Sokanu: The Blog

Just how near are we to using our brains routinely to control machines for work or leisure purposes? Will we be able to improve the performance of our existing brains? Have advances in neuroscience, neural network modeling and the physical sciences led us to the point where it could soon be possible to create artificial, nanoscale brains and where might such technology lead us? For transcript and download versions of this lecture, please visit the event's page on the Gresham College website: Future Brain

I watched a brilliant piece of television the other night, Episode 12 of the Charlie Rose Brain Series.  By the way, I highly recommend watching all of them. This particular episode focused on the brain and its connection with creativity. On the program were artists Richard Serra and Chuck Close, neurologist Oliver Sacks, Ann Temkin, chief curator of painting and sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art and Eric Kandel of Columbia University. Each member of the panel was amazing in their own right, Richard and Chuck are both world-class artists (one sculptor and one large-portrait artist), Eric has won a Nobel prize, Ann is at the top of her field at MOMA and Oliver is one of the top neurologists in the world. 

The entire talk focused on how our brains are responsible for creativity. Whereas something like vision or hearing is quite well understood, our understanding of creativity is still quite a mystery. Why do some people claim to be creative while others do not? I know for one that I never list creativity as one of my strengths. And that is because I have always connected creativity to something that is done in the 'arts'. But of course, this is not true. All of us have an immense amount of creativity, yet only some of us actually tap into it.

 One of the best points made in this episode was the idea of "inspiration". Chuck Close said that the idea of having a moment of "inspiration" or epiphany is just a myth. Artists begin to unleash their creativity simply by working hard. Once they start working and putting together the pieces, the creativity begins to flow. This is an interesting point for anyone, because I believe that most of us still think that we need a flash of brilliance, followed by a flurry of late night work to be considered creative.

The other point that came across was the effect that our brain has on creativity. We all know that the left side of our brain is primarily responsible for linguistics and analytical skills. The right side of the brain is responsible for more of the creative, artistic abilities that we demonstrate. We are told that our strengths usually lie on one side of the brain. You are either analytical or creative - you can't be both, that's what I remember learning. But note that Oliver is both a world class scientist as well as a writer of narratives. He uses both sides of his brain.

We have all heard of the story where an individual goes blind suddenly, and almost immediately, their other senses pick up considerably in absence of their sight. Can the same be said for creativity? Well both Chuck and Oliver seem to be living proof of this. They are both "face blind", meaning that they cannot recognize and store information about a face. Equate this to someone being colour blind. Remarkable, isn't it? The reason for this deficiency is a cluster of neurons that have been turned off, or are dormant, in the region of the brain responsible for facial recognition. But what has happened, remarkably, is that on the direct opposite side of the brain (right side) a cluster of neurons have "lit-up", or activated in response. What Oliver and Chuck believe this means is that, as a result, they have had an increase in their creative abilities. Keep in mind that Chuck Close is a large-scale portrait artist, meaning he paints pictures of faces. See what I mean below:

What does this tell us about our capacity to be creative? It tells us that no matter what industry we are in, we are forced to be creative each and every day. Laying a series of pipes throughout Costco to allow heat to pass through and around the store is immensely creative. Watching a scientist conduct an experiment and derive test results in order to publish a world-class theory, is creativity at work. Watching a conductor create and deliver a piece of music is creativity on an audio level. Creativity is all around us.

The reason that most of us don't appreciate the fact that we are creative is because we are not in a career that facilitates it. When we are not in a career that we are intrinsically motivated in or passionate about, creativity seems like a distant thing. Yet take that same person and place them in a career that they are passionate about and watch their creative skills blossom. One thing that I have learned is that creativity is not limited to the arts. It is all around us, and inside each and every one of us, all the time. We just have to learn how to find the right career to unlock ours.

In reading Tony Hsieh's new book, Delivering Happiness, one thing becomes clear: this is not an average book.  Most business books are the same, sticking in a generic biography with some copied Think and Grow Rich principles.  They then sell the book as new and revolutionary. These are average books. What Tony has created is a simple book; easy to read, yet really big on new content. Even though the first two sections were really interesting and educational, I am going to focus on the third section of the book in this blog post.  

The third section of the book focuses on something called the science of happiness.  The scientific field of positive psychology is dedicated to researching and learning more about this science, which is a relatively new branch of psychology.  Some of the current researchers in positive psychology include:  Martin Seligman, Ed Diener, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Christopher Peterson, Carol Dweck, Barbara Fredrickson, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Kennon Sheldon, Jonathan Haidt, Shelley Taylor, C. R. Snyder, Robert Biswas-Diener, Donald Clifton, Albert Bandura, Charles S. Carver, Michael F. Scheier, and Ilona Boniwell.

But what good is this research if we don't have a framework to apply it to?  How can we, as average humans that don't have a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, relate positive psychology to our everyday lives?  Well, there is a fantastic framework presented by Tony in the third section of his book that does a great job of explaining this.  While you will see that Martin explains the same theory in the video below, the method I will write about is a little easier to understand.

