Random quote
From many sides, gifts are only counted as real gifts when the giver has spent money on it; to give what one has oneself appears to be shabby, illegitimate, insufficient.

Georg Simmel (1858-1918)

Inspiration

Two weeks ago I promised to write one or more blogs on the idea of inspiration, inspired, so to speak, by the book titled Inspiration by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis. “Inspiration” seems to be an inspiring word, for a short search on the internet showed me that the word is used as a name or title for a liqueur brand, for magazines, for a film, etc. etc. People see it as a positive value that can help to draw attention to what you have produced and want to promote.
The word inspiration has different meanings. For example, it can refer to Biblical inspiration, artistic or creative inspiration or to inhalation or breathing. It will be clear that it’s not the third kind of inspiration that I have in mind. Nor do I want to talk about Biblical inspiration, which refers to the supposed divine origin of the Bible. What I want to talk about is artistic or creative inspiration. In the Wikipedia a distinction is made between artistic and creative inspiration. Artistic inspiration should refer to creativity in artistic productions, while creative inspiration should refer to inventions (defined by the Wikipedia as unique or novel devices, methods, compositions, ideas or processes). I think that this distinction is not right and that artistic inspiration and creative inspiration are different expressions of the same basic process. Let me call this basic inspiration simply creative inspiration.
What then is creative inspiration, or – from now on – inspiration for short? My already rather old Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, which is my inspiration for correct English already for sixteen years when writing these blogs, says it this way: “Inspiration is a feeling of enthusiasm you get from someone or something, which gives you new creative ideas.” I think that it is a good characterization of what we mean by inspiration, whether you have become inspired as an artist, a writer, an inventor, a scientist or scholar, or also as a collector of, say, stamps or model trains. However, all this is yet very abstract, for it’s quite a difference, whether I get (as in my case) the idea to write a philosophical blog, which filled me with a feeling of enthusiasm sixteen years ago; whether I get the idea to write a blog about inspiration, which filled me with a feeling of enthusiasm an hour ago; or whether I am filled with a feeling of enthusiasm right now at this moment, because I am happy that I can type down these sentences, for example, because I just succeeded (with the help of some searching on the internet) to distinguish creative inspiration from other kinds of inspiration. Therefore, Dijksterhuis distinguishes three forms of inspiration (p. 31):
- Evocation: Your mission what you want to do or want to become. For instance that you want to become a writer or a philosophical blogger.
- The idea: Once you know what you want to become, you must have the inspiration for a concrete idea like a book or blog. For instance, that you want to write a fantasy novel about a young wizard, or, in my case, that you want to write several blogs about inspiration.
- The process: What is happening in your mind when you are developing your idea. For example, the process of how to structure your book, the popping up of the words in your mind when you are busy with writing the text of your book; or in my case the flow that comes from my mind that makes that I write these words for my blog.
This is what inspiration is. However, knowing what something is is not the same as knowing how you get it, and that is also so in the case of inspiration in all its forms. But everyone can become inspired, when he or she works hard for it, as Dijksterhuis shows in his book.

Random quote
Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; ’tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick, renders us more hard to be cured.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Of thumbs

Montaigne writes essays about all kinds of themes. Some themes are very personal while other themes are so banal that one wonders why he has written about them. For example, essay II 26 in his Essays is about thumbs. Why should you write about thumbs and what can you write about thumbs, if you are not a doctor? But Montaigne does. His essay on thumbs is short and on the face of it it tells us not more than the kind of “funny facts” that abound on the internet, for example on Facebook. So, Montaigne tells us that teachers in Sparta bit the thumb of a pupil in order to punish him. Or that a Roman soldier was exempted from service in case his thumb was wounded, which is pretty obvious, I think, for how to handle a sword, when you can’t use your thumb? Are such facts really word to mention and are they really worth to devote an essay to, even if it is only a short one? Apparently, Montaigne changed his mind later in life, for you find such essays only in Books I and II of his Essays and not in Book III, which he wrote much later, when he had become a mature man.
But are such themes really banal? In a sense they are: Life is short and you can spend your time better on more important subjects, so many people think. Besides that it’s always a question what is important and what isn’t, you can wonder, however, if one must always be serious. Moreover, I think that there is more. To say it short: Is what we call banal really banal? I don’t want to deny that banality exists, but many things that we find not worth to talk about and not worth to pay attention to can suddenly become important, when they are not there or when there is something wrong with them. Take thumbs. I think that there are not many people who would get the idea to write about such a “banal” theme like thumbs (if you are not a doctor). However, as Montaigne’s example of the Roman soldier shows, thumbs become important when they are hurt and even more so, when we miss it. A Roman soldier couldn’t fight when his thumb was hurt. When it had been cut off in a fight, I think he would have been dismissed, which is far from being banal.
In the same way, our daily life is full of banality. We go to the office, park our cars, do our shopping, clean the windows and peel the potatoes. Banality? Without this banality – or something like that, depending on where in the world you live and on which culture and society you belong to – the stream of life would not be possible or be deeply disturbed. Such routine – so “banal” – actions and events become suddenly important, when you are unemployed, poor or ill. Then you feel their importance. Maybe this kind of banality is one of the most important things in life. On purpose I write “this kind of banality”, since I don’t want to deny that “real” banality exists, though many of what is considered banal is not that banal as it seems at first sight.
That we ignore the normal routine and the normal things of daily life, says a lot about life today, I think. I wonder whether it isn’t a recent phenomenon, for in the past life was so full of risks and unexpected happenings that it was hardly possible to speak of routine. Also many normal daily activities lacked routine. Illness, death, accidents, war, hold-ups, sudden meetings (note that nowadays we call up when you want to meet someone, but until not so long ago you just walked or travelled to his or her house without giving notice that you would come) were once integrated in daily life. A big part of life was like a whirlpool. But medicine, social order, technology and so on have brought the life stream under control in many respects. For many of us banality set in and it became increasingly exceptional that the routine was broken. And so banality became a characteristic of modern society, but that doesn’t mean that what we now call banal has become less important than in the past.

