguous, and correct answer, while "divergent" thinking is much more free-floating, original, and surprising. 

And as alluded to yesterday, our state-indoctrinational system not only largely rewards convergent thinking, it has gotten to the point that it clearly punishes divergent thinking. How did this happen? In my professional lifetime psychology went from an openminded study of mental illness to a mentally ill celebration of the abnormal. 

Obviously creativity involves seeing connections, but paranoid and delusional people see connections too, or MSNBC would be out of business. And guess what: it turns out that truly creative people often have relatives who are subject to severe mental illness, while they themselves are not:

It has been repeatedly shown that the healthy relatives of people with psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and who presumably share some traits, are more creative than average.

There are some nuts in my family tree, the question being whether I am one of them. But I want to go back to the question of seeing connections, because this, I suspect, touches on the Ultimate Issue of relationality.  Waaaay back in the introduction McGilchrist mentions this, that

our world is what comes into being in the encounter between us and this whatever-it-is.

And

The relationship comes before the relata -- the "things" that are supposed to be related. What we mean by the word "and" is not just additive, but creative.

It's all about the and, the creative links between. 

Nondoodling.  

Yes, or as some people call it, f-ing around: (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EYEDD2l0YUw)

Do you have to use s'many cuss words?

We can't make creativity happen, but we can certainly do our best to stand in its way. Or therefore not. Furthering creativity is mainly about not doing, rather than doing. 

There are a lotta ins & outs and what-have-yous, a lotta strands to hold in your head at once. Thus, you have to keep your mind limber:

It can't be made to happen. Over-control is the enemy here as elsewhere.... Though reason may be helpful at some stage, it can't permit creativity any more than it can generate it. Its best tactic is to back off for now. 

In short, abide:

First and foremost there must be ease, relaxation, and a general sense of permissiveness...a feeling of informality.... Probably more inhibiting than anything else is a feeling of responsibility. 

Are you employed, sir?