When It Starts With You, Not The World

Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com | JonRappoport.wordpress.com
By: Jon Rappoport
June 13, 2017

I’ve always conceived of my work as “up one side, down the other.” Expose the roots of the major covert ops of our time; expose the power of the individual to mount his own “op” for a better future.

In this journey of many years, I’ve come to a conclusion: a person looking at the world to obtain clues about his own potential and power is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. He’s bound to come to wrong decisions.

He skirts the edge of: I can’t succeed because the corrupt world is organized to fail.

This idea takes you into the morass, into the quicksand.

Yes, a person needs to understand what is going on at a deep level in the world—this is vital, but it’s a prelude. A beginning.

The real meaning of power is creative power. And that pertains to the individual, not the group. So the question becomes: what does a given individual profoundly want to create?

Limitation, inaction, and self-sabotage may be a few of the characteristics of society, but the individual doesn’t have to reflect them.

Nor does he need to reflect notions like “average,” “normal,” and “status quo.” They are meat grinders that turn out typical sausage.

Speaking of society, it’s instructive to read what authors wrote about core values a hundred or two hundred years ago, because then you can appreciate what has happened to the culture of a nation. Try to imagine these famous and celebrated authors from the past gaining prominence in the mainstream now:

“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.” — James Fenimore Cooper

“The less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of [by] formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The former generations acted under the belief that a shining social prosperity was the beatitude of man, and sacrificed uniformly the citizen to the State. The modern mind believed that the nation existed for the individual, for the guardianship and education of every man. This idea, roughly written in revolutions and national movements, in the mind of the philosopher had far more precision; the individual is the world.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” — Henry David Thoreau

“They [conformists] think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world…Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members….Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist…. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can you imagine, today, any of these statements gaining traction in mainstream media?

But the fact that the culture has devolved doesn’t get the present-day individual off the hook.

His independence, his contributions, his imagination and creative power are needed more than ever.
Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
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Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

The Entrepreneur: Organizing His Enterprise

Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com | JonRappoport.wordpress.com
By: Jon Rappoport
June 12, 2017

“We’re talking about design features and how you put things together in an organization, a business. Does the business look like a rocket or a blob of a government agency?” (Expanded Games, Jon Rappoport)

This piece is based on years of working as a consultant with private clients, and also on the research that led to my three Matrix collections.

People tend to have pre-set ideas about organization.

Some of these ideas stem from understanding what a business needs to do, in order to survive. They’re useful ideas.

But other ideas are “inherited”; they’re automatic; they’re put into action without conscious thought.

The first big principle SHOULD be: organization is an EFFECT of what the entrepreneur is trying to accomplish. Organization isn’t a CAUSE.

There are companies that—if they were airplanes—would find themselves housed in supermarket parking lots. The companies are that weird. They’re organized in ways that really have nothing to do with their aims.

“Well, we must have Department X and Department Y, of course. We’ll figure out later how they contribute to success.”

But later never comes. Those departments turn into significant roadblocks and obstacles.

Often, the entrepreneur doesn’t see himself as a creative organizer.

He doesn’t ask himself this question: “Given what I’m trying to do here, what’s the best way to configure my enterprise so all the energy is moving forward?”

If he did consider that question seriously, he would deploy his imagination and come up with very interesting and vital answers.

The shapes of organizations aren’t written in stone. Except when dull minds put them together.

The entrepreneur is always ready to shift strategies when they aren’t working. He should also be ready to reconfigure his organization when it isn’t working.

Buckle up—here’s a little story most people wouldn’t understand or believe: I once had a client who was ready to start a new business, but he was mired in trying to organize it. I gave him a daily writing exercise: describe all the most absurd and ridiculous ways you could put your business together.

After a few weeks, he suddenly and spontaneously came up with a few highly original and workable ideas—these ideas came out of his imagination, which was stimulated by inventing The Bizarre. “Things that made no sense” led to breakthroughs.

This is an approach people overlook because they are too timid in how they use their imaginations…they try to imagine “standard solutions.” This is a contradiction in terms. Imagination operates by going out on a limb. Then good new ideas arise spontaneously. Most people don’t grasp that. They ignore a whole dimension of their innate power.

