You know, I'm normally a huge fan of these TED talks, but this idea, I am not a fan off.

Ok, I rewrote this second paragraph about a dozen times trying to phrase exactly what bothered me about it, and I've cooled down a bit. At first I thought her idea was that people should believe in supernatural process as a means to relieve stress. I think now that her idea is a little more subtle than that. She is basically saying, pretend this supernatural process exists, allow it to exist in your imagination, and it can relieve stress. She isn't saying that you should actually believe it to be true. It's like a game. A game that relieves stress.

So I take it back. It is not a bad idea.

Placebo effects can work somewhat, but there are greater advantages to opting for a realistic understanding of reality.

I can easily relate to this.

I was learning multimedia design a few years ago and for me working in 3dstudio max was a pain because I was so afraid of making mistakes. I hated to have to go back and solve some mistake, this fear stopped me from doing alot of things.

Solving this fear I could resort to something like she talks about... or wine... lovely lovely wine, it was awsome.

I don't think you have to resort to placebo, or mysticism in order to counteract hyper-individualism.

Take calculus: invented by Newton, and then by Leibniz (since Newton didn't publish). The information required for this discovery (some well documented comet activity) added to existing knowledge was sufficient that it would arise from the intellectual environment of the time. Both of these men were brilliant, Newton almost certainly more so, but neither of them could have come upon it without the information which became available during their lifetimes.

They, and all creative people, work as prisms or lenses for their society, focusing, and shifting what is already there in ways which illuminate and add to the general understanding. They depend on their society to provide them the raw ingredients, and they, at times, happen to be just the right tool to discover what lies under the surface, but this in more a coincidence then an act of conscious creativity.

Newton did not discover, for instance, the photo-electric effect, Einstein did that. This does not mean that Einstein was smarter than Newton, in all likelihood he was not, but the preconditions for the discovery did not exist in Newtons time, the discovery is in some sense a product of its time, more then it is the product of a single mind.

The speaker makes an argument from consequences, but offers no basis. I think my argument from example stands logical scrutiny much better, as well as having the consequence she desires. It's not right because it has the desired outcome, it's just convenient that it does that in addition to being a coherent hypothesis.

This was exactly what I needed to hear today.

I don't disagree with the essence of what she is saying. At the core, I think she's saying that people need to figure out a way to no longer be afraid of making mistakes. Her abstraction of responsibility and credit is just another way to stop thinking so hard, enter the zone and rely on your subconscious creative self, without trying to squeeze so much out of yourself, and also being able to accept when your work isn't spectacular, because that's all part of the game.

What I disagree with is the need to creation delusions in order to achieve that level of maturity. We don't have to pretend we have fairies, gods, geniuses, whatever... Sure, that can work for some people - but it's not reality. That's just a trick - a game, like the previous poster said. It's not the only method.

As a designer (sure, I'm a UX/interface designer, but I consider my job to be highly creative), I prefer to simply acknowledge that bad ideas are part of the process to getting to good ideas - that good ideas can come from anywhere and anything, and that sometimes my work will be OK - but that I can learn from that. I think this applies to any creative profession...

In the end, I think our biggest problem is in our society and our education system. We're so trained to think that we have to always deliver perfection. In doing so, we are setup to lock ourselves away for a long time, slaving away on our projects to suddenly release something amazing. We stress so much and are afraid of failure because the world is framed like that for us, very early on.

I'll stop babbling. Essentially, as far as a TED talk goes, this one is disappointing.

She's not just saying that believing in an external genius is a useful trick. She's saying that's what the creative process feels like, and embracing that feeling helps the creative process go smoother.

Sounds to me as if, for the purpose of creative work, the creative genius might as well exist.

Still sounds like nonsense to me. I'd rather people figure out what's really going on with people, rather than making handy little delusions that work well enough for the time being.

That's fine. I don't think we're talking about mutually exclusive options.

^ In the book, Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott does a far better job of describing the relationship with your subconscious and, perhaps, creating some metaphorical relationship with it.

I think there are some people here misinterpreting what she is saying.

Inspiration, or whatever you want to call the peak of the creative mind, is not under conscious control. A person can't just *decide* to write (or paint, or dance, or sculpt) their best piece ever on a particular day. She is saying that artists are going crazy trying to pin down something that cannot be held. However you want to make peace with that fact, with metaphors like external supernatural beings or whatever else may work for you, to continue being a mentally healthy person that peace must be made. This is not to say that the artist should actually believe in faeries or geniuses or muses in the literal sense, merely as a metaphor for the subconscious realm from which inspiration springs. One might even choose to simply address the subconscious mind directly. ("Ok, subconscious, today would be a really great day to write a new song!") The important part is acknowledging that it is not under direct control, and that we shouldn't think of uninspired work as failure. Merely as practice.

The best an artist can do consciously is lay the groundwork for that creative inspiration to appear, and translate from idea to some realized form. What she calls "showing up" is laying that groundwork. Training, introspection, research, anything else that you can *choose* to do in your chosen art will make it easier to act on inspiration. Since nothing can force it to happen, the artist must accept that their only true job is to prepare and encourage creativity, but never expect it or rely on it.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by vaporlock.