Hoof Art Ed?
By Peter LloydThe four Cages of Context—Knowledge, Affinity, Order, and Success—prevent otherwise creative people from thinking more creatively. Two of the Cages, Knowledge and Affinity, working together, can exert twice the creativity-numbing effect.
Knowledge
Understanding stuff gives us incredible abilities. Knowledge of the anatomy of a horse hoof, for example, enables an artist to perform a kind of magic with a pencil on paper. In this elegantly executed video, How to draw Horse Hooves, the instructor puts this knowledge to work and shares it.
Nevertheless, if I were to say to the instructor, “The frog crosses the white line, goes into a bar, orders sole, and stares at the walls,” She might think I’ve begun to tell a joke. Or that I’ve lost my mind. It depends on how she manages the Cage of Knowldege.
Will her knowledge of several esoteric equine structures—frog, bar, sole, wall, and white line—enable her to appreciate the puns packed into the statement? Or like us non-equestrians, will her knowledge of the common definitions of the same words get in her way?
In general, special knowledge of one field can get in th way of understanding knowledge from another. The more you think you know, in many ways, the less you understand.
Affinity
In my Creative Animals Safaris, I demonstrate how Affinity inhibits the creative process. After dividing the participants into two groups—readers and listeners—I show one group what looks like nonsense expressions. For example, “Wheat rye ardor.”
“What does it mean?” I ask them. Rarely does anyone in the reader group have any idea. Then I ask the reader group to pronounce the phrase together, out loud.
It takes the listener group very little time to understand that the reader group is saying, “We Try Harder,” the legendary Avis slogan.
It becomes clear upon discussion that human Affinity with the reading process makes it difficult to understand what becomes clear when removed from its usual context. Only rarely do the readers understand what they are saying.
Imprisoned, as it were, in their familiarity with sensible word order, readers fail to decipher the unfamiliar phrase composed of familiar words. The listeners, unconstrained by the nonsense of the unfamiliar phrase and the familiar meanings of the common words, have no trouble understanding the spoken phrase.
Human society would not hold together without Affinity. Yet it prevents members of groups from solving problems by locking them into comfort with the familiar.
Common Scents
When challenged with mind-boggling problems, it behooves (pun intended) creative people to intentionally escape the Cages of Context. By the way, is this Workout really about hoof art ed?
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.
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