Twelve commandments of a creative individual

Twelve commandments of a creative individual
Summarizing my life experiences, I will try to define the following major requirements to a creative individual. (From S.K. Sarkisov, “The attempt of a creative biography”, Moscow, 2008, in Russian )
Deep emotions
At the first look it seems that emotions of an individual are linked only to the circumstances, which surround this person and do not depend on his/her will. In reality it is no so. Someone is capable to care much about a close human being, but another does not care not only about other human, him/herself.
The only emotions are not enough. It is not that important suffering itself, but the ability of a sufferer to direct his/her negative emotions along the creativity path. There is a need for so-called “sublimation” or the transformation of physical and emotional suffering into something positive and constructive.
History knows numerous examples of such sublimation. Deaf Beethoven, blind Nickolai Ostrovsky, old and penniless Rembrandt - the most impressive examples of such phenomenon.
Renown composer Alexander Aljabjev, unjustly sentenced, created in jail beautiful musical artwork - song “Nightingale”. After getting freedom, he could not create music pieces of such quality.
My moral sufferings were associated with father’s arrest whom I loved very much and firmly believed in his honesty and high moral standards. Hunger and life misfortunes during the war I have weathered easier more likely due to the fact, that similar difficulties endured all our people.
If for Aljabjev the push for creating his song came from the unjust sentence in court, for me such push was initiated by the hit of teacher’s ruler after which I stopped thinking of myself as a poor, unhappy, and with misfortune. By concentrating all my will “in fist”, I got composed and became a successful student at school.
Much later such push came from Tashkent earthquake. I clearly imagined that could be buried under rubbles. As a result, I could not achieve my goals. After that I seriously focused on research that resulted in the defense of my dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Science. Based in these and other occasions, I have concluded that experiencing suffering is not as important as the ability to channel the energy of the associated emotions towards creativity.
There are a lot of sufferers, but creators are few.

Self-recognition of a creative individual
I recognized myself as a creative person early in my life. My parents purchased color pencils and drawing pads for me. There was no clay at that time, but I was allowed to make figurines of humans and animals using small potatoes and ordinary matches. I created household scenes using such figurines.
One time I drew a house with a dog and cat near it. My father asked to draw another animal because dogs do not like cats. Then I erased the cat and replaced it with another dog. It is commonly believed that children draw the surrounding world. I also drew the things, which surround me. But at that moment I realized that I could not only mirror the real world, but reconstruct the things I do not see, but imagine. This was a great discovery for me.
Child’s fantasy has no limits. The child does not know yet what is possible and what is not. Thomas Edison, when he was five years old, attempted to hatch duck eggs. He wanted to fly by taking drugs producing gas. I did not do such experiments. I was more interested in the arts of painting and sculpture. Later I attended the artistic schools of painter Leljavsky. During the war, when I was drawing playing cards, I recognized that my abilities can help to survive even in hardship.
Greatly important for a child was the encouragement from adults. After finishing the trade school I was awarded with a Certificate of Honor. All this strengthened my self-confidence. At the same time the spirit of competition was also very important. In the trade school, where there were a lot of talented kids, we had contests. When we finally got to the trade, we also had the opportunities to compete. I already mentioned that I envied in positive sense my classmate Grisha Linjov when he made beautiful fresco in the technical college. Such envy also motivates creativity. Much later I read that Michelangelo Buanarotti competed against another titan - Leonardo DaVinci - during the decoration of the Palace of Veccju.
An architect has great opportunities in perfecting his skills. All significant building projects are usually competitive.
Very important that the self-respect common to creative individuals did not develop in megalomania. Creativity is very jealous and requires systematic effort. A creator cannot live by his past successes. He/she must always step forward. When time passed on, I, while doing research, realized that the spirit of competitiveness was also there.
To be the best, to be the leader - this is good motivation.
It is good if an award is coming from fair competition. Alas, as my life experience showed, it was not always the case in real life. So the self-confidence of a creator only is not enough. Other necessary qualities are listed below.

