Robert Grudin on his new book Design and Truth...

We’ve become quite fascinated with uniqueness here at adroyt. What makes a person and his or her thinking particular to him or her? is a question we bandy about ad nauseam as we identify social media “voices” for our clients. There’s a book that’s been around for a while which explores questions of originality and authenticity. It’s The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation by Robert Grudin.

In the book, Grudin writes, “Because it is a radical act of freedom, creative achievement is a heroic process that requires, in all its permutations, specific strengths of character. This is not to say that creative people are necessarily ‘good’ or even ‘happy’ people in societal terms; I mean that certain heroic habits of mind seem to inform their attitude toward their own work. It is impossible to speak of these strengths without using moral language: words like ‘integrity,’ ‘courage,’ ‘endurance,’ and ‘freedom’ itself. These virtues, irrelevant to the more routine uses of intelligence, become essential when one’s challenges involve self-discovery, spirited inquiry, and individual expression. They are necessary because of the extreme difficulty of original thinking, which must be developed over long periods of time, quite often without adequate societal support.”

We’d like to use this excerpt as the jumping off point for our salon question this week. Do you think it’s difficult in this day and time to garner adequate societal support for original thinking? If so, why? If not, can you point to a time you’ve had support for your creative explorations?