#1367 - where do ideas come from?

The towel horse from Un-Natural History Not Taught In Bored Schools, etc published by Simpkin, Marshall & Co. (1883). Original from the British Library. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

I was struggling to find something to write about this morning, so I found myself wandering around this question: where do ideas come from?

In The Runaway Species, the authors say that we need the past to be able to create the future. So, ideas sprung from our memory. Yet, how can kids have some many ideas with so little memory? Maybe, they can tap into a memory way bigger than the one in our confined brain.

They also say that "we bend, break and blend everything we observe", and by doing that, we extrapolate new things from the reality around us. Yet, it is not enough.

We also need to pay attention. 

Many people walk through life without paying attention to what happens inside and around them. They look without seeing, eat without tasting and hear without listening. If we don't pay attention, how can we notice the invisible connections between things? How can we break, blend or bend what we don't know it's there?

So, attention is vital.

However, attention follows intention.

So, what truly matters is our intention.

The first step in any quest for new ideas should be to inquire about our intention. And that requires practicing subtraction. A practice that will also allow us to access a memory way bigger than the one in our confined brain.