Earlier this year I was driving around running some errands and I had the car radio tuned to NPR. A lecture had just begun. I was just about to my destination but I kept on driving because the topic was so interesting. I soon put on another 20 miles aimlessly driving around and listening to the lecture for the next hour.
Mainly it dealt with the rise of the modern age and how it been so shocking when it arrived in 1913.
One of the topics covered in the lecture was the cross-pollination of many different fields and how they inspired or altered one another to create new ideas and new concepts.
Artists read evolutionary theory and it inspired them to try out different styles of painting, music, and dance. Doctors looked at the art and started thinking about mental illness and conditions in a different ways. Scientists consulting artists and vice versa. Architects, engineers, political theorists. So many different fields intersecting, altering, and redefining themselves.
Now I look at our contemporary world (saying modern world would not be technically correct). We have got to be the most interconnected people in history. Yet we do so little with it. Sure there are online groups for everything and anything you care to mention but they’re so insular sometimes. They have their own rules, their own interests, own languages and coming in as an outsider is not always easy.
TED talks you say? The TED talks are a series of global conferences that attempt to bring attention to new ideas and provide a platform for people with new ideas to spread those ideas. If you have a day or two to spare, look them up on YouTube.
It’s a noble effort but I have seen in the last years that the TED talks are moving in the direction of becoming merely entertainment opportunities for the geeky.
Real cross-pollination happens when people from diverse disciplines come together without expectations, without agendas, and with an open mind ready to listen to one another.
An evening spent in a cafe just talking. Gathering round a fireplace and chatting with friends with a cup of tea. Being in the backyard with a couple cold ones and letting the late afternoon turn to early evening.
Food and beverage seem to play a role in the creative process. As I recall Compaq computers was founded by two engineers sitting down at the House of Pies
Perhaps it’s because the activity of sharing a meal or a drink makes the mind a little more relaxed and receptive. You may think to yourself that no matter what else happens you will at least get some food or drink out of the process.
I try to keep up with people from different walks of life. From different perspectives. Sometimes I don’t like what I hear, many times I don’t understand. But I am always willing to listen
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