Creativity Butterfly Style

The butterfly effect...

So, for those unfamiliar with this principle...it goes something like this...a butterfly flaps its wings in Los Angeles, and in Central Park, NY you get rain instead of sunshine. Sound confusing? Well, not really. Essentially, it encapsulates the essence of strange attractors as championed in the mathematics of Chaos Theory. Now, what does this have to do with creativity? Well, let's investigate.

I've been musing on my own creative process, trying to distill the nuances of flavors that somehow meld and mend the cracks and crevasses of my own creative psyche. Now, I have not yet completely developed a specific process for this, but I know that somehow it happens. So, I think that there is some type of structure in which this occurs, but often odd bits and pieces creep in, ends fray, edges turn at unusual angles, and shadows fall in places that are unexpected. What do I speak about? Well, in the process of finding my muse for creative enterprise, I often notice that my ideas congeal, but are accompanied by an assortment of seemingly random connections, perhaps even somehow engaged from my subconscious. Now, Freud notwithstanding, I don't tend to think I have any particular reason or need to explore how my id and ego are swapping niceties inside my head, but I do wonder exactly why this somewhat random thought pattern happens at times within the creative process and how it encourages or hinders my idealogical flow. So, thus, I consider the butterfly effect.

It may well prove that a random element is always present in our thoughts, and, in fact, that is true. Quantum mechanics deals with the level of uncertainty in knowing the true nature of anything really small, but still we strive to do so. Our brains are made of nerve cells, made of molecules, made of atoms, made of particles, quarks, and essentially these random movements of perhaps "energy strings". So, the pulses traveling around inside our heads not only follow ther rules of biology, but also the laws of physics... (lost yet?) If we think of a creative process as one of art imitating science or maybe vice versa, then maybe we should investigate the option of some type of quantum theory of creativity! Now, in one sense, we do know that there are nature and nurture components to this ephemeral concept, but to what degree does chaos play in the aha moments?

So, considering how stimulus, response works. If we get inspiration from sensory data or internal dreaming, then the pathways of our neurons fire in patterns that are based on both our physiology as well as the variances due to our own personal experiences.(previous knowledge) Assuming you have more knowledge or a better developed brain, (And I'm not sure I can always assume either for myself.), you may get more firings or a different pattern, etc. making opportunities for some random elements or connections to increase with greater numbers of brain pathways staying open. Now, I'm not saying that "smarter" people are necessarily more creative, but it may help if their brains can make more connections and perhaps, even assemble any random firings of unrelated thoughts into something new.

So, with this picture somewhat formed, here comes the butterfly effect...a random chance experience IN the environment, which could trigger a random neurological/psychological/physiological reaction in our brain or thought patterns...hmmm...

Now, what does my brain do with this random connection? Do I assimilate it or accomodate for it? Do I ignore it? Or, do I try and encourage it? If so, then how? And, if I do, then will that change the fundamental nature of how my brain works and ultimately how I think? I think so...but, maybe, I have been influenced already...wait...I'm thinking about how I think about thinking creatively and wondering if random thoughts are making me think in a different way, but that could even be happening right now! Did a random thought or stimulus cause me to write this? AND, because you're reading my post, it could be happening to you too...Sorry, didn't mean to cause you to think random thoughts, but if you like them, will you try to get more? How do you do that?

Now, I'm not advocating hooking people up to elaborate brain monitoring machines and watching what happens when they wander through the Louvre art museum, but if that what it takes to understand this...OR, perhaps to get to our own creative process, we have to first embrace BOTH the uncertainty in the external world as well as that in our internal thoughts as well. Because, I doubt that any humans thoughts are perfectly ordered all of the time...So, what we need to find out is first IF we have true random thoughts, and IF there is any way to encourage or discourage them, and IF we can influence our randomness of thought towards any particular preferred topics or connections. That's a tall order and I don't know if we have enough butterflies for this project, so maybe we should look for other metaphorical strange attractors of variances. Just allow one of your random thoughts to make a connection and take off, like a butterfly, it just might lead you to something very fragrant and beautiful. Will it cause "rain" somewhere else? I'm not sure. Try creatively connecting Karma and Zen...or is that too much of an egocentric view of the world? Enjoy the ride.