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by Win Wenger, Ph.D. It has been argued elsewhere (most recently in a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert) that inordinate stress is placed upon creative genius, and a psychological way to reduce that stress is to place all the blame and credit for their genius-level breakthroughs on some outside higher force. This recourse, however, takes us away from examining the very tangible factors, in our environments, in ourselves and in our brains, which profoundly bear upon and affect how well we function, both at genius level and otherwise. Many of these tangible factors are known, indeed well demonstrated. Deliberate use of these gives us techniques: methods to increase creativity, to ingeniously and creatively solve challenges (problems and opportunities), andnow that brain plasticity is at last a topic for polite discussionsfor increasing intelligence. Hence, I propose a better way to reduce that stress and reduce the barriers to positive success which now burden and hamper the creative geniuses among us. Not only a way but arguably the best and easiest way to ease the stresses placed on creative genius, is to make creative genius a lot less rare. Bring a lot more people to functioning at a level of creative genius, sharing the load so to speak. (I will propose later in this briefing, also, that for us to do thatenabling a lot more people to be such geniuseswill also serve to much reduce the burdens on the rest of us, including those who choose to remain non-geniuses.) One key to this for me is from my earlyand professionally very-well-receivedinvolvement with civilization theory. Though I've published formal theory there, I think an informal proposition says it best. Of perhaps forty identified high civilizations in history, all but a couple died of self-inflicted wounds, only one of natural causes. Conquest from outside wasn't a real factor; but, at best, the barbarians were sucked into Rome's concentrated-and-undefended wealth and thus into a meat grinder; Cortez was a triggering and very fortunate factor in an Aztec empire and Mexic civilization which was already on the point of exploding, etc. There are dozens of reasonably plausible theories as to why so
many civilizations essentially committed suicide. One description sounds
terribly naive but fits all cases:
If there is truth in that naive-sounding proposition, then our own prognosis is profoundly affected by how many people are able and willing to solve the problems they find around them.That brings me back to my first proposition above, that we need to bring a lot more people to functioning at a level of creative genius, sharing the load, so to speak. I've been seeking to address this in two stages:
Attempts to address #2 got underway, from various sources, a little later, but the very idea was quite inadmissible until the dawn of the 21st century, when neural or brain plasticity became too well demonstrated in too many formal scientific studies to any longer be ignored. A Google search today on brain plasticity yields quite a remarkable eyeful. In pursuit of #1 just above, one thing I've done is to put up a kind of roadmap on this website, a kind of "portal page" providing easy directions to find each of a number of different creative problem-solving methods and types of such methods. Each of those methods, in turn, is provided via step-by-specific-step easy instructions, and each of the methods I've chosen for this applies effectively to just about every type of problem, be that economic, work-related, professional, personal, interpersonal, artistic, technical, scientific, etc. Anyone on the planetif they know about this resource and have
the gumption to try itcan click directly to this roadmap at
Solving Problems, a directory of methods, find the method they are most comfortable
with using, and use that method to resolve just about whatever matter they are
concerned with.
Please take your own look at
Solving problems, a directory of methods, determine to your own satisfaction
whether this approach is worthy and compatible with your own goals and, if you
find that it is, please write me with your suggestions and relevant
explorations.
Improvements in such a notice, help in placing such notices on bulletin
boards, ideas for different strategies for empowering and enabling people to
cope successfully and solve some of the challenges around them, much of what you
can readily do can be of high value. Please reply by
email.
Postnote: Elsewhere, I've argued that the basic human nutrition is
appropriate feedback upon one's own activities, actions, interests, lines of
inquiry, etc. Here I will remark that a major and perhaps the major source of
stress upon the exceptionally gifted is their exceptionality it is far harder
for them, especially as children, to find people around them who can provide
them that appropriate feedback, so that of all human populations, the
exceptionally gifted are the ones most starved of that basic human nutrition.
The proposed solution is the same one with which we opened this briefing: allow
a lot more people to be and function as gifted.
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