Emergence has a lot to do with imagination and it can happen anywhere.

These bathroom tiles will evoke monster fantasies in some people’s imagination as can be seen in the image below. This example illustrates that if a child for instance, is already thinking about monsters, it is easy to find them everywhere. Move you mouse pointer over the tile image to light up the monsters.

The example below this text uses the same tile, but the imagination comes from the Google Deep Dream project, an artificial intelligence algorithm which uses a limited database of reference images (mainly animals) to try to match the content in a source image. Similar to the mind of a child that is occupied by monsters, this cognitive algorithm cannot think about other things, so it will always match and in most cases mismatch the database images to the original image content.

So the concept of emergence is tightly linked to preconceived ideas and the context. If you think beyond the real context (in this case the random patterns in the tiles), you will get different ‘visions’, which can be called inspiration, illusion or hallucination.

Perception functions well if what you are seeing is what you should be seeing.

If you are able to see what others do not see, you might discover or even invent something completely new.

If others still do not see what you see, there might be a problem :-).

Therefore, to be ‘visionary’, you have to see and think out of the box. The box is actually everything that is obvious and contains what others are already seeing. Too far out of the box will often result in non-sense or revolutionary ideas. Just ‘near the outside of the box’ is the most interesting and evolutionary.

IMAGE | ABILITY is also about being capable (and training yourself) to think and perceive ideas in these different ways and to master emergence. A good approach is to try to think from a child’s perspective, remain curious and look at the world without too many preconceptions. When you grow older, you can rely on much more experience. To keep your ideas fresh and challenging, you can use different methods that may vary for everyone. You might have experienced that your mind wanders a bit more out of the box when you have a fever, when you are tired, when you sleep, when you do some relaxing things or when you are working very hard. Also, when you are under the influence of ‘certain toxic substances’, your judgement might be impaired and your senses distorted. We do not and cannot recommend these methods. The approaches you use should be real mental methods or games that are completely safe.

For example, you can see and interpret things in a broader way by thinking in categories and topics. When you see a person that you do not like, you can still look for positive characteristics. When you are considering a problem, you might turn the problem into an advantage. If you do not want to see monsters, you can look for flowers.

Seeing in different ways is sometimes explained using the word framing. The frame of your view on the world is like the box. You have to think out of the box, or you need to move or enlarge your frame.

If there is a policy controversy between people or groups of people, they often have a different ‘framing’ of the problematic situation. When both parties move their frame of mind, a common view for both their frames might emerge. This can be called a meta-frame. Meta-frames provide the holes to look through if you want a solution that is good for both parties. A mediator or a peacemaker tries to describe the different views and framing of views and then he or she will try to remove the convictions in order to find common ground.