Thursday Night Video – Jonah Lehrer on Creativity
April 19, 2012 3 Comments
When I teach creative endeavors (usually some sort of theater-making) to kids, particularly those of high school age, one of the biggest gifts I can give them is to undermine the myth of genius and allow them to simply create. Too many of them get stuck on the desire to be brilliant, which actually tends to be counterproductive. Jonah Lehrer was on The Colbert Show on Tuesday hawking his book Imagine: How Creativity Works, and he spoke eloquently about creativity.
LEHRER: One of the themes of the book is that these ideas that we assume people just invent out of thin air, that they’re really just new connections between old ideas.
About Matthew
I am a big fan of Jonah Lehrer. Thanks for sharing this video, I haven’t seen it yet.
I have yet to read the book, but like alot of his theses on creativity.
Particularly the need to distract yourself and also his recommendation to be curious.
I might blog this video early next week, hope thats ok with you.
For someone who is not such a big fan and calls Lehrer’s stuff ‘neuroscientism’ you might like to read Steven Poole’s thughts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/19/imagine-creativity-jonah-lehrer-review?INTCMP=SRCH
You’re more than free to blog this video or any other I post. It’s The Colbert Report that did the tough work!
I had actually never even heard of Lehrer before, and thanks very much for the link to the Poole article, which is fascinating as well. Regardless of which brain hemisphere he used in which order, I think Dylan is a good example of artists being original in the sense that they take the work of others and reinterpret it, coming up with something new by being open to what is already there.
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