The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World
The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World is a book written by Anthony Brandt, a musical composer, and David Eagleman, a neuroscientist. It was published by Catapult in 2017 and examined the human drive to be creative and innovative and how such these ideals make the species successful. An interesting comparison is made between Pablo Picasso’s painting and Apollo 13’s journey into the moon and back to earth. In the two stories, NASA engineers race against time to save the lives of the astronauts and are proficient enough to understand the importance of functionality. On the other hand, Picasso is merely trying to break away from the expected artistic norms to create something original. To him, time is not essential, and he takes a decade to show his piece of art (9). The authors present the stories to show that creative acts are the same (9). In doing so, they introduce the sole organ that plays the role of creation, which is the brain. As an organ, the brain does not take experience passively but constantly works, using the sensory data it receives to sculpture a better tomorrow with new skills for everyone. Perhaps, the fact that the human brain is continually changing and can remodel itself and everything around it is what the authors believe makes humans distinct from the rest of other living species. To this extent, the authors assert that human beings have cognitive flexibility that remains the essential aspect of the book; that human beings use their brains to be creative, to be flexible and to change the world as they see fit.
Innovation cannot stop, and as humans embrace themselves for the future, they must know that to create is not about making the right object but staying in focus to ensure that the next thing emerges. Indeed, one important; learning point that the book covers is that human beings can quickly adapt. It is the adoptive stance of humans that make new inventions quickly transform lives and become just normal or ordinary events. The aspects present this aspect by showing how smartphones and new forms of technology soon become basic in societies, and this prompts the human brain to look for better alternatives in the way of new inventions. When I read the book further, I got to understand that human beings can learn and quickly adapt because they have the repetition suppression phenomenon and this presents in the way we perceive new things as very interesting at first but the more we interact with them, the more our brains become less responsive to them as we familiarize ourselves with the underpinnings that make them what they are. To further illustrate this aspect, the authors talk about our brains as neural machinery that fails to ensure that good ideas hold for long. However, it also emerges that the brain gets excited when it updates (20). This means that the more information we learn, the more our minds expand to want to experience novel ideas. Perhaps, this is the most critical aspect that drives us to change our perceptions of everything, thereby innovating to make better and more useful things.
Another learning point from the book is that our brains are capable of simulating the future. The authors assert that the mind is capable of making us realize the importance of possibilities and alternatives. This is a talent that makes us modern humans that are not only cognitive but also flexible and able to transform the surrounding through an act that is easily described as being concealed in “what if.” I get to concur with this line of thought since human beings have managed to present themselves as masters of generating alternative realities through pretense play that is a common feature of even the most advanced scripts, movies, and characters in literature. Indeed, by understanding human beings as masters of alternate realities, I get to relate such a role with essential themes in various films that I have watched where a character can be literary anything on the screen. Hence, I get to ask myself, “what if being alive is just another aspect of being a character in the real world, where I have so many alternatives but choose to live in just one reality and thereby forgoing the rest?”
One further reading of the book, the concept of innovation, emerges as a way in which the brain alters what it already knows by building on the basic ideas and expanding them. The authors provide different stories about small inventions that were later improved and eventually revolutionized the world. On a step by step basis, I get enlightened on the genealogy of devices like the iPhone in what the authors state that “groundbreaking technologies don’t appear from nowhere” (32). To this end, the assertion that creativity emerges by turning history into brilliant new forms expands knowledge on why the past exists and the fact that an invention is a result of using the already existing information and developing it several times to come up with an idea or design that might have otherwise seemed abstract decades earlier. Indeed, the authors are also quick to note that we humans are the ones that drive creativity through our innate cognitive software that is the brain. As we feed on existing ideas, we get to use our minds to think out of the box, to change destiny, and ensure that those ideas are absorbed, improved, and used to revolutionize society.
Moreover, the third part of the book presents the fact that ideas have short lives and are in constant threat of being obsolete if there is no desire for improvement. Indeed, the chapters in this section show how human beings are capable of thinking beyond the existing norms to regularly change ideas or improve them to make the world a better place. In this aspect, the authors introduce the concept of creative companies and their attempt to “operate at the border of the possible” (157). Interestingly, it becomes apparent that for an idea to remain viable, it must overshoot the existing norms in the manner in which the creators can think or focus on the far-reaching possibilities. Doing so enables dynamism as people can understand the direction where the society is headed, thereby achieving the capacity to predict the changes to be felt in the future and what type of invention might be needed then.
How then can we effect change, especially in the workplace, to promote innovation? The authors express the need for understanding organizational culture, staying nimble, and providing the right raw materials and support. As pointed out in the book, ideas, when not nurtured, may not reach the necessary threshold required to effect change, thereby petering out (173). In essence, the authors try to show that strength exists in diversification as this is the best way to collect even the small ideas that may seem not important and put them into good use. However, we must not forget that the active brain, which is the factory of ideas, is continuously working and produces insights that compete with one another for superiority. Those that become dominant are then used to effect change, but it is upon us to decide which changes are acceptable within the existing standards and how they can be improved to make the world a fair game.
Furthermore, Brandt and Eagleman’s chapter on the creative school and the role of education in nurturing talents showcase how the past can be exploited to generate ideas. The authors assert that the existing knowledge should not intimidate us into not thinking and expanding our imaginations. This chapter resonates with my view of the world and how I perceive the past as a tool for building the future. By showing me that I can mine the past for new possibilities, the chapter has allowed me to think about myself as an individual who is capable of being innovative in any manner possible as long as I put my heart into it. Furthermore, the chapter points out to the fact that anybody can be creative, more so, children, as long as they are instructed well and can expand their minds and perceive the future and possibilities.
Indeed, getting to read the book gave me a glimpse at the fund of knowledge possessed by the authors on the topic of human beings as creative. I must admit that when I first came across the book, I thought that it would be a boring read mainly because of the page numbers. However, when I started reading it, I got hooked and could not put it down. Right from the first story about the race to save the Apollo 13 astronauts, I kept reading about many other stories and interesting people whose innovations changed the world. The more I read, the more I got to learn about the exciting things that our brains do that make us entirely in control of the world around us. I kept turning page after page filled with information, and the more I read, the more I kept asking myself what would have happened to me had I not been innovative enough to learn how to read. I probably would have missed this exciting read and the fact that whenever I am thinking, my brain learns to be flexible in terms of the knowledge it receives, thereby permitting me to be innovative and to understand that there are many possibilities out there that need my ability to explore.
To conclude, The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World enlightens about the human mind at its innovative ability. Through numerous illustrations, anecdotes, and historical cases, the authors manage to show just how lucky we are to be consumers of innovations as well as our role in the expansion of existing knowledge for a prosperous future. Hence, my take-home points include the fact that ideas are short-lived but can be expanded since our brains are always working to improve experiences, expectations, and perceptions of the present and the future.