CaveDude and the Creative Spark

Are you afraid that people will laugh at your ideas? Guess what? You’re right. There will always be people who laugh at you, whether you do anything or not. Some people will dis you for sharing ideas; others dis you for not sharing them. They don’t matter. Seriously, the people who put others down – they are just trying to fulfill a need of their own – the need to feel less inferior. Yes, I said less inferior, not superior. It’s almost the same thing. Some folk desperately need to be better than others, but most just want to feel equal. They want to be ‘as good as’.

Some people will give you an honest assessment of your ideas. Often that starts with ‘that won’t work because….’ You have options. Ignore them. Listen to them. Listen, then resolve the buts.  If the ‘because’ is a valid point, work it out. Imagine CaveDude making a wheelbarrow to haul home the mastodon. CaveBuddy says ‘That won’t work, squares don’t roll.’ Valid. Round rolls. Problem resolved, roll that mastodon home and fire up the grill. CaveDude could have ignored this, discovered his idea didn’t work, and dragged the mastodon home the old way. He could have listened, said ‘Duh!’ and given up right then. Not our guy. He figured out how to roll.

That is what creativity is – finding a solution. CaveDude had options. Rocks are roundish. Lay the mastodon on rocks and push (or pull.) When you get to the edge of the rocks, run the rocks at the back up to the front and repeat. Sounds like more work than just dragging the beast home, doesn’t it? Trees are roundish too. Cut down a bunch of trees and – well, that works the same way the rocks did. Inventing the wheel took a lot of trial and error. A lot of work goes into the failures and almost-ran’s. Persistence and creative thinking invented the wheel. You know CaveDude’s people were persistent. They had to be to get that mastodon home. They had to be creative too, to figure out an effective way of hunting and killing something that could just stomp them to death.

That is what fuels creativity – need. Sure, they could wait around for an animal to get killed or die on its own. Hungry waiting and a lot of competition for the meat from other carnivores. Better to figure out how to get meat without waiting for something to keel over spontaneously. Hmmm. Sneak up on the mastodon while it sleeps and club it to death.  That probably worked some of the time, but I bet most of the time the mastodon woke up and stomped him some CaveDudes. CaveBuddy, watching from over there must have decided distance was good. He probably threw rocks, which would have just made the mastodon mad most of the time. Stomp. Try a sharp stick. Hey, not bad. Just stay out of the way while the beast rampages himself to death, then fetch the meat. Except, well, there went more CaveDudes lost in the rampage. More distance… yeah.

Hunting techniques evolved through necessity. Can you imagine how CaveDude would have reacted if MusketDude had suddenly appeared and shot the mastodon? KABOOM, plop. On the other hand, what if CaveBuddy had described his idea for a stick that fired rock-sized projectiles at the mastodon from a distance? CaveDude would have thwacked CaveBuddy upside the head and grunted the equivalent of “You moron, lay off the freaking mushrooms, will ya?!”

Is there a point to all this? You bet yer sweet bippy there is. Let ‘em  laugh. You go right ahead and innovate, CaveBuddy. The world needs more folk like you.