Exploring Your Creative Genius: Episode 178
In this week’s show I talk about complexity and suggest it could be seen as the science of creativity.
One of the most wonderful illustrations of complexity and the constant adapting that is taking place in a complex system are murmurations of birds in flight. I grew up in Illinois farm country and loved watching massive flocks of black birds take to the sky and engage in glorious synchronized ballet dances. I wondered then where the intelligence directing this extraordinary feat was located.
I’ve learned that it’s a distributed intelligence, present as each individual bird follows a small set of rules. Those rules are spatial and dynamic: each bird is to maintain a specific distance from the bird in front of it and from the birds on either side, continually adjusting to any changes their neighbors make.
When a sudden change happens in the environment around the flock — perhaps a strong gust of wind or one of the perimeter birds spots a hawk — the large reaction the first birds show triggers the wave of dramatic changes that create swirls and twirls and tornado spouts of birds as they adapt and reset.
“Exploring Your Creative Genius” takes an expansive view on what it means to be creative and entrepreneurial in an ongoing conversation led by Carl Nordgren — entrepreneur, novelist, and lifelong student with decades of experience growing his own creative capacity and assisting others to do the same in exciting new ways!
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