Random quote
First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then you win.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

How creativity works

Recently, I bought the book Inspiration by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis. Dijksterhuis is not only an outstanding psychologist but also a good writer, who well knows how to explain themes of general interest to a lay public. I bought the book because I find the theme interesting. For isn’t it interesting to read how your mind works, if you are a creative author? (In the end I wrote already almost thousand blogs plus a lot of other stuff, like articles and books; see this blog page) Moreover, I am also a photographer, and I always try to see the world around me in a new light and then to capture my view in a picture, hoping that others will grasp it (which not always happens). That’s one reason, why I bought the book: understanding myself. However, I bought it also because I am always looking for stuff for my blogs and I think that this book will certainly give me inspiration for a few blogs (and this is the first one). However. I haven’t had yet the time to read it, so I can only promise to write about it later, but I got the idea that it might be interesting to write here, how I think that I become inspired, and then I can later compare my ideas with Dijksterhuis’s expert view on the matter.
When you have already ideas popping up in your mind, it’s not so difficult to elaborate them, especially when you are an experienced writer, artist, photographer, etc. However, it’s more difficult to get inspiration when your head is empty, so to speak, and you urgently need inspiration, because there is a deadline. Also, for me, it can happen that I urgently need ideas, but as you can see, I always got my inspiration in time, for in those sixteen years that I am writing these blogs, I never missed my self-imposed deadlines (the rare occasions that I didn’t write my weekly blog happened always for particular reasons). Indeed, sometimes it’s time to write a new blog, but I don’t know what to write. Normally it is so that my mind is always attentive to certain things, and usually it is so that a new idea pops up in my mind automatically, if it fits the existing structure of what is already there in my brain, and so I get a new theme: A new idea is a new element that fits with what’s already there. But now and then, it doesn’t work.
Since I am also a photographer, I always watch the world around me not only with a philosophical eye but also with a photographic eye. Since my mind is also full of photographic themes, this makes that it often happens that a photographic idea pops up in my mind. It can be that I see a photographic object, and then I get my camera and take a photo. It’s in this way that most photos like these came about. Or it is, for example that I got the idea for a new photo project, and so photos like these were realized; or I just got the idea for a single photo. The photos of the latter link are also a bit accidental in the sense that it is difficult to plan them; you must simply have the idea of the theme in your mind and then take the pic at the moment you happen to pass the right object or scene. However, photos can also be planned, like those under this link.
So I got the ideas for my blogs and for my photos more or less in the same way. The difference is that the ideas for my photos often pop up when I am walking somewhere, or anyway when I am outdoors, while the ideas for my blogs often pop up when I am reading. Since I am an avid reader, there is a big chance that the week before I write a new blog, a useful idea settles itself in my mind. Maybe, it does when I am reading a newspaper, maybe it is when I am reading a book; though it can also happen when I am watching TV, or doing something else which has no relation to my blogs. And when I have too many ideas, I write them down for later. Anyway, both for photography and for writing, the essence is (at least for me) that I must have already a certain mental structure in my mind and I must be attentive. After all those years, that mental structure is certainly there, but I am continually busy (consciously or without being aware of it) to extend and to develop it.
Nevertheless, sometimes my mind lacks creativity. It’s empty, so to speak, and I don’t know what to write about. But no problem, there are tricks for this case. Since my study is full of books, especially philosophy books, I take one or a few that might be useful. Then it soon happens that I get an idea. For that’s how creativity works. Or in the case of photography, I just take my camera and go out. For if you have already a photographic mental structure in your brain, certainly soon a new idea will come up. But don’t think that inspiration can take place in an empty space. In an empty mind nothing can pop up. No thing comes from nothing. From nothing comes nothing.
What remains now is a promise: A blog about Dijksterhuis’s book.

Random quote
Texts are sometimes hung on the wall. But not theorems of mechanics.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)