These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 7: Inspire.

Inspiration and Culture

• People’s appreciation of inspiration varies widely across cultures, from place to place, and from time to time. There is no nation or group of people that does not appreciate inspiration, but the themes and aspects of that appreciation often differ greatly.

• The difference in cultures in evaluating and valuing inspiration is not only among countries and large groups of people but also among families and even individuals within the same family.

• Creativity and innovation are, in fact, a reflection of how much inspiration is valued, whether for nations, groups, or individuals. Where creativity and innovation are abundant, there is a high value of inspiration within that culture.

• Inspiration usually does not seek permission from anyone, but the more open and daring the culture of individuals and their communities, the more daring the inspiration that the individuals receive. Daring inspiration probably knocks on everyone’s door, but the self-censorship of conservative individuals causes them to not open their doors when those knocks of inspiration come—or even not to notice them at all.

• Getting to know a new culture increases and improves your reception of inspiration in general, as much as you are open to and assimilate to the new culture. When you deeply understand how others frame their culture and deal with it, that will not only affect your reception of inspiration for a time through a few examples inspired by the new culture, but also will reflect the impact of that culture on your inspiration in the long run.

• Every culture has known inspiration since ancient times, but no matter how advanced civilizations and their inventions and innovations are, every culture has its limitations and moral restrictions that impact the flow of inspiration in the nation’s veins.

• There is no doubt that primitive human and ancient civilizations were more certain and faithful in dealing with inspiration that was directly related to nature. Nature was almost everything for them.

• Primitive humans, who had no other alternatives, believed in the power of inspiration from nature, and nature gave them what they needed. We now think that we have many alternatives, while all our inventions and innovations are directly or indirectly inspired by nature.

• Learning to deal with inspiration across civilizations and cultures is never one way. There is always something in any culture that can inspire others.

• The transferability of manifestations of inspiration is faster and smoother between close cultures. The deeper values that motivate the inspiration, however, are supposed to be exchanged between cultures that are more distant, as they include the newest and perhaps most strange sources of knowledge for each other

To read more about the author, click here

Dahab’s books are available on Goodreads and Booktasters are promoting them. This is the link to a trailer on “Damn the Novel,” his first book translated into English.