Bravery
Everybody is continuously putting at risk his/her reputation, health, and even life. As many other young kids, I possessed a boy’s bravado. Walking across a lime pit on a narrow plank or rushing to the evening school from the dormitory encircled with street bullies, I was feeling some fear, but convinced myself that I had to overcome that fear.
When I was chasing shepherd boys blocking me from going to school, I feared nothing. Being affected by shear pain, I was about to tear them to pieces.
The agreement to travel with my adversary Pankrat and the fight with the mafia at the construction of Moscow State University were related to the impossibility to surrender without losing face.
Sometimes a man behaves bravely because of no escape.
In the evacuation during the war, when we were already three day on our way without food, out train stopped at a small station next to a train loaded with wheat. I jumped off from our railroad car, climbed quickly up the ladder in the freight car loaded with wheat, drew my hand under the canvas cover and began to fill my pockets with grains. That I heard the shouting of a running guard. I jumped of the ladder and hid in my car. I emptied my pockets on a blanket and the grains were distributed among all passengers. In this case the hunger overcame the fear.
The bravery of a creative individual is another matter. The exemplary case is Andrei Sakharov who distanced himself from his “baby” - the hydrogen bomb. Another example is Solzhenitsyn refusing to take an award from the hands of the president of Russia, poor and losing its glory. Yet another example is N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky standing up against the vulgarization of science conducted by “people’s scientist” Lysenko.
I have had much smaller obstacles in my life, but they also required my courage to overcome fear and stand up “with open face” against militant oppressors of the truth.
Long fighting with Urbov, propagating his utopic ideas under the umbrella of dedicated communist, hardened me as a fighter. This struggle was built on my confidence and mathematical calculations. I did believe that my adversary was condemned to defeat and that I just needed to develop the right strategy against his strong and merciless enemy. We, as Roman gladiators, had no choice: one of us had to die.
To the honor of my enemy, he did not vacillate and fought to the end.

Endurance
My life turned out such a way that the comfort I was kept in by my parents ended up soon and I was thrown to confront the freezing wind of harsh circumstances. The struggle for survival occurred as passing a track with obstacles and that forged my stamina and strengthen my endurance.
Yet in childhood I read Jack London’s book “Martin Eden” and understood that a man has to beat his path in life himself. When I experienced difficulties, I recalled many literature heroes and always found those who experienced much worse.
Was it easy for a teen from a distant Archangelsk homestead to become a top scientist? But Mikhail Lomonosov overcame this obstacle.
There were a lot of similar examples. It must be mentioned that the communist ideology, despite all its misgivings, tuned young people to overcome idleness, carelessness, ignorance, and other bad qualities.
In my life I met people overcoming difficulties. My friend and classmate Gene Ogarkov and Alexander Nikolayevich Zotov, the architect for Tashkent, who were overcoming non-curable illnesses, were for me not only role models to follow, but somehow pointing to my guilt. I felt that I, a healthy man full of energy, worked at one-half of my ability, feared insignificant obstacles on the way towards a great goal that I put in front of me. So, when obstacles, such as high fence on the way to the school or shepherd boys with sticks, I believed that I will overcome them.
Both Boxer and the chief of Sojuzmorporekt were considered nothing more than the barriers, which I must cross.
Extreme rage I experienced with dishonest people. When the chief of the Tashkent branch tried to cheat, I was ready for extreme measures.
Urbov was a serious obstacle, but I was never going to surrender. My friends advised me to submit my dissertation to another Committee. Many did so, but I could not leave my Committee. No, I had to defend my dissertation only here. No giving in to Lysenkovshchina. It was impossible to let the enemy think that he is feared. It was impossible to give up in the struggle for the truth and justice. If you felt right, you had to fight to the end.
It is no enough that you created, invented, wrote, painted, or discovered. A creator must break the hole in the wall made of conservatism, dishonesty, and incompetence despite the threats and provocations. He must win!

