My mission is to encourage
creativity in all walks of life in order to build bridges and help solve what
seemed, in the past, to be intractable problems in human relations, technology,
economics, politics, and in one’s sense of self and destiny. Creativity,
coupled with action and hard work, can, with luck and perseverance, open doors
and expand access to education, economic life, and social groups, in order to
strengthen one’s ability to have a purposeful, enfranchised, examined, and
courageous life.
How do I actualize my mission and vision?
Tactic One:
List and Describe Core Values
Creativity: I like the way that thinking creatively
requires the willingness to put unexpected things together, and to look at a
set of things, circumstances, or concepts from multiple perspectives. Sometimes it’s necessary to explore biases
and blind spots in order to avoid confusing the status quo with the truly
creative, or simply using new ways to reinforce old biases. Creativity, in the
ultimate sense of the word, should be generative and life-supporting, as well
as psychologically freeing.
Perseverance: I
value staying with a project until it’s done. If the project is on the wrong
path, I think it is perfectly acceptable to drop it. Nevertheless, the ability
to envision the outcome, and to stick with it, is something I have always
respected.
Teamwork:
Working alone is efficient, at least for
awhile. Teams are better. They bring energy, diverse perspectives, and multiple
skillsets to a challenge, task, or problem. Being in a team is also vital for
feeling enfranchised and that you have a sense of belonging.
Connecting the Previously Unconnected: I
like the idea of taking two or three things that never worked together and
seeing how they might connect. It’s a great way to approach problems, and can
lead to breakthroughs of engineering. It’s also a great way to energize a team
or group problem-solving group – there are usually moments of absurdity and
humor that encourage the open exchange of ideas and create a supportive,
non-punitive atmosphere.
Tactic Two:
Describe the World as It Is Now, Describe Potential Vision for the
Future (key example of this tactic: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a
Dream” speech)
I see the world as a place where,
despite the eternal self-fashioning and energizing transformations of
technology, commerce, and human invention, the majority of the world’s peoples
still behave as though they were approaching end times, “slouching toward
Bethlehem” (as in the great Yeats poem, “The Second Coming”), and they
interpret the events and activities around them as signs of decline, rather
than opportunities for creative, energizing, empowering growth.
The fear-driven mind finds
apocalypse in the random words, signs, and acts that surround it. For the
fear-driven mind, the future is a predetermined horrorscape of chaos,
equivocation, and snarling despair. The end is predicted to be ugly and
inescapable, and there is no way to protect oneself from it.
The hope-driven mind may find apocalypse
to be in our future, but instead of suffering and horror, the vision and
hope-driven mind finds generative patterns, and pathways to growth. The end of
the world signals Dionysian transformation, a necessary death phase that one
goes through in order to be reborn, revitalized, regenerated. The vision-driven
mind may have a mystical inclination, and the “dark night of the soul” is the
test of faith that ushers in a state of union, of intuitive knowledge, of the
achievement of great things.
I would like to work toward a
future that allows individuals to find a balance between their fear-driven and
hope-driven minds, and which provides a strategy for overcoming short-term,
immediate anxieties by recognizing that working through the negative emotions is
a necessary part of growth, and simply seeking to avoid pain will mean that one
will remain in pain because no major changes have been made.
In the future, I would like to
see a world where people understand that they may transform themselves, and
that the barriers that once existed can be eliminated. It may take some time,
cooperation, and willingness to learn another language, computer skills,
philosophy, or higher-order math. It might also require one to examine one’s
own internal resistances to change, and to read works of literature and
creative non-fiction in order to understand the mindsets of others vis-à-vis
one’s own.
The young child born into cold,
hard streets of despair and abandonment has the same future as the young scion
of a social media billionaire. It’s not enough to scoff and say that they share
the same ultimate destiny, to die and be forgotten. It’s imperative to nurture
the spark of life and imagination that drives one person to reach a hand out to
another, without expectations or preconceptions, but simply to invite another
to go on a journey together. The journey will strange, unpredictable, and yet
infinitely worthwhile.
I’m reminded of “Woyaya” by the
South African song written by Osibisa, performed by Art Garfunkel in the early
1970s:
We are going
Heaven knows
where we are going
We ‘ll know
we’re there…