You want to know what’s really bizarre? Imagining what already exists.

In the area of organization, people do this every day. And, as a result, they eventually find themselves dealing with all sorts of problems, and they don’t realize where those problems are coming from.

Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com

Creativity

“The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.”
– Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Imagination | Creativity | Conformity

Speech, Action, and the Human Condition: Hannah Arendt on How We Invent Ourselves and Reinvent the World

“The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of the same boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.”

Source: Brainpickings.org
Maria Popova
May 17, 2017

“An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word ‘love’ — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other,” Adrienne Rich wrote in her piercing 1975 meditation on how relationships refine our truths. But although our words may be the vehicle of our truths, their seedbed is action — we enact the truth of who and what we are as we move through the world. That’s what Anna Deavere Smith spoke to in her advice to young artists: “Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.”

That indelible relationship between speech and action in an honorable existence is what Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975) examines throughout The Human Condition (public library) — the immensely influential 1958 book that gave us Arendt on the crucial difference between how art and science illuminate life.

Hannah Arendt by Fred Stein, 1944 (Photograph courtesy of the Fred Stein Archive)

Arendt examines the dual root of speech and action:

Human plurality, the basic condition of both action and speech, has the twofold character of equality and distinction. If men were not equal, they could neither understand each other and those who came before them nor plan for the future and foresee the needs of those who will come after them. If men were not distinct, each human being distinguished from any other who is, was, or will ever be, they would need neither speech nor action to make themselves understood.

It is useful here to remember that Arendt is living, and therefore writing, nearly half a century before Ursula K. Le Guin unsexed “he” as the universal pronoun — Arendt’s “man,” of course, speaks to and for humanity it is entirety. In fact, she examines the vital complementarity of the universal and the unique. With an eye to the difference between human distinctness and otherness, she writes:

Otherness, it is true, is an important aspect of plurality, the reason why all our definitions are distinctions, why we are unable to say what anything is without distinguishing it from something else. Otherness in its most abstract form is found only in the sheer multiplication of inorganic objects, whereas all organic life already shows variations and distinctions, even between specimens of the same species. But only man can express this distinction and distinguish himself, and only he can communicate himself and not merely something—thirst or hunger, affection or hostility or fear. In man, otherness, which he shares with everything that is, and distinctness, which he shares with everything alive, become uniqueness, and human plurality is the paradoxical plurality of unique beings.

Speech and action reveal this unique distinctness. Through them, men distinguish themselves instead of being merely distinct; they are the modes in which human beings appear to each other, not indeed as physical objects, but qua men. This appearance, as distinguished from mere bodily existence, rests on initiative, but it is an initiative from which no human being can refrain and still be human.

Art by E.B. Lewis from Preaching to the Chickens by Jabari Asim — the illustrated story of how civil rights leader John Lewis’s humble childhood shaped his heroic life at the intersection of speech and action

Not only is the interplay of speech and action our supreme mechanism of self-invention and self-reinvention, but, Arendt suggests, in inventing a self we are effectively inventing the world in which we want to live:

With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance. This insertion is not forced upon us by necessity, like labor, and it is not prompted by utility, like work. It may be stimulated by the presence of others whose company we may wish to join, but it is never conditioned by them; its impulse springs from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own initiative. To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin (as the Greek word archein, “to begin,” “to lead,” and eventually “to rule,” indicates), to set something into motion (which is the original meaning of the Latin agere).

Action is therefore the most optimistic and miraculous of our faculties, for it alone gives rise to what hadn’t existed before — it is the supreme force of creation. Arendt writes:

It is in the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. This character of startling unexpectedness is inherent in all beginnings and in all origins… The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable.

And yet, contrary to the popular indictment that speech is the cowardly absence of action, action cannot take place without speech. Above all, Arendt argues, it is through the integration of the two that we reveal ourselves to one another, as well as to ourselves:

No other human performance requires speech to the same extent as action. In all other performances speech plays a subordinate role, as a means of communication or a mere accompaniment to something that could also be achieved in silence.

