How to have original ideas
The following is an except from my first book Pragmatic Magical Thinking:
How is it possible to have a novel idea? I suggest there are three primary ways:
1. Synthesis. This is the act of putting together two or more old ideas that haven’t been combined before. For an example from cooking we have the concept of “chicken vindaloo on rice”, and the concept of “spaghetti bolognese”. Therefore, I see no reason why there couldn’t be chicken vindaloo on spaghetti, or rice bolognese! (One common effect of this type of synthesis is to upset prickly people, which can be used for comedic effect. Try it at your next dinner party.)
2. Removal. Take an idea consisting of parts, and remove a fundamental part (analysis). For example, The White Stripes was a rock band consisting of only a singing guitarist and a drummer. This was the so- called “power trio” instrumentation of guitar/bass/drums, with the bass player removed. The removal of the bass player threw their music into an exciting new context, even though the guitar playing or drum- ming in itself was not significantly outside the norm for a rock band.
Another example would be the unicycle compared with the bicycle. The mere removal of one wheel creates a vehicle that, while harder to master and less energy efficient, is significantly more manoeuvrable. As my friend Sugra, probably the most well known unicyclist in New Zealand, has explained to me: unicycles are, unlike a bicycle, able to travel in a squiggly path, or spin on a spot. The single wheel offers a whole new range of manoeuvrability. In both examples, the removal of a fundamental component creates new attributes and meaning, different from the parent form.
3. Discovery. This is the hardest one, as it requires founding a new concept or “logos”: that is, a boundary that allows us to recognise a concept, action, or thing separate from that which surrounds it. Occasionally, we can discover something from nature, harness it, and treat it as a new idea. For example, people did not create the phenomenon of electricity, they discovered it. Once the methods of turning kinetic or solar energy into electricity were discovered, we gained a new concept that could now be added or subtracted from other concepts. Take, for example, the electric guitar, which is a syn- thesis of the acoustic guitar and electricity.
4. Add noise. Since our perception is both a “pattern-recognition machine” and a “prediction-machine”, one way to have new ideas is to pump “noise” into a system. This can produce perceptions of patterns from randomness (pareidolia). Magical practices such as scrying in a black mirror, or the psychological Rorschach blot-test, take advantage of our natural tendency to arrange random information into patterns.
Engaging with randomness or “sortition”, as it is usually referred to by magicians, is an easy way to use discovery in order to have new ideas. I believe that this helps explain what is going on with various forms of divination, from tarot to reading tea leaves. Most forms of divination that I have come across involve some form of sortition, that is, a randomisation, such as the shuffling of cards or the settling of tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. The fortuneteller then uses their creativity to notice patterns, either via the shape of the tea leaves, or narrative patterns between the meanings of the tarot cards. This “discovery from noise” is also a big part of the experience behind psychedelic drugs, and the art inspired by them. It can also be used in music, theatre, and film to create other-worldly experiences.