A man is rich in proportion to the things he can
afford to let alone.


Henry David Thoreau, Walden


V. EMBRACE SIMPLICITY

This last quote is not from a Taoist text, but it may as well be. Readers familiar with Thoreau and his philosophy of life as expressed in Walden understand the great importance of simplicity. Creativists must look honestly and intensely at every facet of their lives and root out all that is not necessary. Creativists reduce things to their bare minimum. They search out the essentials. They hold to the pure.

The importance of this principle cannot be understated. It's all too easy nowadays to get caught up in the commonly believed maxim that more is better. Such a view is extremely dangerous to creativists. It destroys their intuition. It introduces expectations which greatly hamper their ability to be spontaneous. It increases their needs, making it more difficult to be self-sufficient. It complicates their lives and corrupts their creativity.

   
         
     
please note: The word "Immuexa" was originally my name for what later became the World-Wide-Web. It's now the name of a company, not a network.

The software known here as "ThoughtShop" was originally called "Colony." The rights to the tradename "Colony" were sold in January 2000.