[…]

In acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world… This disclosure of “who” in contradistinction to “what” somebody is — his qualities, gifts, talents, and shortcomings, which he may display or hide — is implicit in everything somebody says and does. It can be hidden only in complete silence and perfect passivity, but its disclosure can almost never be achieved as a willful purpose, as though one possessed and could dispose of this “who” in the same manner he has and can dispose of his qualities. On the contrary, it is more than likely that the “who,” which appears so clearly and unmistakably to others, remains hidden from the person himself, like the daimōn in Greek religion which accompanies each man throughout his life, always looking over his shoulder from behind and thus visible only to those he encounters.

Down the Rabbit Hole: One of Salvador Dalí’s rare 1969 illustrations for Alice in Wonderland

Echoing the Nobel-winning Indian poet and philosopher Tagore’s assertion that “relationship is the fundamental truth of this world of appearance,” Arendt adds:

This revelatory quality of speech and action comes to the fore where people are with others and neither for nor against them — that is, in sheer human togetherness. Although nobody knows whom he reveals when he discloses himself in deed or word, he must be willing to risk the disclosure.

[…]

Without the disclosure of the agent in the act, action loses its specific character and becomes one form of achievement among others. It is then indeed no less a means to an end than making is a means to produce an object. This happens whenever human togetherness is lost, that is, when people are only for or against other people, as for instance in modern warfare, where men go into action and use means of violence in order to achieve certain objectives for their own side and against the enemy. In these instances, which of course have always existed, speech becomes indeed “mere talk,” simply one more means toward the end, whether it serves to deceive the enemy or to dazzle everybody with propaganda; here words reveal nothing, disclosure comes only from the deed itself, and this achievement, like all other achievements, cannot disclose the “who,” the unique and distinct identity of the agent.

In a passage that calls to mind philosopher Amelie Rorty’s taxonomy of the seven levels of personhood, Arendt suggests that action is what propels us from static selves to dynamic agents of change, and considers the immense potential of that agency:

The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of the same boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.

In a sentiment which Rebecca Solnit would come to echo half a century later in her immensely vitalizing Hope in the Dark, where she asserted that “the grounds for hope are in the shadows, in the people who are inventing the world while no one looks, who themselves don’t know yet whether they will have any effect,” Arendt looks back on the history of humanity’s great intellectual and political revolutions, and adds:

It certainly is not without irony that those whom public opinion has persistently held to be the least practical and the least political members of society should have turned out to be the only ones left who still know how to act and how to act in concert. For their early organizations, which they founded in the seventeenth century for the conquest of nature and in which they developed their own moral standards and their own code of honor, have not only survived all vicissitudes of the modern age, but they have become one of the most potent power-generating groups in all history.

The Human Condition remains an indispensable read. Complement this particular portion with Vincent van Gogh on principles and talking vs. doing, then revisit Arendt on the crucial difference between truth and meaning, the power of being an outsider, how tyrants use isolation as a weapon of oppression, and our only effective antidote to the normalization of evil.

Read more At: Brainpickings.org

JFK on Poetry, Power, and the Artist’s Role in Society: His Eulogy for Robert Frost, One of the Greatest Speeches of All Time

“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”

Source: BrainPickings.com
Maria Popova

In January of 1961, as John F. Kennedy’s inauguration approached, his would-be Secretary of the Interior suggested that the poet Robert Frost participate in the ceremony as the first inaugural poet. Eighty-six-year-old Frost telegrammed Kennedy with his signature elegance of wit: “If you can bear at your age the honor of being made president of the United States, I ought to be able at my age to bear the honor of taking some part in your inauguration.” He proceeded to deliver a beautiful ode to the dream of including the arts in government, which touched Kennedy deeply.

Frost died exactly two years later, in January of 1963. That fall, Amherst College invited the President to speak at an event honoring the beloved poet. On October 26, Kennedy took the podium at Amherst and delivered a spectacular speech mirroring back to Frost that deep dedication to the arts and celebrating the role of the artist in society. Perhaps more than any other public address, it affirmed JFK as that rare species of politician who is equally a poet and prophet of the human spirit.

