What the heck is Creativity
Last night, I was lying in my bed and thinking about the principles that I feel my parents taught me to value. They are mostly pretty simple ideas: Honesty, Charity, Tolerance, Humor, Political Awareness, etc.
But one principle made me think. That was the principle of CREATIVITY. What is creativity? Several years ago, my family and I got lost while hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mtns. I was carrying a rain poncho and my dad was able to fashion a makeshift shelter using the poncho and several pine bows which he cut from a tree. We rode out the night and all made it back to camp safely. Certainly that was creative. My dad was willing to think outside the box -- and, because we were in a Federal Wilderness Area, outside the law -- to protect his family. But simply "thinking outside the box" is not good enough, at least I don't think so. If thinking outside the box were enough, then we would have to call the 9/11 hijackers "creative," as their use of airplanes was certainly thinking outside the box (though one could argue that their use of violence was certainly NOT thinking outside the box.)
A several months ago, my dad sent me to Home Depot to buy some rope. When I described how I intended to use the rope to a salesmen, he persuaded me to buy some nylon tie-downs. These tie-downs were much cheaper on a per foot basis than the rope and actually did what my dad and I wanted it to do BETTER than the rope would have done. Was I being creative by my willingness to try the tie-downs instead of the rope? it certainly wasn't my idea, and the salesman who helped me probably knew all along that they were better than the rope.
So, what the heck is creativity? It is obviously important. I would argue that the world runs on creativity, but I am not sure exactly what it is?
So here is what I am going to do. I am sending this email to almost everyone in my address book, some people I haven't heard from in YEARS. I'll keep everyone's email confidential, but I want some replies. PLEASE don't reply to me. I am going to post this letter on my blog, http://thesloop.blogspot.com/, it will be my first post up there in over a year. I invite, I encourage, I beg you to go up there and post a comment. Start a discussion, let's see where we end up.
posted by John Imrie at Sunday, February 24, 2008
3 Comments:
Creativity is the ablity to take a series of exsisting concepts and from then, dervie something that is different.
Under this theory, scientife theorists like Einstien and Hawking are just as creative as Betoveen, Van Goah and Coleridge.
Okay, its a bit of a simple explanation, but it suffices (besides, this is the first comment!)
Don' know much about creativity, but have collected some others' thoughts on the subject since I write for a living. In no particular order (sources end each paragraph):
Insight, Lonergan argues, is reached “not by learning rules, not by following precepts, not by studying any methodology. . . [Insight] is a function not of outer circumstances but of inner condition, pivots between the concrete and the abstract, and passes into the habitual texture of one's mind.” Insight is discovery, not deduction; it shares the same element of genius that creates great new art. “Were there rules for discovery,” Lonergan adds, “then discoveries would be mere conclusions. Were there precepts for genius, then men of genius would be hacks.” --Steve Hayward quoting Bernard Lonergan, in NRO Corner
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. — Scott Adams
“Back in the day we had creative artists; today we have created artists.” –Lionel Richie, NYT, 9-12-06
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." --anon
“True genius [is] the creative kind that starts with nothing and accomplishes all.” -- Willmoore Kendall’s 1954 translation of Rousseau’s The Social Contract. (p. 65) [I like this one best for Sloop purposes.]
"The recognition and understanding of the need was the primary condition of the creative act. When people feel they had to express themselves for originality for its own sake, that tends not to be creativity. Only when you get into the problem and the problem becomes clear, can creativity take over." --Charles Eames
"It is almost impossible to reconcile self expression with the creative act." --Charles Eames [pretty spiritual/humble, eh?]
Here's creativity means to me: Creativity is the skill of coming up with a wide variety of strategies for doing a given thing. It is best followed by analysis and common sense, which help narrow down the feasible choices.
I hope you are not expecting people to discuss this much. It's a futile exercise to debate the question 'What is X?' Any given word means whatever I think it means to me, and it means whatever you think it means to you. Neither of us can present any arguments as to why the other is wrong unless we both agree to a third-party standard like a dictionary. Which is boring. So the only use in asking that question is to get a survey of people's personal perceptions of the word. Whatever definition you may have, I'm not going to argue with it. That would be like trying to argue that you don't like cheddar cheese--I have no say in the matter because it's entirely dependent on your own experience.
I'm very curious about one thing from your post: you say that 'thinking outside the box' isn't enough to be creative because the 9-11 hijackers did so, and they certainly weren't creative. But why weren't they creative? Does your definition of creativity require that the output be good? Mine certainly does not, so I believe the hijackers were wonderfully creative--but also terribly misguided.
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