Sometimes I wonder where the boundary between spirituality and feeling good about yourself lies. When you walk into a room with loud rock music, people dancing and focusing upon feeling good about themselves, what causes the feeling?
Is it that God is touching those in the room?
Or is it that we’re doing the things that facilitate us feeling good?
If we have a ‘flow’ experience – where we lose track of time, where we’re focused on something bigger than ourself, where we are overloading our sensory capacity – is that God, or is it really merely a positive emotional experience?
When I have walked into some large Evangelical Churches this year, I’ve sensed that people in the room have thought that feeling good equated to God supporting their experiences. Maybe they’re right… Maybe God is making them or letting them feel good. Yet what if the same experience can be simulated without involving God?
Then again, if people are enjoying the experience, what does it really matter?
If personal enjoyment and popularity are the criteria for establishing whether something has God’s blessings, wouldn’t you find that sex is the best devotional activity ever? I wonder whether these same Churches would endorse such a line…
But it does matter… as someone who lives with the personal knowledge that spirituality is real, for someone to assert that just “jumping up and down and feeling good” is God is as blasphemous and even idolotrous as saying that God is a tree stump.
We are really simple creatures.
As I listened to a successful business leader of innovation I was dumbfounded at how even one of the most advanced organisations can use just a few different techniques and suddenly they’re classed as ‘innovative’. I have great respect for de Bono popularising creativity and expressing a few useful tools. And it is probably because of this that an organisation just selecting the first thing that occurs to them happens.
Perhaps it’s an explanation of why McDonalds does so well: Don’t give your customers too much choice!
Even if you felt called to use de Bono’s suite of techniques, ignoring the fact that none are validated (and that many other schools of thought exist), I remain bemused that a ‘leader’ of innovation would just choose the first technique that comes to hand. Not that the techniques themselves are poor in themselves – but surely an innovator would be called to look beyond the obvious?
If you want to use de Bono, go beyond the 6 Hats – they’re great, but they’re just the beginning. A scientist should explore water logic, action shoes, ToLoPoSoGo and a bunch of ideas outlined in Serious Creativity… AND look to other sources of thinking on creativity.
We set our standards so low… even people who innovate often end up just innovating enough. With the rise of Asia in an era of abundance and outsourcing, the only way that the developed world can continue to demand the sort of quality of life that it has grown accustomed to is through lifting up the value chain. We don’t get that by digging deeper holes: We get that by freeing our minds…
Take off the handbrake, unleash the throttle and explore the things that you’ve never thought possible… That is the path to genius.