The speech was eventually included in the altogether superb Farewell, Godspeed: The Greatest Eulogies of Our Time (public library) — a compendium of breathtaking adieus to cultural icons like Amelia Earhart, Martin Luther King, Jr., Emily Dickinson, Keith Haring, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Schulz, and Virginia Woolf, delivered by those who knew them best.

This original recording of the speech, while short in length, is endlessly ennobling in substance. Highlights below — please enjoy:

Strength takes many forms, and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant. The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

[…]

Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.

The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state… In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role…

If sometimes our great artist have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth… In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society — in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost’s hired man, the fate of having “nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.”

Typed draft of the speech, edited in Kennedy’s own hand (Courtesy of John F. Kennedy Library)

But as notable as the speech itself — for reasons both poetical and political — are the parts Kennedy edited out in his own hand, including this heartbreaking-in-hindsight passage from the second page:

We take great comfort in our nuclear stockpiles, our gross national product, our scientific and technological achievement, our industrial might — and, up to a point, we are right to do so. But physical power by itself solves no problems and secures no victories. What counts is the way power is used — whether with swagger and contempt, or with prudence, discipline and magnanimity. What counts is the purpose for which power is used — whether for aggrandizement or for liberation. “It is excellent,” Shakespeare said, “to have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”

Three weeks later, one of history’s ugliest and most arrogant misuses of brute power took place as JFK was assassinated, prompting Leonard Bernstein to pen his timelessly moving address on the only true antidote to violence. But the message at the heart of Kennedy’s speech continued to resonate even as his voice was silenced by brutality. Less than two years later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, creating the National Endowment for the Arts — the very dream that Frost had dreamt up at JFK’s inauguration.

Complement with two more titans of poetry on the role of the artist in culture: E.E. Cummings on the agony and salvation of the artist and James Baldwin on the artist’s responsibility to society.

The JFK speech appears as the opening track on composer Mohammed Fairouz’s spectacular album Follow Poet — titled after a line from W.H. Auden’s beautiful elegy for W.B. Yeats — and can be heard in Fairoz’s wholly fantastic On Being conversation with Krista Tippett:

Read more At: BrainPickings.com

When The Muse Arrives…

TheBreakaway | BreakawayConciousness
Zy Marquiez
May 11, 2017

It matters not whether it is morning, afternoon, evening, midnight, or the tail-end of a 48-hour session, when the muse arrives, she must be served on the spot. 

It just so happens than my Muse, my oh so dearly beloved, insists on knocking on the door at the most unexpected of times – when I need sleep!  We have a long history of this, and I’ve gotten used to it, but still.  I mean, really, who loves to lie in bed spellbounded by insomnia as The Muse casts her spell?

Those that know their muses, and know them rather well, know that when the modern descendents of daughters of Zeus arrive in all their profound, stylistic and amazing glory, you better get to work!  Thou shalt not anger the Goddesses.

It just so happens that when my muse arrives, she means business.  The woman knows her stuff, and knows it well.  Some days she blows by the door barkinig orders of many types (some in languages I don’t even know or have ever heard of, but I don’t tell her that) while other days she’s a bit more laid back having been aptly served.  Tonight, it was just my luck that the last idiot that talked to her said he was “Too tired“ to work at the moment. SERIOUSLY!?  The poor soul undoubtedly now shares a chamber in Hell in the Idiot’s Inn next.  Of course, given how quickly muses dispose of unworthy souls, my Muse still had a lot of anger to displace.  Gee, lucky me.

I learned very early, and very quickly, that no matter what, you better be serious if you dare summon her or she will call upon her lovely long lost uncle, Hades himself, for wasting her time.

Given all that, when The Muse does show up, there’s always a lot of work to be had – all creative types know this.  Some muses require the occasional sacrifice, you know, a sheet of paper, a candle, a few pencils.  Mine, however, takes her job seriously and merely to walk through the door requires a metric ton of graphite, you know, for those things lovingly called pencils, a veritable forest for the endless stream paper to sacrifice to the Fire Gods, as well as crates of candles of all types – ALL TYPES!  And all these things better be natural, she doesn’t do fake ANYTHING.  This wicked wondrous woman even likes, especially, wait for it…ESSENTIAL OILS!  SERIOUSLY!?  [note: remind me to erase the word wicked from the final draft, as she caught me writing it…it’s just too early to get into a fight.  Plus, my soul is worth a lot more than one word, you know.]

