Creativity (36 page)
Authors: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
I ran into the radical left and had combat experience with the politically correct movement, powered by the last remnants of the counterculture left in the academic world. In the seventies I became so revolted by the dishonesty, including that of some of the respected academics, that it immunized me forever from wanting to curry favor with the people who applauded them.
So, if anything, certain conservative social values that I had anyway from childhood made me much more individualistic and—
what’s the word I’m looking for?—independent. You know, as a person I don’t think much of the right and I don’t think much of the left. My favorite movie is
High Noon
. I don’t mind a shoot-out. and I don’t mind throwing the badge down and walking away. I sort of have a Hemingwayesque attitude toward life in that regard.
Hunting for Patterns
Wilson typically works on several projects at once, using different methods. This is again a common pattern among creative individuals; it keeps them from getting bored or stymied, and it produces unexpected cross-fertilization of ideas. There are at least four different approaches that Wilson commonly uses. The first is fieldwork in exotic places, which acts as a sort of “nuclear fuel” by providing concrete experiences and data to be elaborated later. The second is attending lectures or meetings, where he absorbs from other experts the latest developments in the domains that interest him. The
third is night-work, the serendipitous connection between ideas that unexpectedly arise upon waking up in the middle of the night. And finally there is the systematic work that takes place from morning to early afternoon, which also includes reading, writing, mathematical modeling, and drawing specimens. The crucial insights sometimes occur during the night-work, but more usually they are the result of the systematic work process itself and its combination with the other three approaches:
I think the best eureka ideas I’ve had are right in the middle of working. Well, for example, a week ago I was sitting having lunch. I do a lot of studying and writing while I’m having lunch. I have a favorite restaurant in Lexington. It’s an Italian restaurant. They know me, they let me sit in the corner. I work for up to two hours every lunch period when I can be at home in Lexington. And bring papers. I read books. I make notes.
I was reading an anthropological work, and I was worrying about why there were such great differences among preliterate societies, and things like patriarchy and the transfer of wealth and so on. And then I saw that it was ecological in ways that the author had missed. He was describing it, typical ethnography. He was describing it as though. “Oh, well, human behavior is so flexible.
We have this, and we have that.” And I was saying, “No. no. It’s ecological. You know, it’s this way among the Australian aboriginals because their resources are patchy and unpredictable. It’s that way in an African agricultural society because they are not unpredictable and patchy,” and so on. And then I started: “But why do these things hold on for such long periods of time? All those fine details of cultural differences hold on?”
And then I thought of the whole notion of ritualization and the need to ritualize and codify and then sacralize some kind of code norm, and that that must be the reason for stasis in cultural differences. In other words, many things will work. But once the society has settled upon something and ritualized and sacralized it, then it becomes very static. And then last night, as I sat and listened to Amartya Sen, the economist, talk about the Nash equilibrium, the steady state of strategies, it occurred to me that they tend to freeze. You know, once they’re set. At least theory
predicts that they freeze.
It occurred to me that in addition to ritualization, and perhaps as an aid to it, the attainment of Nash equilibrium would be a means of reaching equilibrial solution, as opposed to others, and then holding onto them indefinitely. And that the connection between that concept of strategy equilibrium developed by economists should be related to the notion of cultural stasis and ritualization in anthropology. So I’ve just given you an example of the way I’ve been thinking the last several days. Now that last one, Nash equilibrium to cultural stasis, is just the kind of thing that
might occur to me as I was falling asleep. As it did, it came to me while I was listening to the talk about the Nash equilibrium, but it easily could have come to me a couple hours later as I was getting ready to go to sleep. OK. And often that sort of thing does come to me, and then I get up, and I write.
But most of Wilson’s work does not involve coming up with synthetic insight. It consists, rather, of slow, methodical work. Among his current projects is a monograph on the largest ant genus in existence, which requires identifying and describing six hundred related species of ants scattered around the world—one of the largest genera of any kind of animal. In preparation, Wilson has completed more than five thousand drawings with his own hand. “Now that might
sound rather odd,” he admits, “but I find it particularly rewarding. I’m doing that on the side. That’s sort of like a hobby.”
