(2015-09-09) Oshaughnessy Improvisation

Patrick O'Shaughnessy on Improvisation. The topic of this post is an obscure book called “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre” which was recommended to me twice in a day by 1) a standup & comedy writer (my sister) and 2) a coder turned philosopher (Kevin Simler).

The methods presented in this book for unlocking ourselves, and rediscovering child-like creativity, are odd and often unappealing, given that we like to project ourselves as sane and in control. But as the author points out, “Sanity has nothing directly to do with the way you think. It’s a matter of presenting yourself as safe.”

Peter Thiel’s Zero to One tells you what you need to do: be truly creative and original in entrepreneurship. This book, without trying to, tells you how to do it.

Three key lessons emerged from the book. Here they are, with quotations to support each:

First, to be creative, we need to bring down our defenses and rigid world views.

uncreative people ‘are ashamed of the momentary passing madness which is found in all real creators

regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea that follows it; perhaps in collation with other ideas which seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link.

I’ve since found tricks that can make the world blaze up again in about fifteen seconds, and the effects last for hours. For example, if I have a group of students who are feeling fairly safe and comfortable with each other, I get them to pace about the room shouting out the wrong name for everything that their eyes light on.

Second, traditional education destroys creativity by creating rigid and homogenous structures for thinking and for evaluating the world.

I began reversing every statement to see if the opposite was also true

Reading about spontaneity won’t make you more spontaneous, but it may at least stop you heading off in the opposite direction; and if you play the exercises with your friends in a good spirit, then soon all your thinking will be transformed.

People think of good and bad teachers as engaged in the same activity, as if education was a substance, and that bad teachers supply a little of the substance, and good teachers supply a lot. This makes it difficult to understand that education can be a destructive process, and that bad teachers are wrecking talent, and that good and bad teachers are engaged in opposite activities.

Third, every human interaction is a show of status. Understanding what conveys high and low status (and when to deploy them) can be very powerful