I’m just a regular guy – I can do pencils, paper, a computer, heck even some music – BUT FRIGGING ESSENTIAL OILS!  Next thing you know she’s going to want her own symphony!  (Thankfully Symphonies in MP4 format and such are much simpler to find than a veritable orchestra – I feel sorry for the Greeks!)

Don’t tell her I said that last part, or I will be cleaning the catacombs of hell from here henceforth with bones and blood (don’t look at me like that, It’s called HELL for a reason!).  She loves her varying delights to be unknown and for others to figure it out for themselves, which is why she loves the self-sufficient creative types.  Muses are private individuals you know, which is why we don’t see them often.

In any case, after sauntering through the door minutes ago, and waiting – with her hands on her hip, head tilted slightly and one eyebrow raised – for my sorry ass to get to work, she realized I was still groggy as all hell.  SHE WASN’T HAVING IT!  She dared cross her arms gave me the look, in my house!  MY HOUSE!  And don’t you dare ask me what the look is – YOU ALL KNOW WHAT THE LOOK IMPLIES!  It’s the Muses’ version of the Death Stare that instantly levels worlds like wrecking balls level buildings.

That meant it was double-time for me!  After promptly rolling my eyes – making suure she didn’t see that – I intimated Greaaaat!  (You don’t mouth off to the Muse, or you’re in the slammer, sometimes for life!  Such as been the unfortunate end of many the fool who messed with the Goddess’ power.  Poor, ignorant souls who dared venture on such a wicked and death-ridden road.  Such has been the journey of many one-hit wonders, as we have come to learn.)

Here goes, my first piece, in a night, a long long time, which will soon follow with sacrificial offerings of myriad types.  If you think essential oils are weird, you DON’T EVEN KNOW what she requires of other individuals who mouth of to her!  May the Gods have mercy on their souls skills.

I, uh, gotta go.  The point of her heel just started tapping rhythmically by my side, as she stands slanted looking at me wondering why it’s taking me so long to compose this piece.  Speaking of piece, PEACE!

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This article is free and open source. You are encouraged to share this content and have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and TheBreakaway.wordpress.com.
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About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is an avid book reviewer, researcher, an open-minded skeptic, yogi, humanitarian, and freelance writer who studies and mirrors regularly subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.

His other blog, BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com features mainly his personal work, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information nigh always ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.

Creativity | Imagination | Poetry | Writing | Photography | Lovers | Thinkers | Painters

The Individual: The Foundation Of Society

TheBreakaway | BreakawayConciousness
Zy Marquiez
April 26, 2017

“They [conformists] think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world…Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members….Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist…. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The collective is often promulgated as the vanguard of society – the gears that keep society moving forward.  Truth be told, nothing could be further from the truth.  This is because any collective, or any group, is nothing without the individual – it doesn’t even exist.  It can’t even exist.

At society’s core, the individual is the main gear that makes the world go round.  Like imagination is the foundation of creativity, the individual is the foundation of society.

It’s crucial to comprehend this concept of Collectivism Vs. Individualism, because it’s not something pondered deeply in society nowadays.  Individuals are often given a bad rap, as if wanting to be your own being is a bad thing.  The term ‘lone wolf’ is often bandied about in negative light regarding individuals.  But individuality is not about living life alone, but about maintaining your identity – your individuality, what makes you distinct from everyone else.

No matter what societal structure, job, or group the individual is in, the individual that maintains their identity will be one step ahead of the curve because they will hold the ability to think like an individual, rather than forgo their mental faculties for the group.  This is vital, because many times the mental faculties of individuals wither within groups, which is rather deleterious.

For instance, we all have heard of group brainstorming, the epitome of collectivism.  Group brainstorming is one form of collectivist structure that seeks creation ‘by the group’ at the expense of the individual.  However, this tool is fraught with issues.

