Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds

I made a very exciting discovery this morning that I would like to share with you.

Before the discovery, a little aside about discoveries - the philosopher and computer scientist Margaret Boden made a useful distinction between p-creativity and h-creativity. H-creativity is short for historical creativity, and it involves coming up with an idea that “no one else has had before: it has arisen for the first time in human history.”

H-creativity is real, but very rare. P-creativity is just as real and thankfully much more common. P-creativity, says Boden, “involves coming up with a surprising, valuable idea that’s new to the person who comes up with it. It doesn’t matter how many people have had that idea before.”

So, when I say I made a discovery this morning, I mean this in the p-creative sense. It’s not a new idea as such. It’s just new to me. I discovered it in the same sense that Columbus discovered America. For some people this idea has been home for decades.

Anyway, that made clear, let’s get back to the discovery. It’s really simple and it’s blown my mind. Here it is.

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It needs a bit of build up.

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Ready?

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Right.

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It’s not going to live up to this now, is it?

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It might!

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Ok, right, let’s go. Here it really is.

I do not need to have consistent feelings or thoughts about anything.

For example, my family returns today from a weekend away. I am really looking forward to picking them up from the train station, to seeing my grinning children and my probably tired wife, giving them all big kisses and coming back home with all of them. Can’t wait. I also really wish they would stay away a bit longer because it’s nice to have a stretch of time when I can be by myself.

So do I want them to come back this afternoon or do I want them to come back later?

Yes.

What else can we try this on? Let’s see. Here’s a good one. I am trying to shift the centre of my work to what I believe is my vocation: helping people encounter themselves and each other through philosophy. Prosaically, right now that means trying to sell salons so I can do more salons.

Sometimes, I am absolutely convinced that this is going to work. Pretty much everyone who comes to a salon loves it. It is a real thing that serves real needs - for connection, for community, for clarity and understanding. It is genuinely a special product. And it meets the time perfectly - this is exactly what people long for in our increasingly mediated world. Great. Let’s go!

Other times, I think, fuck, who is going to pay money for this? It’s never going to work. How am I going to get hard-nosed businesses to pay money to have a small group of people sitting together to talk about Plato? I’m deluding myself that I can make a go of this.

So which one is it? Do I believe or do I doubt?

Yes!

It is astonishing to me how relaxing this is. I can feel something in me loosen up when I stop trying to have consistent feelings or beliefs. It’s physical, this sensation. It’s an inner exhalation, a sense of something sighing deeply and for perhaps the first time in its life, chilling out. It’s fine, it hears. You can feel whatever you feel. You can think whatever you think. They don’t have to line up. They can be anything.

Or take the email I sent yesterday (thank you so much for the replies, I will be replying individually over the week).

I am absolutely mortified I sent it. Self-indulgent, self-pitying nonsense, what is this bullshit? Everyone has problems, deal with it. People probably think much less of me now. I really shouldn’t have sent it.

I think it was fucking awesome I sent that email. It was good for me and it was good for the world. It helped me own feelings and attitudes that I have long run away from. And it might have helped someone else see that it might be ok to feel those feelings and that it might be ok to need help and ask for it.

And it was true - we are dependent on each other and we are vulnerable and we are sometimes deeply unhappy with our lives. What is the point of hiding such basic and universal facts of human existence?

You’ll see where this was going.

Was it awful or was it awesome?

Yes!

Honestly, do try this at home. I’m finding it revelatory.