Hard work
Well known formula “labor created the humankind” has been recently exposed to doubt. Very many of our citizens, honestly working people, allowed themselves to be cheated off their expectations, and the same time the some Ponzi schemers turned into ridiculously rich.
Various theories popped up declaring the uselessness of hard work and justifying smartness as the way to prosperity. There is also an emphasis on luck and fortune.
But a creative individual cannot count on luck. In order to achieve success, someone must put in a lot of effort. The evidence comes from the lives of the men of the past. Sir Isaak Newton is one of the examples. He did not allow himself even a minute of rest, playing sports, or walking. He considered lost every hour, which was not spent in doing science.
I had a fortune to be acquainted with many truly hard working people. Many of my teachers, co-workers, and friends worked hard, sometimes to exhaustion. The case of my trade school roommate Kolja Didenko shows that deep involvement in art can lead to a tragic end.
Not all the work is productive, but such that brings up creative results, the work well calculated and focused. It does not mean that climbing to the top must be done along the unique trail. I had to correct the direction and speed of each my step towards the goal.
Unfortunately, the knowledge we got in schools is often not sufficient nowadays. The life is constantly changing: we need new knowledge. The time has come when my professional occupation of a fresco painter became unpopular. I had to master more complex, but no less creative occupation of architect. When overwhelming standards in architecture design depleted the creative component of the profession, I decided to do research.
Perestroika in 90-s resulted in sharp decline of research and development, so I had to switch my interest to innovations.
I do not consider such zig-zag route as negative. As the matter of fact, long time activity along the beaten path leads you to the loss of feeling of novelty.
Creative work can be only the one that bring new, unexpected result.
I recall my student years, when my classmates escaped from lectures to watch new comedy in movie. I could not afford to do that. I always remembered that, when fortune let me study in university, millions of other young people did not have such an opportunity. They worked on construction, in factories, and small country black smithies as I did not long ago.

Motivation to innovate
Novelty often confuses many people and, as a result, receives rejection or even (from some conservative folks) outrageous reaction.
But the time passes and people get used to a new device or method and look at it as a common place. There was a time when Parisians sharply protested against Eifel Tower, but now regard it as the symbol of Paris. Such examples are plenty.
A creative person, if he/she is confident in the importance of the usage of new idea, must therefore claim this. If he/she does not do, tomorrow somebody else will, but it might be not urgent anymore.
The meaning of term “novelty” is rather complex. A star, which nobody new before, can be absolutely new though it existed. It was discovered due to a more telescope. Can we consider new a compound made of known components? We can, if such compound has new properties and during its synthesis a new super-additive (synergetic) effect was attained.
By analogy, new are the devices with the elements assembled in a new way; components are mixed in new proportions resulting also in a similar synergetic effect.
Sometime ago engineer V.A. Kuznetsov was invited to develop the design of Promstrojproekt in Leningrad. He also invited me, a young designer, to participate in this project, which assumed, for the first time in USSR, lifting entire stories of a building. But it was known that the method has been already used in the construction in the USA.
I refused, because I thought this was not a new idea. Instead I spent my spare time developing the method of “stepping stories”, which has never been used in the world.
If every child has natural curiosity, later on adults by the way of humiliating and forbidding discourage the child from this in order to make sure that everything is done the ”right way”. Growing up, the individual does everything the way the others do. Konstantin Tsialkovsky could not attend public school due to his deafness and may be thanks to this missed the exposure to standard thinking and contributed greatly to the space exploration.
By the way, that specially shaped template, which I made being an apprentice at the construction of Moscow State University was not a “template”. But when it was copied, it lost its novelty.
Drawing pictures during the evacuation time I did not have samples. In baba Dunja’s cabin there were no playing cards and I had to draw them using my memory. I made images of jacks, queens, and kings as portraits of the surrounding people. Due to war I did not attend school for two years and lagged behind by kids of my age, but I at least for some time was isolated from routine school tests, which assume every student make the same right answer which the teacher knows. Sometimes, if the problem was in the book, was given in the end.
At that time, working in the smithy, I made fire strikers and each one was different. Studying in the trade school, I drew the ornaments, which I could not copy from elsewhere. Every student tried to make something different from his classmate. Copying the solution of a problem from your classmate was a common business in school. I was not something unusual there. That is why I was not shocked by “stepping” stories and the irrigation canals “climbing” on roofs.
But what was acceptable to me, was not understandable to others. It took more than 30 years before I was awarded with a patent for “stepping stories”.