Focusing on why brainstorming often fails, author and psychology researcher Susan Cain explains in her milestone book, Quiet – The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking:

“Psychologists usually offer three explanations for the failure of group brainstorming.  The first is social loafing: in a group, some individuals tend to sit back and let others do the work.  The second is production blocking: only one person can talk or produce an idea at once, while the other group members are forced to sit passively.  And the third is evaluation apprehension, meaning the fear of looking stupid in front of one’s peers.”[1][Bold Emphasis added, Italics Emphasis In Original]

How many individuals suffer from such a system?  It’s certainly not optimal, although the illusion of it is always pushed as such.  Furthermore, due to all those reasons, the imagination and creativity individuals could employ otherwise remain stagnant, rarely if ever used except in rare circumstances.

Moreover, the larger the group becomes, the less efficient it is.  This, of course, makes individuals mere cogs in a machine when they could be harnessing their own endless creative potential.

Regarding large group inefficiency, Cain further notes:

“…some forty years of research has researched the same startling conclusion.  Studies have shown that performance gets worse as group size increases: groups of nine generate fewer and poorer ideas compared to groups of six, which do worse than groups of four.   The “evidence from science suggests that business must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” writes the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham.  “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity and efficiency is the highest priority.”[2][Emphasis added]

Furnham’s words boil down this particular issue to the individual.  It’s at that level that individuals shine the brightest.

Hearkening back to issues regarding individuals taking part in groups, Malcom Gladwell, author of the book The Tipping Point, states:

“…when people are asked to consider evidence or make decisions in a group, they come to very different conclusions than when they are asked the same questions by themselves.  Once we’re part of a group, we’re susceptible to peer pressure and social norms and any other number of other kinds of influence…”[3][Bold Emphasis Added]

As we can gather, the collective is not where an individual’s maximum potential lies.

When the individual becomes part of the collective, creativity suffers, and thus, his imagination.

That is why it’s up to the individual to make sure they retain their identity if they are ever forced to work in a group, such as in school or work.

Ultimately, what choices an individual makes are dictated by what they see available.  When the availability of choices is forcefully narrowed down, the path the individual walks on is limited rather than boundless, and the individual’s choices are less than optimal to say the least. 

There is a great saying: “Knowledge is power. Lack of knowledge is lack of power.” A corollary to this would be: Individual potential is based on choices; lack of choices create lack of power.  The most significant ways an individual will lack power is when they merge with a group, thus limiting their choices, and as the example above details.  As we have learned, brainstorming sessions in large groups are not terribly efficient.

Furthermore, as the individual identifies with the group, they tend to merge with the group mind and rarely ever voice their opinion, for various reasons. This is also highly inefficient because the whole point of group work is to cultivate idea and possibilities.

The ironic part is that group brainstorming, on paper, is about imagination, and yet group brainstorming is antithetical to it since it doesn’t maximize on the potential imagination of every individual and only employs a fraction of it.  On the opposite side of that spectrum stands the individual and their maximum potential, every single time.

Individuals which use imagination are self-sufficient in many ways.  The Individual that uses imagination not only seeks solutions, but creates them.  They don’t take anything at face value.  They check, recheck – they research.  Why?  Because individuals realize they control their own path and are responsible for it.  They live a better life, a healthier life, because they imagine better possibilities and put them into action.

These individuals don’t allow themselves to be stopped because they’re incapable of being stopped.  That’s not within their DNA.  It’s not part of their reality structure. 

Curiously, the proclivity to create is so ubiquitous in creative individuals that not creating seems rather foreign.  They always seek create beyond the lines, outside ‘the box’ – always in action, always creating.  This is why ultimately the individual is the foundation of society.

The canvas of endless possibilities is there for everyone.  It requires the desire to create to the nth degree coupled with conscious action for the canvas to become something more than a mere possibility.

What would happen if we all realized our canvas is reality itself?

As the philosopher Sun Tzu once intimated:

“Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?”

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Footnotes:

[1] Susan Cain, Quiet – The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking, pg. 89.
[2] Ibid., pg. 88-89.
[3] Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point, pg. 171.

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About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is an avid book reviewer, researcher, an open-minded skeptic, yogi, humanitarian, and freelance writer who studies and mirrors regularly subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.

His own personal blog is BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com where his personal work is shared, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information usually ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.

Creativity