While it is not possible to teach the non-creative to be creative in mind, what is possible is for you to abandon all participation in the wholly unoriginal and unproductive mental/verbal games of the pack. If you yap, either overtly or to yourself, in response to whatever the pack is yapping about, you are forever stuck with being a copycat follower. It does not matter whether you yap back a yea or a nay in reaction to any other pup’s particular yap. You and he both are being lackeys, submitting your mind and its potential to the domination of another, and in our special case, not the domination of another person, but the domination of ideas not original with you, which, by your useless interest therein, dictate the very life of your mind.
By the arrangement of things is the mind of the pack forever entangled in questions/problems of a non-disruptive nature. Matters labeled important by the pack’s mentality are always meaningless, in that they have no immediate material impact on their physical lives or survival. The hot topics in any pack are always actually quite cool, bland and harmless, and only inexperienced pups are fooled into believing otherwise – primarily via their own heated yapping. “Look how excited I am over the question that proves its significance? Right?”
The originality and creativity of mind necessary to see This Thing through cannot be specifically described, since it is unique to each person. But what can be accurately said is that whatever it is, it is not anything that the pack, or its nominal leaders, are ever embroiled in; never has been and never will be. As the pack’s topics gradually change, so too does the creativity of the individual few. One hint is feasible: take any topic/question/problem in which large numbers of humans publicly profess concern and about which they are in dispute, and consider not any one side of the argument, but rather: “Why arguments? Why men argue over food, land and water is obvious – but why arguments over words and ideas? What is going on right here in front of me that everyone misses, as their eyes/I’s stay affixed on the opposing sides of the argument itself?”
Making that your non-exceptional private enterprise will ultimately awaken that special creativity in you, (if it be in you). Separating yourself mentally from the never-original-pack IS the first step to exerting your own originality. No matter how you say you feel about them, pro or con, you simply cannot run with dogs without forever smelling mentally mangy. It is difficult to ever see a truly original and creative person of the mind – for they are never where followers look. (Oh yeah: if you want to, you can take all that was said above about, “the unoriginal pack, and the creative individual” and assume it was referring entirely to the situation in your own head.)
J.