The system revolves around understanding that happiness is not a singular object.  It is not a carrot on the end of stick that we attain.  This is the mistake that most people make.  They assume that if they attain a ton of money, a beautiful wife (or rich husband) and a Ferrari (or Tesla for the tech crowd) then they will be happy.  We begin this process by getting the right grades in high school, picking the correct college and then transitioning into the best job.  This is the apparent correct path to happiness.  I wish I could say the path to happiness were that easy, but we know that this is not true.  

Instead, we need to research what truly makes us happy.  What makes us tick?  What makes us get out of bed in the morning?  Well, we can best explain this by dividing happiness into three types: pleasure, passion and then purpose.  Let's go through each one in order to get a better understanding of what each means.

Pleasure

Pleasure is the most common form of happiness.  We all know what this means.  Pleasure is actually measurable via our emotions. We are all aware of what makes us happy and what makes us sad. If we interchange the word happy for pleasure we know what apply our experiences to this section. Many people derive pleasure from eating good food, spending time with friends and going out on a Friday night. These things make us smile, laugh and show noticeable happiness to others.  

So what is the problem with pleasure?  If we put ourselves in situations where we are always smiling and having a good time, haven't we figured out the secret to life?  What is the point of even going through the rest of this post?  Well, the problem comes when we analyze what people are feeling with the rest of their time. Humans, in general, tend to follow a simple graph. The graph spikes Friday afternoon around 5:00 and seems to drop Sunday night.  We have long periods of mediocre happiness during the business week (school or work) followed by high points on the weekend.  And this is not sustainable.  So while pleasure is great for short term moments, it is not going to give us the happiness that we as humans require for the rest of our lives. 

So what can we do to make sure that the graph does not dip every week?  Well, we must learn to master the second form of happiness, passion.

Passion

Passion is a tough thing to explain since it is unique to each individual.  While pleasure is easy to both detect in other people and in ourselves, passion is unfortunately not the same.  And this is because passion is not measurable by emotion like we stated before. The form of happiness involving passion is a state, not an emotion.  Finding this medium of happiness can also be called finding flow or the zone. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote explaining this phenomenon is his excellent book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.  

Finding this state is the key to understanding this level of happiness.  And this involves finding your passion in life.  Sokanu's goal is to help people find their passion in life, in order to push people to achieve this second level of happiness.  Once you find something that you love to do, it doesn't feel like work anymore.  This is how you get the middle part of the graph to rise up to meet the level of the weekend.  If we can discover what we love to do as our career, life becomes much easier.  Finding the portion of happiness called passion is goal that most individuals work for a long time to achieve.  Unfortunately, most wait until too late to start discovering what makes them happy.  My advice?

While you are young, have no responsibilities and have time on your hands to figure out what you want to do (university), PLEASE find your passion. It doesn't matter if your friends think that it is not "cool" or lucrative.  If you know internally that the passion you have found is something that you love, start doing it.  And once you start doing it, work as hard as you possibly can in order to be the best in the world at it. Period. 

So how can there be a level past this?  Isn't finding your passion in life the ultimate goal?  Not only have you identified what makes your emotions happy with pleasure, but now you have found a career that you have a passion for.  What else can there be?  Well, we have been very selfish up until this point. In order to reach a point where we are truly and fully happy, we must find our purpose.

Purpose

Finding your purpose in life is a very personal subject.  I can't help you find this by giving you a guideline like we can with pleasure or passion. So where do we start?  Well, just remember this statement:

Finding your passion in life means that you are part of something bigger than yourself.

Something bigger than yourself can mean a variety of things.  Being involved with charity, politics or religion are the most common versions of this. Or it can be a part of a mission that involves a huge number of people, igniting a global movement.  

Some recent examples can be Al Gore advocating for the climate crisis, inspiring millions of people to make a change in their environmental lives.  In charity, Craig and Marc Keilburger and their charity Free The Children have done some amazing things trying to solve problems that are much bigger than themselves.  In religion, I can think of no-one happier than the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. He understands that he is a part of something much bigger than himself.

Another example that we may not think of are scientists and researchers.  So many people work tirelessly to solve huge medical problems like disease, scientific problems like where the universe comes from and understanding how the brain works.  These people are working on problems that have existed since the beginning of civilization. One person can not possibly understand how the brain or universe works, yet they realize that they are a small part of a much greater purpose.

This is the reason that you see wealthy individuals turn to charity full time later in their lives. Some of them realize at one point or another that making all of their money and buying nice cars gives them pleasure, but does nothing for their legacy.  They then turn to themselves and say, "what impact have I made on the world?"  And very often that impact is very minimal as selfishness has dominated their life previously. They then work to be a part of something much bigger.

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So through these three words we can begin to understand how to build a happiness framework for ourselves. It is not an easy task, but it is easily the most important one that we have in our lives.  After all, what is the point of living if we are not happy?

If you have made it down to the bottom of this post, thank you.  I have embedded a video below from positive psychologist Martin Seligman explaining the framework above in proper terms (I am no psychologist). It is a fantastic watch and gives interesting insight into the world and work of positive psychology.