The ability to stand up for your idea
The patent application for “stepping stories” has been filed four times since 1954 and eventually the patent was awarded in 1987.
Detailed analysis revealed the following causes:
1. The idea was too advanced; the society was not ready to accept it.
2. The wrong technical policy of those days, which accepted the only one dominating doctrine of the construction based on assembling pre-fabricated panels.
3. The lack of experience in filing patent applications.
4. The lack of experience in presenting and defending the idea.
If two former causes were external, two latter two were mine.
Many years of correspondence and discussion with patent examiners helped me to eliminate the deficiencies and develop the right strategy of defending my idea.
I concluded that first of all you must know your opponent. This can be a person who does not understand the core of the idea or is not ready to comprehend it due to the lack of expertise in the field, confused or dogmatic.
Such person must be convinced, educated, provided with proper arguments, examples, references to the analogs know to him/her.
For instance, I provided the opponent reviewer of my dissertation S.G. Zmeul I provided with the necessary literature and he, after reading the literature, turned from doubtful into the supporter of my ideas.
Another situation, if your opponent does not have a desire to understand the idea, initially biased against the idea and its author, firm conservator, person with a conflict of interests trying to bury your idea whatever it costs. In this case do not waste your time - the confrontation with Urbov was a brilliant evidence.
Was it worth of the time and effort spent to fight to get the patent and the Degree of the Doctor of Sciences in Architecture? Recalling those years, I must say that the time and effort were not wasted. I grew up as an expert, polemist, and, the most important, as the fighter for the truth.
Regarding to this, it is worthwhile to refer to Mikhail Lomonosov who spent 25 years of his life to set up the ethical standards in the Academy of Sciences, fighting with bureaucrats in science. The Chief of the Academy Office Schumacher was the main bureaucrat in the Academy (basically, the shadow leader) who used the research funds for his personal enrichment.
Lomonosov declared the war against Schumacher and his accomplices. As a result, Lomonosov achieved a lot in his desire to develop the Academy as highly reputable establishment for sciences and training the scientists.

Freedom
Creative activity is not possible without freedom
The harm inflicted on the architecture science by Urbov was not only from oppressing everything truly progressive, but, first of all, from blocking the career of the talented employees of his institute. He frightened them to such a degree that even his deputies did not dare to explain him the false of his doctrine of sending elderly people and children in the experimental micro-district separately to the elderly asylum and boarding school taking away the family connections between them.
At the same time he forced those scientists to review and fabricate multi-page comments-accusations against the studies that could potentially be harmful to the career of the director of the institute. He turned them into his obedient clerks.
When I had a chance to occupy an administrative position, I, feeling like sinking in the daily routine, abandoned the administrative career. At the first opportunity, I escaped from this routine work with my every step being controlled from the top and with no room for creative activity.
It is worthwhile to refer here to philosopher Benedict Spinoza.
When he was offered the professorship at the University of Heidelberg with good salary and promises of “broad freedom of philosophical activity”, but with the pre-condition of “not questioning the established religious faith”, he rejected the offer, saying: “…I do not know what are the limits of the philosophical freedom offered to me that I could not generate a suspicion in the activity against the established religion”.
Valery Artishchev - the brilliant example of a person, who broke up the chains, walked away from lies, took a breath of freedom, and reached the higher level of creativity.

