In 1968, George Land distributed among 1,600 5-year-olds a creativity test used by NASA to select innovative engineers and scientists. He retested the same children at age 10 and again at age 15.
Test results among 5-year-olds: 98 percent; test results among 10-year-olds: 30 percent; and test results among 15-year-olds: 12 percent. Same test given to 280,000 adults: 2 percent.
“What we have concluded,” Land wrote, “is that noncreative behavior is learned.”
What I have concluded is that among the 280,000 adults tested was the entire vat of our current Washington politicians. Really.
Is “sandbox” the new term for a level playing field? I’m not an expert on national economics by any means, and I know that where two or three are gathered often mistrust and dissension follow. But really.
As I’m writing this, the debt deal is awaiting passage, and hopefully when it does it will end the political posturing, stubbornness and refusal to see the real crisis we’re facing. US. You can refer to that as the United States or as in you and me.
Not to mention the jobs deficit. The economy must add 12.3 million jobs each month to return to its peak employment level before the 2008-09 recession, according to Today’s Economist. At that pace, the jobs gap will not be closed until 2020 or later.
Laura D’Andrea Tyson, an economist and professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, believes along with many other economists that “the jobs gap warrants additional fiscal measures to increase private-sector demand and promote job creation.”
She doesn’t see that happening: “Premature cuts in government spending will reduce aggregate demand, will tip the economy back into recession and drive the unemployment rate back into double digits.” Not a pretty picture.
She reports that the McKinsey Global Institute published a new study by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation that reached the same conclusion.
“The United States is under-investing in three major areas that help a country create and retain high-wage jobs: skills and training of the work force, infrastructure, and research and development,” Tyson says.
To say there is not enough money to apply to these areas is ludicrous. We worry about losing jobs to other countries, but that will continue until we offer worthwhile employment opportunities here.
The world is changing, and our resistance to change is the problem — not money. Washington is stuck in a dangerous game of self-will run riot. Like 2-year-olds, the sand is flying and ideas are stomped on instead of listened to.
Years ago a woman minister said to me, “The government is a reflection of its people.” That’s depressing as hell.
True or not, I believe collectively we get caught up in the drama, trapped in the manufactured fear of the moment and allow it to drain our creative juice. It depresses our spirit of innovation and weakens our courage to take risks.
Republicans want us to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. Democrats want to save the world. Good ideas. So each person needs to pull up their bootstraps and get busy with saving the world. One or the other won’t work anymore.
It’s time to listen to one another. It’s time to recharge our creative batteries. It’s time to go into battle, but this time for peace, innovative ideas, job creation, education for all, affordable health care and the overall economic and physical well-being of each person.
It’s not too late to relearn creativity. That will definitely make it a better world.
(Study Sources: Escape from the Maze: Increasing Individual and Group Creativity by James Higgins; also George Land and Beth Jarman, Breaking Point and Beyond. San Francisco: HarperBusiness, 1993)
— Susan Ann Darley is a creativity coach and writer who works with artists, creatives and entrepreneurs to discover, use and market their talents. She offers a free 30-minute coaching session. Follow her on Twitter: @Coach7700. For more information, click here, e-mail her at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call 805.845.3036.
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