Protecting our Wild Side

Much of our lives are lived in conformity with family, social structures, local laws, political and economic  realities, religious pressures, geography and climate. Most, if not all of us, conform outwardly, while as individuals we may share some but not all the values we publically profess to. 

Some people suppress their individuality, others are determined to express it; some fall in line, others rebel; some transfer traditional  values to their children, others decide to establish new ones. These opposing behaviours are like the waves of oceans – that can be gentle troughs and crests or alarmingly polarized, threatening to overwhelm societies.

Extreme individuality is considered disruptive. The exception is culture, art, science, and technology - all expected to generate new ideas, or the ability to see things differently and generally seen as a positive force.

Creativity has been called the harnessing of ‘the wild mind’. The term ‘wild’ is associated with rebellious, disrespectful, anti-social behavior, and violence. The movie  “The Wild One”  spoke for  the rebellious 50s; Nelson Algren’s  1956 book ‘A Walk on the Wild Side’ was inspired by a 1952 song  "The Wild Side of Life" by country music singer Hank Thompson, and in turn inspired Lou Reed’s famous 70s  songs   "Walk on the Wild Side" and “ Wild Child”.  

In these examples ‘wild’ is used in a similar sense to a feral animal, a term used for a domestic or captive animal that has escaped and is living as a wild animal, just as rebellious people  step out of mainstream society.  A feral animal instils fear, while animals that naturally live in the wild are admired and seen as regulated by the natural order of things.   

Wild has also been used  for  a sense of independent power  as in “Wild women Do”, a support group founded in 2014 for businesswomen  who lost  their courage under social pressure and from ‘belonging to someone’- parents, husband or children. “Beneath it all they’re still Wild Women, fiery with passion and visionary ideas they want to contribute with and change the world.”

In the field of creativity, ‘wild’ represents a connectedness  to the vast unconscious, not through behavior, but through cultivating a calm mindfulness and an almost dreamlike state. The subconscious is explored and engaged with, rather than analyzed as a psychologist might.  Michael Michalko, in his essay ‘Creative thinking’ writes the  subconscious mind never rests and is like the universe with  “billions of bits of thoughts, observations, and information floating around in your conscious and subconscious mind, totally unobserved, with each bit presenting a multitude of possibilities which evolve and change over time”. They appear as words, phrases, metaphors, images, feelings, dreams, and abstractions.   The creative thinker simply trains the conscious mind to learn how to harvest thoughts and ideas and give them form.  

While Sigmund Freud saw the mind as a dangerous dark place, his contemporary, Frederick Myers believed the subconscious to be ‘a rich source of inspiration, meaning, and creativity’. Writers, composers, scientists and philosophers such as George Elliot, John Keats, Goethe, Mozart, Niels Bohr and  Bertrand Russell,  have all described a process summed up by Russell as a period of very intense thought followed by a period of inactivity for the work to “proceed underground”  “After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.” Others describe being directed by another voice or dreams.

Psychologist Graham Wallas outlined the stages necessary to activate the unconscious : Preparation, Incubation, Illumination and Verification.

These apply not just to science and art but everyday life.  As Carl Jung says “… if you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.”  In the midst of the practical need for conformity, we need to preserve a space for our wild side. 

Durriya Kazi

August 5, 2019