There are few clearer examples of how complex a creative life can be than the one presented by E. O. Wilson. Personal adversities, historical conflicts, and deep changes in the organization of knowledge all clamored for attention and required a positive response. There were many ways that he could go wrong and few that led to acceptable solutions. The way Wilson adapted to the pressing external demands required stubbornness and flexibility, ambition and selfless curiosity. He had to be as pure as the dove while being as cunning as the serpent. In this way, instead of being swept as
ide by the momentous changes swirling around him, he used the emerging ideas from different domains and created with their help a new way of understanding the intricate web of life.
T
HE
L
IFE OF
C
ANCER
C
ELLS
George Klein also hunts small life forms, but his are even smaller, and vastly more deadly, than the fire ants E. O. Wilson pursues. Klein is a pioneer of a recent branch of cell biology known as “tumor” or “cancer biology.” It is a domain that has emerged from studies on the chromosomal constitution, genetic changes, immunology, and the role of viruses in the generation of tumor cells. Like other branches of cellular biology, it has exploded this century into a race for knowledge that was made possible by the development of molecular biology, by constant cross-fertilization between
the rapidly advancing research laboratories, and by the infusion of funds aimed at conquering cancer. In the most general terms we might perhaps say that cancer biology tries to understand how cancerous cells develop, how they grow, and how they die. Traditionally tumors were viewed strictly as pathological entities to be eliminated by any means available. The new approach also wants to learn how to get rid of them, but it is based on the assumption that this goal can best be accomplished if we think of cancer as populations of cells subject to genetic variation and selection, with their own genetic an
d environmental history. Then one can ask the crucial question: Why do these cells disobey the growth-controlling instructions that the rest of the organism obeys?
Klein’s domain, like that of many other people we interviewed,
could scarcely be said to exist until quite recently. The elements of knowledge were there, but they were not put together in a coherent conceptual system. The origins of tumor biology could be traced to the pioneering studies of the American researcher Peyton Rous in the first decade of this century, but like most scientific domains it grew opportunistically by borrowing whatever information was relevant from other expanding disciplines. Science works by putting out conceptual pseudopods that occasionally separate out of the parental field to form an independent discipline; more o
ften than not, however, the shoots are reabsorbed. In this highly charged intellectual atmosphere, research centers compete with each other, as well as complement and stimulate each other’s work with their discoveries.
George Klein leads one of the most exciting of these laboratories, at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Pre- and postdoctoral fellows from all over the world work in his lab. Klein obtained the funding and helped design the building, and for many years he has been responsible for the fiscal and intellectual life of the lab. One of the dilemmas creative scientists face is that if they wish their ideas to continue into the future, they have to become entrepreneurs; but if they become entrepreneurs, they have to take precious time away from their original research.
In addition to running the institute with all that entails in terms of applying for grants and administration, Klein is involved in many enterprises of a very different sort. He has published several volumes of essays that combine personal reminiscences with philosophical reflections, with titles such as
The Atheist and the Holy City
. His fascination with poetry led him to investigate the life of the great Hungarian poet József Attila and to write about his verse. After reading Benno Muller-Hill’s book on the Nazi death doctors, he has become a vocal spokesman for ethical responsibility in
science. And finally, at the many international scientific conferences he attends, he has gained the reputation of being the person who can best summarize and integrate the presentations of other specialists.
A Sunny Pessimism
Klein’s life began in Hungary under less than auspicious circumstances. His father died before George had a chance to know him, and the loss has remained a constant presence in the son’s psyche. On the one hand it gave him an “
incroyable légèreté
,” a great lightness in
confronting life without worrying about a paternal censor, a condition Jean-Paul Sartre attributed to those who grew up without a father. “I did not have to carry an Anchises on my back as I swam to a new country,” he says, quoting Sartre’s metaphor. On the other hand, fatherlessness leaves a burden of a different sort on the son’s shoulders: a feeling that as the oldest male, he is now responsible for the welfare of everyone around him.
