What
if they laugh at me?
Laughter
can also be used as a club to kill creativity. Our instinctive reaction
to ideas that don't conform to our expectations is to laugh at them.
Consider how many laughs were created by these once-outrageous ideas:
Copernicus
stated the earth revolves around the sun. Newton said there was
some invisible force called gravity. Louis Pasteur claimed disease
is caused by living creatures too small to see.
Break-Out
Creativity, page 59.
Laughter
is a force that both relaxes and raises our guard against new ideas,
against creativity. Like many things, it is how laughter is used
that makes it our enemy or our help. Next time you laugh at an idea,
make sure you laugh with sheer delight at its cleverness, not at
it - or at the person who came up with the idea.
