Rod Kackley's Blog: St. Isidore Collection - Posts Tagged "steinbeck"
To Be Creative, Be Lonely, By Rod Kackley
Forget about collaborating with a team to come up with a new idea. Collaboration works best after you have the idea. Then you can recruit others to follow your vision and turn it into reality.
It is better to be lonely, if you want to be creative. I didn’t say it first. John Steinbeck (pictured above) did. Not in so many words, but he made the point in his 1952 classic, East Of Eden.
“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and the spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”
Don’t you wish the creator (if he was working alone) of the open office concept had stumbled upon this passage before he tore down our office and then cubicle walls.
Again, John Steinbeck from East Of Eden:
“And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.”
“And I this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”
So this is why I would never hesitate to say, “No, I am not a team player” nor never hesitate to say, “Stop reading business books.”
However if you feel you cannot break the habit of reading business books, feel free to read my five-part ebook series, Restore The Roar: Manufacturing Renaissance, available wherever ebooks are sold, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes and Vook.com.
It is better to be lonely, if you want to be creative. I didn’t say it first. John Steinbeck (pictured above) did. Not in so many words, but he made the point in his 1952 classic, East Of Eden.
“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and the spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”
Don’t you wish the creator (if he was working alone) of the open office concept had stumbled upon this passage before he tore down our office and then cubicle walls.
Again, John Steinbeck from East Of Eden:
“And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.”
“And I this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”
So this is why I would never hesitate to say, “No, I am not a team player” nor never hesitate to say, “Stop reading business books.”
However if you feel you cannot break the habit of reading business books, feel free to read my five-part ebook series, Restore The Roar: Manufacturing Renaissance, available wherever ebooks are sold, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes and Vook.com.
