Solitary Soul

  WHEN PRODUCTIVITY GOES OVERBOARD  Mario D’Couto               Once upon a time, there were 2 woodcutters named Peter and John. They were often at loggerheads over who chopped more wood. So one day, they decided to hold a competition to determine the winner. The rules were simple – whoever chops the most wood in a day wins.              So the next morning – both of them took up their positions in the forest and started chopping away in their fastest possible speed. This lasted for an hour before Peter suddenly stopped. When John realised that there was no chopping sound from his opponent’s side, he thought, ‘Ah ha! He must be tired already!’ and he continued to cut down his trees with double the pace.             A quarter of an hour passed and John heard the opponent chopping again. So both of them carried on synchronously. John was starti...

  ARE YOU CREATIVE? Mario D’Couto                         Can you imagine a world without creativity? What would the world look like if there was no creativity? Well, for all we can expect, it would be pretty boring and dull. There would be no speech, no songs, no tools, no ideas such as love, freedom or democracy. It would be an existence so mechanical and impoverished that none of us would want to be a part of.             To achieve the kind of world we consider human, some people had to dare to break the thrall of tradition. Next, they had to find ways of recording those new ideas or procedures that improved on what went on before. Finally, they had to find ways of transmitting the new knowledge to the generation to come. Those who were involved in this process we call creative. What we call culture or those parts of our selves that we internalized from the social...