Listening to Kermit is a creative process in itself. We’re imagining that an inanimate puppet, moved and voiced by someone whose identity is not the puppet, is an actual ‘person’. This leap of imagination is creativity. A full immersion into the concept of Kermit, so much so, that throughout the talk we do not even doubt his person hood.
I am looking at the talk from the perspective of creativity in the pure sciences, since that is the background I happen to most readily connect the talk to.
There are 2 concepts that resonated with me the most:
- Having a Beginner’s Mindset / A Child’s mindset: This encapsulates everything Kermit said earlier about the creative process. It all boils down to not caring in the least about how things have been done, and being curious about how they could be. When we first learn something, we often try (and fail) at even the most basic parts of the art; but eventually our unique exploration consolidates into an understanding that is slightly different from the rest of the world. This is often how I try to see math, it’s the process of playing around with the theorems and proofs that ends up creating new information. It is not necessarily useful information, but it adds personal flavor to the picture.
- Mistakes/Useless stuff today might be innovation tomorrow: Often pure math and physics are chalked off as having no real world value. The concepts are too esoteric. Almost always, the writers of these concepts also have no intention of their work having practical applications, it is a creative (and intriguing) expression for them. Einstein himself said that his work on Nuclear Magnetic resonance had no practical applications. But a little later, his work became the foundation of the MRI machine and went on to save millions of lives.