"You need a lot of naïvety to do great things"?

Question

I'm reading René Crevel's "L'Esprit contre la raison," & am a bit mystified by the meaning of "Il faut beaucoup de naïveté pour faire de grandes choses," which means "you need a lot of naïvety to do great things."

What are your thoughts on that sentiment? How could being naive help you to achieve great things???

Merci

: )

Answer 1

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. It took me four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. It takes a long time to become young again."

Pablo Picasso

The art of small children is such a joy. Their work is most bold, unique and powerful of any grade. Somehow traditional schooling and a stilted society beat that out of most kids. The Journal of Creative Thinking  reports that kindergartners display greater flexibility and fluency of thought, greater uniqueness of expression, better open association abilities than do third graders. By the time they are seventh graders they lose even more on each of these and their visual imagery skills are much lower. The trend continues throughout our formal education. College freshmen test higher on fluency, flexibility, open association, uniqueness and visual imagery than they do as sophomores, still more loss as juniors and seniors.

"When  I think back on all the c**p I learned in High School it's amazing I can think at all"

Paul Simon."Kodachrome"

Don't let them beat the naivety of the dreamer from you young Skylark.

Keep reading and writing. Keep playing your violin and guitar, and always keep singing. Keep painting and for God's sake keep dancing and laughing.

Whenever I read your posts Skylark I feel the optimism, and positive idealism that I had when once I was younger. The  experience of age has  unfortunately covered that shinny, bright view of the world and myself in it with a dark filter of jaded cynicism. What's really depressing is that many friends my age see me as too unrealistically optimistic.

Like Picasso I work to see as a child again. I draw every day professionally. I have college students working here who practice and compose on my piano in their spare time. I read the adventures of Skylark. I teach college.I attend classes myself. I travel. I try to see the world with  fresh "naive" eyes.

It is better to see one site over and over with fresh, new eyes

than to travel the whole of the earth seeing with the same set of eyes.

With all your wisdom and learning, learn to stay naive.

Answer 2

tu parles francais?

email me please at [e-mail]

Answer 3

:)

Answer 4

Its true. Children are fearless, parents teach them to be afraid.

As adults, society teaches us to fear or avoid situations.

Heres is an example.

The Crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin. He was raised in an enviornment where his father took him out and introduced him to many different animals, animals that most people would come across and run the other way. Steve Irwin embraced the idea of interacting with species that are mostly considered dangerous.

Then, as his 2 children were born, he introduced them at an extremely early age, to wild life. Do you remember when he held his 2 month old son up in front of the crocodile at their zoo in Australia? He took an extreme amount of c**p for that, people felt he was endangering the life of his child. But Steve? It came very natural to him.

His daughter Bindi, now has her own show. She is just as her father was, fearless. Because she was never taught to fear the animals. As a young person (9?), her naivety is allowing her to do great things.

Answer 5

I think it's genius.  Think of how brave you were when you were young and indestructable.  So many wonderful accomplishments in human history have come from this exact idea.

Answer 6

Maybe it's because when you are naive you dot things whole-heartedly. But I don't really believe in that.

Answer 7

The less you know of the world, the less you have known of failure the more willing you are to try new things. You  are not influenced by others because you know nothing. Your simple uncomplicated nature allows for greater scope of discovery.

pas d'quoi