It was doubly ironic that Robert Rowland Smith, a writer and philosopher (an ideas based profession if ever there was one) chose the RSA (an organisation whose central mission is ideas) to urge us all to move beyond ideas at a talk today.
He says we live in a culture which believes in making things happen rather than letting things happen: “We wait for ideas to rescue us.”
He argues that this focus on ideas keeps us removed from reality. Ideas and reality aren’t connected, he says. They are the “cousins of the lie”.
He says there are many ways of seeing the world.
The first is what he calls the Google Glasses approach. This is our common approach. Like Google Glass we look at the world through a filter. This is a mediated view designed to help us interpret rather than experience the world directly, what philosophy would call a hermeneutic way of seeing.
In contrast his second way of seeing is data driven – a phenomenological way of seeing the world.
Using this way of viewing we simply describe the world without trying to interpret. “The effort of seeing is very hard” though, he warns.
The third way is what he calls Hazing – losing focus on the particular in front of you and therefore seeing more of the context. “Understanding increases when you lose focus and you see more of the whole.”
The final way is what he describes as a Meta way of seeing. This involves moving above yourself and seeing yourself as one of the actors in the scene. This allows us to appreciate our place in the whole as we are spared of the need of interpreting the world.
Smith says he is often called on to help artists of all types who are experiencing a creative block. He says they mostly think what they need are fresh ideas. But he says this is wrong.
Creativity is solitary and non-ideas based he argues. He has invented a term – “Soulus” – to describe what is solitary and unique about each individual.
True creativity comes, not from an idea which is rooted in someone else but from within. It’s in the images from our subconscious which come to us in our dreams, for example.
The final idea Smith spoke about was perdition – being lost.
“When we are looking for an idea we are looking for navigation,” he says. Getting lost is where we find our most innovative thoughts, he says, when we are being open to what is not formed.
“Unless you are truly lost you are not empty enough to come up with unique creative ideas.” There’s that word again!
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