Klein remained close to his mother, whom he perceived to be very dependent on him emotionally. His main concern became to satisfy her needs, to keep her from being depressed. Even now his greatest fear is that people who depend on him won’t be happy, that he will let others down. His greatest source of pride is the ability to control his own emotions so as to preserve harmony in personal and professional relationships.
Klein is Jewish, and the cultural environment of assimilated Hungarian Jewry played a determining role in the formation of his character. An orthodox grandmother was especially important, but what counted even more was the generalized valuing of the sanctity of existence and the expectation that one should achieve excellence in one’s life, which he absorbed from the cultural milieu. As he turned fourteen he started doubting the existence of God, and after a two-week spiritual crisis decided that religious beliefs were “absolute nonsense.” Even now he “believes absolutely in the none
xistence of God,” while retaining his awe at the wonderful mystery of life, which he sees as his task to demystify.
As a teenager, Klein was frustrated in school. Although he was ambitious, he feels he didn’t learn anything from the “stupid, oppressive teachers”—except for one, who had a permanent influence on all his students. Kardos Tibor ostensibly taught Italian and Latin, but it is his enthusiasm and love for art and poetry that made him memorable. Klein can still recite Dante’s verses, even though he cannot speak Italian. Uninspiring schools did not prevent him from learning important things, however. Like E. O. Wilson, Klein learned self-confidence and love for nature from the Boy Sc
outs, where he became the youngest patrol leader in the troop. He still remembers fondly the long hikes, the night raids, the pleasant exhaustion after vigorous exertion outdoors. Above all, learning to resist fatigue, hunger, and thirst helped to build up the toughness necessary to confront the future, “when all hell broke loose” toward the end of the
war. But on the train ride home from the outings, he was saddened by the empty and boring conversation of his peers.
For intellectual challenges he turned to a different group. He and a few other Jewish students banded together to discuss music, literature, philosophy, the arts, and mathematics during walks on the banks of the Danube—not as a continuation of what went on in school, but in opposition to it. It was the kind of peer group that used to be relatively frequent in Central Europe and is almost unknown in the United States: a group in which the most “serious” boys earned the highest respect, and one demonstrated superiority by being sensitive and having a broad range of knowledge. In that ci
rcle one never talked about personal matters, only about abstract ideas and aesthetic experiences. It is thanks to these discussions that his interest in culture is still so lively: “I like Dante more than most Italians, and the Kalevala more than most Finns.” And like all the other creative individuals, he spent much of his youth alone. He played the piano and tried to keep his mind in order through music, reading, and thought.
Many decades later Klein developed a new version of the intellectual club. Feeling that specialized scientific interactions were limiting, he started corresponding with kindred spirits, and that correspondence eventually grew into an informal network that spans the globe. All kinds of intellectuals, from physicists to poets, share with him ideas about religion, politics, the arts, and life in general. Occasionally he acts as a clearinghouse for this information by sending copies of letters received from one friend to others he thinks would enjoy reading them. Many of these letters
are dictated into a tape recorder in airport waiting rooms and on the subway for later transcription, and a typical letter is four to six pages, single-spaced. The files of this correspondence take up dozens of cabinets near his office.
In a way, it is surprising that Klein ended up choosing a career in medicine. As a child he had been horrified by saliva, vomit, or bodily functions in general. He remembers being both fascinated and frightened by doctors when six or seven years old. But after high school, medicine seemed the only realistic profession to enter. It was not a positive choice, but more of a process of exclusion that made him start on a respectable career in which a Jew would be less likely to be ostracized. It was not until he was twenty-two years old
and took a rotation in pathology that he became fascinated by the detective work involved in laboratory research.