Dancing with Miracles

By Jonathan Milne, The Learning Connexion managing director

What is the connection between creativity, a big ship, weird navigation and dangerous pollution? The same question could be asked in relation to economic melt-down, 9/11 terrorism and many other things.

The container ship Rena is 235 metres long and 32 metres wide. This is an area roughly equal to a test match rugby field (about twice as long and half as wide). It was built big because big is efficient. It had a crew of about 25, most of them from the Philippines.

Rena carried around 1700 tonnes of ‘380 Centistoke’, one of the cheapest fuels available. Most of the things about Rena are cheap. The idea is to shift as many containers as possible at the lowest possible price. Too bad that they’re falling into the sea.

The Rena calamity is the result of a narrow form of creativity dictated by money. Unfortunately money causes trouble when it gets isolated from the rest of life. Probably the smart designers of Rena didn’t have in mind that a birthday party might collide with a reef.

Creative ideas flourish in that delicate zone between resilience and efficiency. Resilience is the ability to cope with bumps. The better you can handle life’s bumps, the more resilient you are.

Efficiency is about getting the biggest possible result for the smallest amount of energy. In the case of Rena, efficiency was high and resilience was too low.

Extreme safety isn’t the answer because it leads to inaction. If a ship never leaves harbour it will be safe and there will no longer be much purpose in having a ship. You might say that Nature is a process of each thing finding balance with all the other things. Cheating is possible although unsustainable because sooner or later it will hit a reef. Humans have pushed the possibilities of cheating. We have tolerated a banking system built on dodgy loans. We have cheated by building huge wealth without paying any attention to huge poverty. We are sailing in shallow water.

At a personal level, artists have to resolve the balancing act. Everything is fluid and there is no safe answer. The challenge is to be able to create art, live happily and earn enough money to be sustainable. It’s not so different from the problems of Rena. If you have a well-paid job doing artful websites for Liberian shipping companies you might find that this doesn’t quite stack up as the best way to spend your life. Then again, if you’re making no money, stuck in a bleak little bed-sit and unable to afford art materials, your dreams of creativity aren’t going to come true.

The balance is not as difficult as it seems. Everywhere you look, including the mirror, you see things that have taken billions of years to reach the delicate place of now. It’s all here, ordinary and miraculous. The trick is to find a way to dance with all the other miracles.

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Jonathan Milne, Managing Director and founder of The Learning Connexion School of Art and Creativity presents some of his 'gently subversive' thoughts on creativity in a series of articles. Milne is equally interested in science and art and has always been captivated by the notion that life has meaning and heaven is within. He has led courses on art, business and creativity in businesses and universities.

In 2008 his book, 'GO! The Art of Change' , was published. He is presently working on 'Art, Meaning and Myth'. He says 'Creativity isn't a slogan - it's about real engagement with who we are. I love to see people getting a bigger sense of what they can be, both individually and collectively. It's like suddenly breaking out of a great spiderweb of entrenched expectations.'