Only The Artist Sees The Tall Ships

Do Our Brains Manage Away Our Ability To See G-d Or To Be Creative?

Somebody once told me that they read someplace that somebody said that way back when Europeans were first invading the Americas, it’s likely that natives might not have even seen the ships out on the sea as they approached and anchored. If they had to mental construct for the idea of a big ship on the water, their minds might have simply failed to process the images coming in to them.

Sounds like a crazy notion to me. And since it was something somebody might have read about something somebody might have said, I’ve always considered it to be mostly a made-up thing.

But a fun idea.

I suspect there might be a grain of possibility in the idea as well. So I’ll talk about it here as-if it’s real fact. It makes a point I want to make after all. And really, if I do this well enough, it might be that some Faux News Network might make me a job offer…

So, the ships were there. That’s a fact. And folks on the shore had eyeballs that worked, and they were looking out across the horizon, and their functional eyeballs picked up the information, and sent the information along the optic nerve and into the brain for processing.

So far, it’s all fact, it’s all science, and it actually probably happened just like that.

But we’ve all worked hard to “manage” our brain so it doesn’t interfere with the way we want to see the world. We all process incoming information in similar ways, but with little twists and turns, filters, brushes, and enhancing tools.

We all know what we want the world to look like, and we have fine-tuned our senses to pick out the pieces of information that surrounds us that reinforces the picture of what we want the world to look like.

My Faux News comment is a perfect example. What is your source of news? While some people work hard to get a wide variety of opinions and input, most folks simply find the news or opinion source that tells them about a world that’s built the way they want to believe it’s built. In my opinion, that’s explains the growth in popularity of particular networks or sources that are biased to the point of absurdity – people aren’t looking for Truth, they’re looking for reinforcement of the views they want to hold.

Just like the husband or wife who’s blindsided by the unfaithful spouse, even though everyone around the couple could see the signs for years. From the inside, the husband or wife had a picture of what they wanted their spouse to be, and the only information they accepted into their brain was the information that reinforced that view.

I understand this tendency. It makes sense. I can only imagine how overwhelming the world is to an infant – information bombarding the brain with no context or ability to put the pieces together. As we mature and grow, one of the ways we unleash the power in our brain is to learn how to filter and “manage” the information that we’re swimming through.

We can become extremely efficient at filtering and managing information, so that our lives run smoothly, and we’re not troubled with dilemmas. We’re not forced to confront and adjust our filters, brushes, enhancers, and other “information management” devices that make us comfortable.

I recently ran across a post by a gal (Katinka Hessilink) who suggests that creativity is tied up in this whole equation. In her article, Katinka is talking about the existence of a soul, but I’m co-opting her argument here to help me suggest that creativity in a person might really be little more than a higher tolerance to leave the filters turned down.

It might be that what we call creativity is really just a tolerance to accept, hear, and see input that doesn’t necessarily fit with the shapes we’ve already constructed within our mind – the shapes that we think the world is supposed to fit into. The “creative mind” really might just see more.

There’s always been this assumed connection between creativity and, shall we say, a looser grip on sanity? I have no idea of this is actually true, but it’s a pervasive stereotype.

If there were a linear representation of “sanity”, it could be that the further one moves to the right on the scale, the more constricted is their view of the world, and the less they are actually able to experience the world they’re moving through. They have a very tightly managed shape into which they fit all of the incoming information, and whatever doesn’t fit, is ignored or changed in some way.

What’s on the other end of that scale? Off the edge of either end would seem like insanity to me.

Way back in the time of Columbus, a dreamer sat on the beach of some island in the Caribbean. On the horizon he saw something he’d never seen before – he saw ships with tall masts and large sails. He ran and told the others of the tribe, who looked and saw nothing that fit into the shape of the world they knew, so they saw nothing at all.

I can believe that. You?

Here’s a Wayne Dyer quote, that I probably have a little wrong:

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you’re looking at change”.