“The future belongs to the right brainers. Those who have empathy, understand the nuances of human interaction and behaviour, find novel ways of putting together seemingly opposing ideas and craft amazing narratives to inspire others.”
- Nii Abbey Boye (Human Resource Generalist)
“The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic ‘right-brain’ thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t.”
- Daniel H. Pink – Author of “A Whole New Mind – Why Right-brainers will rule the Future.”
Growing up, our actions were influenced by our “creative active”. The creative active is a psychological phase of inspiration where the child in us is on fire, always coming up with great ideas, mostly funny mischievous ones. The idea of the creative active, is to always allow our minds to wander into the streets of imagination and the alleyways of thought, which can influence our consciousness and inspire us to produce eureka moments that can become the next “big idea” of innovation in the world.
This is how many inventions and discoveries were made. The long, seemingly unending list of historical discoveries and achievements were developed through the desire of our creative-active. Before civilization, basic inventions and discoveries were made that allowed man possess some form of dominance or power over all other creation. Man already was imbued with power from God. The discovery and understanding of the power we possess within us is the source of all innovation and discoveries. From the discovery of fire through the basic action of striking two stones together, to newer innovation of creating fire through the use of bio-chemical elements, has created an industry that fuels world economies today. Today, fossil fuel, oil and gas companies, firemen and women all belong to an industry that started centuries ago, simply because man stroke two rocks together and discovered fire.
As communities developed, blood was spilled to own lands, enslave people and conquer empires. Metals were beaten into sharp objects called knifes, spears and arrows to allow man dominate over each other and protect each other. A lot of bloodshed went into establishing cities, communities, nations and eventually economies. The proximity of human contact in winning those wars had to be reduced to save lives so soldiers and warriors could go back to their families. Thus new ammunitions were invented. New innovation like canons were employed and the nations that had them were considered powerful. They had the advantage because they could fire at long distances and eradicate the “enemy” without having to sacrifice their own men. Men built ships to encourage international trade, which mostly began with selling our fellow humans as slaves to grow farms and build cities in other nations and to grow the economies of foreign lands. Today, we need visas and passports to travel into countries whereas, in the past people were taken forcefully against their will to develop nations. Security has also improved because of education and innovation. The world has become one entire global marketplace of opportunities and growth. We have built systems to aid and support each other and to avoid repeating the many mistakes made against mankind in history.
The rule of law is protecting the rights of people, although in some cases it seems inapplicable to a certain class of people. These new systems although helpful have also created biases amongst ourselves as a human race, choosing whom we deem worthy to protect and whom we deem worthy to execute. When people lived in the jungle, there were no biases for nature had a way of restoring the balance, because nature is an external force. Nature acted as the rule of law to ensure people did the right thing. Although, today nature still works to restore and protect the balance in society, mankind has had too much interference in the business of one another. Promoting community is good but not when we use it to take advantage of the rights or deny the benefits of others. The jungle had a way of ensuring ethical behaviour. Nature took care of crime because men didn’t have the education to hold law degrees. Communities changed all that when kings, chiefs, elders and judges came into the picture. We built a system to protect and support one another, but we haven’t been fully honest with ourselves. We continue taking advantage of ourselves in basic things we’re all supposed to equally enjoy. We have cheated ourselves in our own systems such as healthcare, educational opportunities, employment, food, clothing, shelter, lands, etc; and we continually do so.
How can we ensure honesty if we are not fair to ourselves in matters of leadership and ruling? How can we build a modern society free of racial discrimination and mental slavery where everyone is treated equally irrespective of ethnic origin or skin colour?
Through our creative-active and critical thinking, we have been able to connect the world together. We are still deeply connecting and embracing one another. Through collective team effort and embracing our diversity, we have built and are building blue chip organizations that are developing global economies and sustaining livelihoods. We are accepting that the universe we live in supports community, helping each other and embracing our uniqueness as a human race as well as our diversity of ideas, which has enabled us create the many innovations we see in the world today. We have achieved all this by valuing the uniqueness of the human mind. Our diversity, differing talents and cultures have helped us understand and appreciate one another. Through modern innovation such as the internet and artificial intelligence, we can globally connect effectively and efficiently than before. Innovation from blue chip companies such as mobile telephony services, chatbots and video conferencing are connecting us, creating jobs and improving our lives. Although they somewhat affect face-to-face social interaction and distract people from connecting deeply with one another physically and emotionally, they are proof of the potential of what the human mind can achieve.
Entering into a new phase of life always has its perks. Whether it’s in education, a new career path, a job promotion, a marriage, a new relationship, dealing with a breakup, or starting a new business, there are always procedures, rules and a whole new social concept to pierce through to settle comfortably in each of these phases. Today, technological advancement is moving so fast that we spend almost 85% of our daily lives on technology (smartphones, social media, television, radio etc). Artificial intelligence is somewhat making things easier. We can video call our loved ones who are miles away and get to share in their emotions. We can also manage our schedules easily to either allow more room for human interaction or not. However, some argue that the more time we spend enjoying the whims of technology, the less time we allow our brains to wander, thus becoming less creative. This is based on an argumentative research which proposes that by 2050, our children will be less creative than us because by then technology and artificial intelligence will simplify almost everything that we wouldn’t have to think to perform the tasks we have to think to perform today. If this is true, human interaction will be affected in a way, especially human interactions like brainstorming. As we prospect the future, we must ask ourselves questions like: Is this the kind of human interaction we want our children to have?
Personally, I believe wisdom and knowledge will always abound because of the access and availability of knowledge in the world today. For nothing at all, this would make us more creative and creativity demands human interaction to share in the fulfillment of innovation. We have come a long way in innovation as a human race and it’s dire to think human interaction and our creative thinking process will severely be affected. This is because Creative Thinking is ideal and a natural phenomenon. Think about Michelangelo’s quest in painting the Sistine chapel, Da Vinci’s innovativeness, the warrior antics of the Central African tribes, the untapped resourcefulness of the Amazon some years back. All these had the natural flow of life. We can constructively say that the mystery behind these creations caused us to dig deeper leading to the development of technology that can lead us to more truth. However, we must always remember that we created technology and not vice versa. Thus, we must not deny our natural minds to indulge in the natural or supernatural processes of thought and silent meditation to inspire creativity in us. Creativity is important. Creativity is necessary. Creative thinking is “The Future”.
