Author: John McCarthy

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What does recycling have to do with creativity?

Creativity=recycling.

Really? 

One of my daily household duties is to empty a small recycling bin in our kitchen into a large recycling can in our garage.  A peek into the recycling can will reveal a host of seemingly nonrelated things: water bottles, junk mail, used cans of garbanzo beans, and that Yellow Pages book from 15 years ago that finally made its way out of the house. 

The EPA estimates that Americans recycle 66 million tons of things annually (Albeck-Ripka, 2018).

“So what does this have to do with creativity?” you wonder. 

Dr. Paul Silvia, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Carolina at Greensboro who has done a great deal of research on creativity, wrote the following: “Creativity is a sort of cognitive alchemy.  We know things–experiences, ideas, images, words, concepts–and somehow from what is old and known becomes something new” (2018, p. 298). 

Recycling?

When it comes to creativity, “new” ideas may actually be old ideas—sometimes really old ideas–put together in a way that comes out as innovative or ground-breaking or rejuvenating.   F example, one of the stories of the “invention” of the ice cream cone dates back to the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis when Ernest Hamwi was selling a wafer dessert next to an ice cream stand.  He suggested that the two things—the wafer and the ice cream—meet, and Hamwi found himself named as the official creator by the International Association of Ice Cream Manufacturers in the 1950s (Fabry, 2016).

Notice how the headline this week of something creative is representative of “other” ideas combined in some way.  That recycling bin can hold some treasures to the future of creativity. 

Albeck-Ripka, L. (2018, May 29). Your recycling gets recycled, right? Maybe, or maybe not.  The New York Times.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfills-plastic-papers.html

Fabry, M. (2016, April 12). The murky history of the ice cream cone. Time. https://time.com/4288576/ice-cream-cone-history/

Silvia, P. J. (2018). Creativity is undefinable, controllable, and everywhere. In R.J Sternberg & J.C. Kaufman (Eds.), The nature of human creativity (pp. 291-301). Cambridge University Press.

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“Everything that is going to be invented…”

A scene from northern Chile taken in 2019

I give thanks to Charles Holland Duell quite often.  Few people may know that Mr. Duell was the Commissioner of the US Patent Office from 1898-1901 and later became a federal judge.  During his time as Commissioner in the Patent Office, he purportedly said, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”  [Note: Though the quote can be found in various places, I also ran across a 1981 book where the authors indicated that it has been misattributed.]

 Regardless of the origin, the observation about nothing else needing to be invented is brilliant: It infers a limit to inventiveness, a completeness to what is needed, and how current innovation has delivered a sufficiency to our current state.  Nothing else is needed in creativity and innovation.  Simply put, we’re all set.

Imagine if that were the case.  Life would, to a large extent, stay the same.  Nothing new would be on the horizon in medical care, computer technology, or business manufacturing.  It would make an inviting plot to a “Twilight Zone” episode.

Or would it?  It could also make for a long, boring episode with no real ending. 

Without creative thinking and problem-solving, society would remain stagnant.  We wouldn’t be entranced by attention-grabbing headlines or television stories about the next-big-thing in whatever industry.  The breaking news of innovation would be broken.

Whether college graduates today are entering engineering or medicine, architecture or environmental sustainability, the future is exciting with the problem-opportunities to be addressed in exciting, inventive ways that will no doubt result.

 Imagine Mr. Duell–or another US Patent Commissioner from the late 1800s—spending a day of in a cellular, online world.  Consider what it would be like giving them a tour of a business, a hospital, or even a hotel.  The number of patents encasing their visit would be remarkable.  New devices, innovative tools, and creative systems surround us. 

At some point, someone must have hinted that innovations would be tapped.  It’s a good that their forecast was wrong.

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The beauty of starting small

Spotted on the roof of my car on an early summer morning…

Consider the beauty and richness of creativity.  Consider how creativity surrounds us each day, often without our even giving it a second thought.  Consider the thinking that permeated these items, not only as they were developed and launched, but also in their modifications after being “invented.”

As I type, I’m looking at a coffee mug, a clock, and a pair of scissors.   Take any of those items and consider their brilliance.  Someone long ago found a better way to drink liquids, and from there the space may have changed, the handle was added, and the size and materials were modified.  Perhaps clocks “replaced” sundials and other ways to measure time, adding a dimension of being able to record and schedule time.  We have watches, digital clocks, alarm clocks, and cuckoo clocks.  From Big Ben in London to pocket watches, timekeeping spans sizes and places (and timezones!). 

Finally, there is a simple pair of scissors.  Remember that age when you weren’t allowed to use scissors…and then how one day you could use them for the first time by yourself?  At that point, the amazing quality of something so simple probably didn’t resonate with you.  (I know it didn’t with me.)  Now notice their design, their shape, their size, and their color.  Each pair has the same purpose, yet each has its own distinctive quality and benefit. 

The simplicity of creativity is quite striking to me.  I think that it may be easy to focus on the greater whole without realizing that the smaller parts are where that whole originated. 

Creativity starts small.  Keeping this in mind is one way to begin the process.