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
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