What inspires you? Can you surrender to your imagination and grasp at the fireflies of ideas that blink in and out of consciousness? Can you listen to the voice of deity and become enflamed with new ideas? Can you climb a mountain and walk in the hills, carry a question and hear the answers that come? Can you still the wild fury of your thoughts and be still to the flame that lies within? Can you see shapes within flowers or hear the music in the laughter of old women talking?
Inspiration has come to me through all of these things. It would come more often if only I could learn to let go and be still more, to listen with my heart to the stillness, beauty and pain in the world. Every day I come closer…
Blessings, G
“Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.”
-Thomas J. Watson
Who owns ideas? When we conceptualize something new (to us) and we express it out in the wild through media or even tell it to a friend, can we maintain control of it? Can we say “Here is my concept. You can express it to others but you cannot take it further and you can not apply it in ways that I don’t like?” How realistic would that be? Characters, stories and songs can be copyrighted but ideas tend to take on a life of their own. They take root in our imaginations and branch off in all kinds of ways. We find new applications for these ideas far beyond anything that their originator could ever have imagined. Could Alexander Graham Bell foresee the iPhone? Could our ancestors who made the first wheels have imagined a Cobra Convertible or a Race Car or rocket ship? I would say probably not. It was a process of a long chain of originators each of whom took the ideas further. Yet it seems that on occasion, people want their ideas only developed in the ways that they can accept. Recently in a social media group that I belong to, a man who did much work in developing the concepts of Spiral Dynamics took issue to someone applying SD’s memes in a sexual context. He said that he believed that it was “unsavoury” to do so and that Spiral Dynamics was a protected trademark and could not be used in this way. Yet isn’t part of the SD concept a look at how we individuals interact within society? Does he feel that the ideas belong behind a fence? Can ideas survive locked in captivity or do they need to grow and expand in order to survive? I appreciate the response because of the questions it raised for me.
Blessings, G
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
― Ray Bradbury
Ideas according to man are notoriously difficult to kill. Yet people try to kill ideas all the time. Either they try to excise all uses of the ideas and thought or they distort the meaning so that noone will recognize it such as freedom.
Yet ideas like books can also be preserved by those who love them and those who believe in them. Noone can stop an idea that’s been shared. Noone can squash a dream that’s in the hearts and heads of many.
So hear’s what I propose we do. Consider it an exercise for our growth, an invocation and an exorcism at the same time. As soon as you have an idea worth sharing, do so. Write a book, tell a story, sing a song, paint a picture, photoshop an image… carve it out of mash potatoes but communicate it. Send it out into the world and it will live. You know its happened when you have the idea com back to you. Even if the form is different you sent a new meme into the world and in your own way have changed human history. Just by expressing your idea and doing it well. Kind of humbling it is.
Puzzled Dragonflies by G A Rosenberg 
Bug in the System by G A Rosenberg 