Choice of the opponents
A man from early childhood is getting used to being petted for good deeds and condemned (or even punished) for indecent behavior. I are offensive towards those who do not agree with us, but friendly towards people who estimate us positively. We often avoid those who criticize us.
But positive response is not sufficient for advances in creative work. Unfortunately, I did not recognize in time that critics are much more useful than those who admire us. An opponent (from Latin “oppono” - to counteract) must be unbiased, independent, competent and objective. Judges at different contests, jurors, and official opponents - people who not only stand for justice, but support the progress in any field.
You cannot always find the opponents who meet such requirements. Sometimes you have to coach an opponent, supply him/her with new information in order for that person to get deeper in all the details that are known to you, but to anybody else. This is even more valid when the problem is absolutely new.
I had a chance to work with many opponents. Only during the procedure of defending my dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Sciences I had twelve official opponents, not to mention the reviewers form the Supreme Degree-granting Committee (VAK in Russian). One of the most useful opponents was my official opponent professor D.N. Yablonsky who one of the first mastered new mathematical methods. He organized a computer center in Kiev where he started computer aided design (CAD) in architecture design. He did not need anything to explain. He quickly comprehended the essence of my work, made important comments, and later even allowed me to perform some computations of my model and graphic plotting at his center. After my dissertation defense we became friends and business partners.
It has been often asked: can the author be a good judge of his/her creation? The answer is yes. The reason is that the author in essence estimates his/her “child” on each step of development of the idea. But this estimate unfortunately is not always adequate. On one side, the estimate might be too low especially if the individual has a complex. On the other side, the overestimate of your own creation is even more dangerous. That is why it is important to compare your own opinion against the opinion of others. Especially important in this case the opinions of intelligent and unbiased opponents.

The ability to analyze, generalize, and synthesize
It is a common view that any creative solution of a problem goes beyond the boundaries of logic. But, once the solution is implemented, it can be logically explained. So the mastery of logical skills is very important for a creative individual.
When I was a teenager and faced with the problem of fixing broken shovels during the digging of a forage pit, the real life itself forced me to analyze the causes of the problem and find the solution.
The next lesson of improving the efficiency of an industrial process was given to me from instructor Dahov. Trying to utilize with maximum efficiency the labor of a highly skilled wall painter-craftsman (I as he thought I was) he used different means. He transferred a number of more simple functions to less skilled painters who did all the preparation work. The second, he prepared scaffolds and necessary tools and materials in advance. Finally, he elaborated the time schedule of my transition from one construction site to the other. In essence that was the shortest way. He developed the prototype of the future highly profitable industrial process.
This and other examples made possible that I was prepared to the analysis of various problems from the viewpoint of improving their efficiency.
My colleague invited me to his lecture. He showed the students the design of a public building adjusted to various conditions in a city: radial/circular, square, hexagonal, and other structures of the street network, various building density, and other environment factors. He had to make 80 variations of the design and the accompanying technical and economical specifications.
After getting deeper in the problem, I concluded that all this educational task could be reduced to the comparison of the options based on the main criteria - minimal travel distance of the employee inside the building. When the plan is compact, the distance is at minimum; when the plan is extended, the distance increases. It was sufficient here to plot the graph of the variation of the main variable. All this could be presented in a single sheet (slide) and explained in half an hour instead of several lectures used.
What is about innovations such as inventions? They cannot be analyzed before they are actually invented.
It appears that there are some inventions that reflect similar process.
For instance, my student and I were awarded with a patent for a building specially designed for a periodically flooded location. The building was constructed on a platform that was placed on one arm of a lever. The other arm had empty vessels. When the flood water level reaches the critical point, the vessels filled up with the water from the flooded river are going down lifting the building. The vessels serve as the counterweight for the flood protected building.
When the water level begins to drop down, the water remains in an adjacent pool. A turbine installed in the bottom of the pool will generate electricity that can be used to power the building and pump the water out of the vessels that are now going up and return the building back to its initial position.
In essence, the flooding can be considered as the event turning on two major sub-events: water level increase and drop. Similar sequence can be observed during the avalanche. So we used the same principle of “utilizing bad for good”. Burt as a counterweight we used a pulley block instead of lever. One end of the pulley block was connected to the living quarters of the building, another end - to the warehouse. There was a tight link between these two parts of the building. During the avalanche the stoppers released the warehouse located under the living compound and it slid along the vertical columns down lifting the living compound up the hill with the help of the system of pulleys.
Again, the water remaining after the avalanche snow was melted could be used to generate electricity. But instead of the pool we used here the dam collecting the water from melted snow and directing it to a hydro-turbine. The electricity produced was utilized to pump the water out of the warehouse. Finally, the living compound and the warehouse returned back to the initial positions.
Both inventions used therefore the same principle that turned to be applicable to other similar innovations. Similar approach was used to build an object on the ocean shore exposed to frequent tsunami. A tide-based electric power plant was constructed the fenced area of a buffer pool.
Despite the fact that in the above-mentioned examples different devices and methods were used, but the idea was the same: natural disaster - recovery with the use of the energy of the natural forces.
This allows us to talk about the “package” approach to inventing and the possibility of the generalized method of creativity.

