Michael Strong introduces John Lobel's Visionary Creativity, arguing that true creative vision means imagining new futures and building the conditions to realize them. Strong connects this to Socratic dialogue and deep study across philosophy, literature, psychology, and economics as ways to question assumptions and see the world freshly.
Hello, I'm Michael Strong, founder of expanseonline.co. I'm also the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice and lead author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems. I want to introduce you today to a book by an author whom I just recently discovered because he reached out to me. This is Visionary Creativity: How New Worlds Are Born by John Lobel. Uh, John Lobel is an architecture professor at Pratt Institute, and he has a vision of what he calls visionary creativity, which is very similar to the way I think about learning, education, and the advance of civilization. You might ask, what does the habit of thought and Socratic on the one hand have to do with visionary creativity on the other? And I would say that what people don't realize is that in order to see new horizons, in order to see the world in fresh ways, one first must question one's existing assumptions. So when I talk about Socratic dialogue and Socratic practice, I'm talking about constantly questioning what you know and how you know it, and what you believe and why you believe it, and what is good and what is true and what is noble. And by means of this ongoing process of reevaluating how you see the world, gradually you learn to see the world in new and unexpected ways, especially insofar as the emphasis is on— to cite the other of my books— being the solution. So if one combines Socratic questioning of one's premises about the world and how one's beliefs relate to each other on the one hand with an orientation towards being the solution, towards getting things done that are valuable to the world, an outcome of that— I'd like to say a natural outcome. We haven't proven it's natural yet, but for me it's been very spontaneous and with many of my students students, it's been spontaneous, is what Lobel calls visionary creativity. That is creativity that goes way beyond simply a child's clever drawing or a different way to use a paperclip. Visionary creativity is envisioning a new future and then working to create the world in which that future is a reality. And especially insofar as it's looking at the fundamentals of culture. So that as one understands oneself and one's culture much more deeply— and that happens when we spend thousands of hours reading, thinking, and discussing philosophy, literature, poetry, religion, anthropology, psychology, political science, economics— and instead of having a dogma we're teaching, we're getting students to think and understand themselves in the world and how the world works while also trying to achieve things in the world, while also doing projects, while also looking at how the projects they want to do could contribute to making the world a better place. The integration of these components leads to something like what Lobel calls visionary creativity, and I think it's really exciting, really satisfying way to engage with oneself and one in the world. And I think many students who have gone through a program like this also find it to be a really satisfying way to focus and orient oneself towards reality, and the future. It develops in a systematic way entrepreneurial and creative ways of seeing the world in the deepest, broader ways. So I encourage those of you interested in Socratic dialogue to read my book, The Habit of Thought, interested in getting things done in the world that matter, read Be the Solution, and interested in Lobel's big picture visionary creativity to buy his book and read it. And one of these days I'll get together with him and we'll do a video dialogue together because we're deeply aligned. Thank you. Michael Strohm, founder of expanseonline.co.
