Excuse me for a moment, gentle readers, as I wax meditative. While trying to write a post on 'The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show', the old time radio program, an old theory popped back into mind from that place that theories go to hibernate and recover from scrutiny. Old ideas definitely have to go somewhere when you're not considering them, don't they?
The theory is that, roughly, progress comes mainly from naive ideas, or that naiveté is the basis for creativity and not experience. How many artists lose their edge after their first few works, after all? Is it because they've become less talented? No, but maybe it's because they think they know how it works and stop messing about with new techniques? This isn't really about art, though, as much as the world in general. Why does it seem as if things are in a static cycle or repetition at the moment? Could it be because naive ideas are being thrown away in the cause of maintaining the status quo for the currently priviliged? Or because we see naiveté and confuse it with idiocy?
Most of the major changes throughout history are based in naive ideas. Was it a cynical move for the ancient Greeks to start handing out votes in their democracy? No, it was a dumb and original one. Was the first hot air balloon a smart idea? No, it was born from someone thinking about hot air in the most idealistic and naive of ways and then tying a basket to it. New things don't come from experience, do they? Refinement comes from experience and destruction from cynicism. In the great wide world of today, naiveté is an endangered quality. Thanks to years of exposure and overexposure to the troubles all around us, it's almost impossible to be naive.
A day or two ago, I read a story about a thirteen year old high school student who made a functioning renewable energy generator for five dollars, out of what looked like some bits of plastic and sticky tape. It works, and will one day be scaled up to something truly wonderful. She did it, with no disrespect intended, from naive origins. Let's hope that she never loses that ability to take things from the aether and make them real.
Will the human race ever truly make a change for the better? Will the world die under a crowd of abundant and automated cynics? Maybe not, but to change we're probably going to have to learn to listen to some experts, and some naive geniuses. Some of them might even be both.
O.
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