In September, summer is drawing to a close, and after the equinox around the 22nd or 23rd of September, autumn begins.
The sweltering heat gives way to a new clarity.
A fresh wind is blowing!
In the best of cases, it brings with it a new view of the world.
New ideas and new possibilities for being creative appear on the mental horizon.
September
Hand-signed art print with small original drawing, unique, 29.7 x 42 cm
Many years ago, the following stood in giant letters across an entire wall of our living room:
ECLECTIC CREATIVITY.
That means combining already existing things in new ways.
With this motto, we wanted to embolden ourselves to be creative, for everything is already there, just waiting to be discovered and newly composed by us.
Something completely new, new in all its components, I don’t believe we humans could even think or grasp.
In the USA, they once did an experiment in which students were called upon to depict living beings from another planet that were completely different from anything we knew and governed by completely new laws.
It was impossible.
In some way, every creature had a material structure familiar to us: a top and a bottom, an inside and outside, at least one opening for the intake and excretion of food, sense organs of whatever kind to experience the environment. It was subject to growth and decay unless all things were meant to be at a standstill, etc.
We are trapped in this universe with our mental concepts.
It’s therefore vital to expand the mental, to penetrate new realms of consciousness.
And how then are we to be creative? What does our creative freedom consist in anyway?
In new ways of composing, I think.
The world itself does not change but, through a new consciousness, our view of things.
And in my judgement, this view can go very deep, can expand, can look into abysses and the highest heights – immeasurably.
Happy is the one who can share with others what he or she experienced there.
Through eclectic creativity.
Addendum for Philosophers
This ‘universal eclecticism’ that relates to the universe obviously takes place on an entirely different, higher plane and must be distinguished from so-called ‘trivial’ eclecticism, meaning the mere combination of pre-existing components, such as creating a design with set pieces in the fine arts or a compilation in music.
Moreover, the mental process of the eclectic creativity I speak of, i.e. the method, is dialectic (thesis – antithesis – synthesis, which leads to a higher level of cognition, where it forms the next thesis).
The translation of what is seen or experienced must, however, occur eclectically since the ‘building blocks’ that are available for creative expression are tied to this universe.
And this limitation in turn has a feedback effect on the mental creative process, for one cannot express something for which one has no concept (building block).
Make sense?
Now, for those who haven’t yet had enough and wish to truly expand their mental horizons, for these, there is ‘juxtapositional thinking in identity’ (see Balavat, Das Seiende Nichts, p. 33, Verlag Andreas Mascha, Munich, ISBN 978-3-924404-89-5)
Here, two circumstances are viewed as the front and back (corresponding to thesis and antithesis) of one and the same thing. They therefore stand on equal footing beside one another (Latin: juxtaposition), specifically in identity.
As the cognitive process progresses by means of a common general concept, neither circumstance (either thesis or antithesis) is dropped.
Through their being as such, they remain in identity two components of a larger, universal context, and the resulting synthesis includes them in this realisation.
This method of juxtapositional thinking in identity leads to the highest heights of understanding, and since the steps of the staircase that brought us there still remain, the way back is quite easy, and the creative implementation of what has been understood (through existing and therefore eclectic building blocks) becomes possible.
There we go!
More posts from the series ‘Contemplations’:
