Is Social Rejection the Key to Creativity?

I've dedicated a significant part of my post-teens to trying to crack this nut and become more socially active and 'adjusted', at the expense of the solitary and creative endeavors that characterized my younger, lonelier years.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't, as my 'creative output' suffered and at my current age I sometimes wonder if it was worth it. I am also doing well financially, but I know I could've achieved much more in terms of projects if I had not focused on the 'social world' as much.

I'd very much like to exchange perspectives with someone who took the path I didn't take, so to speak. And maybe we can even be of help to each other.

Share your challenges and be completely open and transparent. Use social media to stay relevant and on people's radar. Show people you're just as human as they are.

I'm on the same boat. Achieved financial independence in college. Experienced the highs of having a ton of friends in university and my first job to the lows of not being able to make any good friends as an independent worker.

This seems to be working for me.

no lack of people wanting to connect with a successful mentor. Design your own mentorship in a way that it won’t consume more than an hour/week of your time but will consistently bring interesting new blood to you, run an open office, say from 5-6pm, make it accessible for anyone to book an hour with you and most importantly, to book again if they like the advice, and if they do, you must accept them, even if their idea sucks, keep seeing them until the idea doesn’t suck anymore or they give up, learn to be so pleasant that the ratio of people giving up is falling.

volunteer at your homeless shelter as a ‘socialiser’ (they need people to just come in and talk to folks) and to ‘sleepover’, they need someone awake at all times, this can give you a new perspective.

as others have pointed out, see a psychiatrist.

spend less time on the internet and more time talking to people face to face, anyone, from cashiers to hairdressers to the guy seating next to you, ask questions only about them, if they ask you a question, meld your answer into another question about them.

stop looking for friends and asking people why they disappeared, if you actually ask them "is it because I am a somehow unpleasant person?" don’t. Work on becoming pleasant. How well do you take criticism? How often do you positively criticise? Halt all criticism, even the extemely positive ones.

I had a similar conversation with a psychologist/economist friend who left Goldman Sachs to lead a more fulfilling life, she deals with over achievers in business and sometimes life, that find themselves struggling for a deeper meaning, her answer was, if you only have one or two close friends, it’s perfectly normal, if you don’t have a single person close to you, then you should act on it.

I’m going for a walk.

People relate to those they perceive as similar. When you meet someone, there's two stages to making friends. 1. Attraction, demonstrating you are valuable, which is easy for you thanks to your business success, and 2. Rapport, where you must show the other person you're similar and am OK with making yourself vulnerable to them, and in trusting them, you earn their trust. I think you're OK with 1, not OK with 2. Tell stories, being completely emotionally honest, and in ways where you show, at times, you're just like they are. In the rapport stage where you're trading stories, use the word "we", avoid "you". "We" can make someone think you're already together, "I" can be used as an attempt to bring others to emphasise your situation, while "you" makes the other person compare differences with yourself. "You" can be useful for the attraction stage, but I don't find it useful for the "Rapport" stage. And make sure to listen, and synchronise your emotions with them - if they're happy be happy, if they're upset about something, be concerned.

If you're looking to find a romantic partner there's one more stage but I'll leave that up to you.

Do not worry much, focus on people from your interest, and remember that socialize is also waste your time unworried and speak about general things without take things actually serious.

From my personal experience I can tell you that being to much focused in very concrete topics is sometimes not the best way to find people to spend the time with. And it is nothing wrong; you just may need some common areas to share with others, where you can be just a bit unworried and comfortable (more to enjoy a while with good companions than develop an activity by itself).

I really didn't understand how this works. I know that now I work a lot. But I wasn't like that when I was younger. Nevertheless it was always me that had to keep a relationship going. If I didn't do anything things faded away pretty quickly. If I did the relationship agonized for a while before ceasing.

I know that I am not unpleasant - people don't talk with someone for hours just to be polite. And only one person has ever told me that she always hated me because of how annoyingly smart I was. But then again I went to university where one of my fears was that someone is smarter than I am (and probably a lot of folks actually were).

When not at work most people relax with a game of cards, small talk about repairing the car, the new update for the phone, etc. What I do for fun when I am not programming is read about consciousness studies, biology and nutrition, philosophy, physics. If the person is up for it we can talk for hours on such a topic. But most people most of the time are not. I have two kids and I like talking about them - kids are fascinating and incredibly funny at the same time. However people who don't have kids don't have a clue what I am talking about (I was the same when I didn't have kids). People who have kids usually just want a beer. I like running, hiking, riding a bike - good topics for a conversation. Until I say that it's fun to ride a bike at night, while it's raining.

So I was at lunch with my colleagues one day and it suddenly hit me - the problem is not that I am smarter or a genius or the like. It would be nice, but actually most of my colleagues are as smart as I am and some of them are smarter. The problem is that I cope with pain and hurdles differently. When people stop to rest I usually push some more. When they seek a shelter from the rain I want to ride more. When they need to chat with someone I need to read a book. I am a hyperactive introvert with a strange set of interests. I am a little different and because of that it's much harder for me to make friends.

You say that you have started so many projects. To me this means that you have a lot of energy and it's quite possible that people just don't want to play catch up with you – it’s tiring for them and they may actually prefer to just relax.

Doesn't that have a great deal more to do with the art industry than creativity itself?

Free time might be required, and there's danger in groupthink absolutely, but you can just ignore the noise of the group, rather than avoid the group. Be with the crowd sometime but not all the time. As there's also things to be learned from other people too. And it's great being able to be your own person and ignore that crowd.

Given, I greatly prefer Van Gogh to Picasso and Matisse, it's probably just as likely his mental state were an influence of his art, not the whole loneliness thing. Drawing the conclusion the other way seems dangerous, to encourage isolation. However it's good to say it's not ok, or not one's fault.

It's hard especially due to 'fake socialization' like Facetube and such, smartphones, and people's busy isolated schedules involving central air conditioning to expand a circle of people you know. It seems dangerous to say to be creative you must be lonely, it's very wrong. Yet it's also wrong to say it's wrong to be lonely, because of factors that make it a really hard thing.

I think we need to suggest to other people that aren't so isolated to reach out and be friendly to more people. In the south (of the US) it used to be increasingly common for people to say hi to people they met out walking, and increasingly as people move in from other places, it's rare when someone says hi back. Then people go back into their houses and you don't see them again.

The problems that cause society to be isolating are somewhat improveable, but it requires awareness of it. I think it's possible Van Gogh didn't really want to be isolated, but that was his way of justifying it and being ok with it, and that his feelings of isolation were rooted in deeper problems.

We'll never know. But if you are feeling isolated or whatever, don't feel you have to be that way. It's not your fault though something you have to fight for (because everybody is caught up in doing whatever they are doing), it's everybody else's fault to a degree, and you can be creative either way.

However, being creative with "things" as opposed to people does lead to further social rejection thus reinforcing the formed identity. I guess this is how the nerd/geek identity is formed and maintained?

Thinking independently doesn't necessarily entail sharing one's independent opinions with whomever one meets. Creativity implies the ability to create humour, and making people laugh is one of the easiest ways to get them to like you. Combined with intelligence, which makes it easier to work out what people want to hear, I'd argue that creativity actually brings a significant social advantage, at least when it's consciously directed towards achieving social ends.

Feynman represents a good example of this, achieving social success by using his creativity as a fount of humour.

The article has to lack data as that's the reason for why we are so impressed by creativity. 'True creativity' (as opposed to opposed to the shallow "We have to think outside the box" type of creativity) can not be measured by definition. That's what makes it so intriguing! As soon as something can be fully measured it becomes debatable whether it is still a creative effort or not.

If you accept what I wrote above then the headline of the article appears even more bonkers: How can something that is so complex that we can not fully measure it (yet) be caused (mostly) by a one-dimensional factor? I mean, sure, you could find a single factor if it is very vague one but that's not helpful. I.e. I could say: Being alive is a key factor for creativity. What's more, social rejection is surely also a key factor for becoming a dull person who watches TV all day.

Surely all progress comes from the unreasonable man. Also we only hear about the most famous / rich creative geniuses. I have no particular problem switching off creativity and hanging out (going hiking or something), I am also not famous, not even internet famous. That would lead to the theoretical model that famous people can't shut off their unreasonableness, perhaps at all, which makes them completely cantankerous and anti-social yet also somewhat more productive than better balanced individuals. All kinds of interesting experiments could be devised. Are they able to shut anything at all off, or are they OCD/addicted personalities? If someone who can shut off is converted intentionally or otherwise into someone who looses control of their creativity, are they more successful? College binge drinking to emulate an alcoholic might be monkey see monkey do emulation of creatives... does someone naturally somewhat creative who gains an uncontrollable addiction have the bleed over into uncontrollable creativity?

Another interesting model revolves around the only socially rejected people the general public ever hears about, are the top of the line creatives. That probably tells a lot more about our culture than about the individuals. For example, I suspect the panhandler at my freeway onramp is socially rejected, at least by most, its just "we" will never hear about him unless he becomes a famous painter or poet. Given his cardboard signs I think he's not creative at all, at least not WRT the graphical arts, yet he's got more rejection than most of us. IF most people are socially rejected to some extent or another, thats kind of the purpose of mass media and big cities after all, and the only rejects we hear about are creatives, then a very weird conclusion could be drawn that creativity only comes from rejection, although the reality is almost everyone is somewhat rejected. Much like they all drink water and all creatives drink water so creativity obviously comes from drinking water.

It looks like at least a couple books talk about these concepts. Where would you recommend reading more about them?

It must be noted that I am not convinced from my <1 page of reading that people are truly divided into only two camps in this category, like the philosophy seems to suggest so far.

Ya, we can find allies, but these relationships are fragile and often limited. The problem is that we often cannot find common ground to explore our ideas together (though we can and do offer moral support). When working with other creatives, someone or all of them have to tone it down a few notches to get anything done at all. Studio models attempt to deal with this by providing a decent balance between independence and review.