The New Yorker: The Brainstorming Myth

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all

A longish piece on how brainstorm inhibits rather than promotes creativity in comparison to the work of individuals. 

There have been times when I have attempted to brainstorm on projects and discovered brainstorming doesn't work.  Brainstorming seems to need to include people who are all already present.  I have tried brainstorming by email and it pretty much doesn't work.  You're better off in the pursuit of what is called "free writing". Over the last year I've tried brainstorming on my essays for the DCAU and almost nothing has come of it.  By contrast, if I just run ideas by DZ about what I'm thinking of doing I will, when he has time, get very positive feedback. 

What the New Yorker article explains at some length I can summarize in a rather short sequence of sentences.  DZ and I can bounce ideas off of each other because we've established a collaborative relationship, the kind editors and writers have.  The relationship is by its nature primed toward productivity but also, and more importantly, constructive criticism.  Writers talking with writers bring a different set of dynamics that do not necessarily (ever) lead to a similar kind of creative synergy. If writer A comes up with an idea then writer B, guided as he or she will be by his/her own interests and interpretive lenses, will tend to default to what he/she sees through those lenses rather than open up the alternatives.  An editor, by training and habit, is more likely to consider these things.

So over the last year I have found myself hitting brick wall after brick wall in writing about the DCAU and the solution for dealing with these brick walls was not brainstorming but simply plowing through the difficulties.  I didn't need a bunch of new ideas or many outside ideas, I needed to strip away things that were too simple and too obvious. 

Let's take Superman as Christ-type.  Too simple and too obvious to make sense of the majority of actual stories about Superman that work.  It doesn't adequately explain why Superman and Luthor are such compelling foils for each other.  Reframe the combat in terms of Superman as the ideal America and Luthor as the real, corrupt America and everything falls into place.  As I put it at some length in my Mockingbird series, Superman can be more than an American icon but he can't be less than an American icon.  A lot of bad writers, editors, and fanboys want to skip to Superman as Jesus without considering whether or not this is a sustainable case beyond cosmetic narrative similarities.

Let's take Batman.  It could be said that Batman is the peak of human mental and physical potential.  That's true.  But as I've been discussing at great length what motivates Batman is not his strength or intellect but his unshakable experience with grief, loss, and powerlessness.  Artificial contrasts  between Superman and Batman might posit that Superman is the Christ-type and Batman is the pull-yourself-up-by-your-batboots kind of hero.  Of course that fails to account for the entire Bat-mythos.  Bruce gets trained by dozens of people, relies on many people for help and wisdom, and makes a point of cooperating with Commissioner Gordon.  What at first glance could appear to be a contrast has turned out, over the last eight decades, to not be so big a contrast after all. 

In criticism you can begin with the obvious but to accomplish criticism that is more helpful you have to go beyond the obvious.  For instance, let's take a certain big and well-known church that some people say has cult-like tendencies in leadership and discipline.  There are a lot of people who will say this is founded on a personality cult connected to the leader.  Well, does that really explain how a disciplinary process can become controversial?  Not really because arguably the entire Christian faith can be explained as emerging from a cult of personality that surrounded Jesus and His teaching. 

However, if one were to propose that a truncated theology of sin in which sin is seen as springing from pride and not from fear or lack of impulse control; if one were to propose that a reductionist view of sin as things people knowingly do has the potential to distort and influence disciplinary and counseling activity in a community then there's at least the start of an explanation.  After all, a personality cult will tend to reflect strengths or weaknesses of the personality, couldn't it? It becomes important to not merely note that personality cult dynamics can happen but to give some attention to practical views in action.

A reductionist view of sin, motives for sin, and consequences of sin could lead an authority to conflate non-disclosure with deceit, for instance.  Running with such a premise without examining it will lead to some disastrous approaches to disciplinary protocol and precedent--it will literally not matter what kind of procedures or checks and balances are in place if everyone works from a hamartiology that assumes all sin is knowing defiance of divinely sanctioned authority motivated by pride.

An equally importnat observation from the research that has proven brainstorming is not effective in gaining its intended goal is to note that group think dominates.  Brainstorming and group discussion narrows rather than expands creative thought.  The groups tend to come up with fewer and less workable or compelling ideas because the group dynamic kicks in.  People tend to reinforce the same handful of ideas whether or not those ideas even make sense.  Questioning those ideas gets considered to be acting up.  Now I know some people who think that's how it must work in certain church settings but it's also how it works in certain blog settings, ironically enough.  Not really ironically enough, if we think about it, but there are paradoxes afoot. 

So if you are in a moment where you're trying to figure something out and are thinking of brainstorming ideas with people you probably don't need to.  If you know someone you trust and respect and want to talk with that one person about ways to think outside your box, however, that's good.  Proverbs says that in many counselors there is victory but notice the proverb doesn't say you call up a committee meeting!  One of Peter's few great pre-resurrection moments was not necessarily when he was part of the team but when Jesus asked him personally, "Who do you say that I am?"