Prudence
Public opinion about people dedicated to creative work have long been that they do not care about money, live by ideas, do not seek prosperity, and are satisfied with only basic necessities to survive.
Leo Tolstoi, count and renowned author, played an important role in making his living modest. He felt uncomfortable about the fact that, due to his social origin he lived with his family in prosperity surrounded by poor and hungry peasants. This psychological discomfort provoked him to eventually make an escape from his manor that ended up with illness and death.
Fortunately I never experienced a discomfort of this nature. My life was such that starting from the age of eight I lived in a family with very modest income. Until my thirties I experienced continuous malnutrition. Trying to get rid of administrative routine, I changed jobs. By the retirement age I was not able to make savings. But I do not regret. Instead, I enjoyed my life always doing what I was truly interested to do. My attitude towards my job has never been as it was a forced labor.
At the same time history knows many examples when a person chasing wealth ruined his/her talent.
The man under pseudonym Demian Bedny had the real name Ephim Pridvorov (last name means the one who is a servant at the court of a king). His last name turned to have meaning. Most of his life he spent at the “court” of Soviet Party “kings” constantly saying hosanna to those who won the bloody struggle for power and smearing their defeated opponents.
After Lenin’s death Demian luckily to him put all the stakes on Stalin’s majority. He was sent for medical treatment abroad and provided with $1,500. That was a huge amount of money equal to the yearly salary of a highly skilled professional in the USA.
The poet became reach, built a huge library; he could be often seen in the best Moscow restaurants surrounded by gorgeous women.
But from all the literary heritage of the poet merely four his poetry pieces were selected in the collection “Three ages of Russian poetry” published in 1986. Poetry experts consider three of them to “very mediocre”.
Our descendants will care the least what a particular person ate or wore. Everybody will be interested in the fruits of our life.

Moral integrity
Creative work and moral integrity are firmly connected to each other.
Recalling my teachers, I have already mentioned that one of them made the portraits of people honestly disclosing the most significant features of their character while the other made smooth, beautified copies of the original.
Leljavsky did not care about the opinion of the model while Kozlov wished the portrait to please a customer, especially when that person was his boss.
Moral integrity does not depend on person’s status. A shepherd, for instance, could be a good person. At the same time high-ranking people not always have such quality.
What to do if you have to deal with a dishonest individual? If in dealing with a person of honor you have to behave accordingly, how shell you respond to “Boxer” breaking common rules? Or - with the director of Tashkent branch?
Good manners are irrelevant in this case. Be a wolf with wolves. You have to stand against such people. Even better not to have any business with them.
Great Ivan Pavlov, after he learned that his lab technician cheated him fixing the experimental data on the conditional reflex, became very frustrated and published an article in “Pravda” asking the readers not to believe in his latest scientific findings on the topic because they were falsified. It was found that the lab technician was trying to please Pavlov.

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