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Psychology of the Creativity Person
- Thread starter Penpilot
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I watched the first video, and hey, I've seen that test he made before.
I didn't have a high opinion on the usefulness or accuracy of his talk. He talked about fluency and divergence, which are the bare-knuckle basics of creativity, but he didn't talk about how to develop those skills. He never discussed them beyond the rudimentary level. He then jumped directly into high-creativity endeavors like new product launches and the music industry, and heavily implied that creativity was an either/or situation, and then went on to say that most creatives are cursed and fail because it's all really difficult. Well of course they do if that's all you have to teach them.
Honestly, I feel that I could give you better pointers. That probably sounds really presumptive. But I'm going to give it a shot and you can be the judge.
There are two basic parts of creativity. The first is Ideation, the way in which you generate a new idea. How quickly do you develop ideas? That's fluency. How different are those ideas? That's divergence. Every idea that you generate is in response to a prompt. Your brain makes a connection between the prompt and an idea it's familiar with. True divergence involves making connections between a stored idea and a prompt that are far apart in your head; sometimes, having a lot of data points can help you fake it (you say "baby" I say "suit," you go "wow that's divergent," I go "not really, the kids are watching Boss Baby behind me"). When you sit down and list ideas to a prompt, that's using explicit ideation. When you relax, and you're half asleep, and ideas pop into your head in the shower, that's called implicit ideation. That last thing, commonly called inspiration, is completely real and is a skill that you can develop. When your brain is relaxed it opens up space to work on old processes, and may make connections between your prompts and ideas that are further away in the brain.
However, all of that is just the basics: The true skill behind ideation, sworn to by the masters, is figuring out how to get control of and manipulate the prompt that's generating your ideas. For a fantasy writer, do you need an orc or a slave warrior? Taking that kind of mental step blows your creative pathways wide open (and hell, it's just for the ideas, in the end you can still call it an orc).
The second basic part of creativity is Iteration. It's not enough to have an idea. You have to take it and fit it into a specific useful shape. The only way to do that is to try over and over until you get the results you're looking for, changing something with every effort. I'm not sure of the standardized jargon here, but I would guess we need the following concepts:
- How close can you get with a first iteration? For a writer, is your first draft garbage, or is it pretty decent?
- How well can you see the ways that your next iteration needs to adapt? Is it really clear what you need to do in your second draft, or not?
- How well can you put your iterative vision into practice? That is, can you fix it or not?
- Based on these skills, do you have the creative stamina or willpower to develop the work to the point where it is successful?
Now, I want to go back to the video above. He makes a key assertion that creatives fail because marketing is really difficult. And it is. I studied marketing at a top-five business school. I can tell you there's a rare trait that you need to have if you want to be successful at marketing - the thing is, it just happens to be creativity.
I firmly believe that most creatives fail because they aren't being creative enough. I'll take that to my grave.
I didn't have a high opinion on the usefulness or accuracy of his talk. He talked about fluency and divergence, which are the bare-knuckle basics of creativity, but he didn't talk about how to develop those skills. He never discussed them beyond the rudimentary level. He then jumped directly into high-creativity endeavors like new product launches and the music industry, and heavily implied that creativity was an either/or situation, and then went on to say that most creatives are cursed and fail because it's all really difficult. Well of course they do if that's all you have to teach them.
Honestly, I feel that I could give you better pointers. That probably sounds really presumptive. But I'm going to give it a shot and you can be the judge.
There are two basic parts of creativity. The first is Ideation, the way in which you generate a new idea. How quickly do you develop ideas? That's fluency. How different are those ideas? That's divergence. Every idea that you generate is in response to a prompt. Your brain makes a connection between the prompt and an idea it's familiar with. True divergence involves making connections between a stored idea and a prompt that are far apart in your head; sometimes, having a lot of data points can help you fake it (you say "baby" I say "suit," you go "wow that's divergent," I go "not really, the kids are watching Boss Baby behind me"). When you sit down and list ideas to a prompt, that's using explicit ideation. When you relax, and you're half asleep, and ideas pop into your head in the shower, that's called implicit ideation. That last thing, commonly called inspiration, is completely real and is a skill that you can develop. When your brain is relaxed it opens up space to work on old processes, and may make connections between your prompts and ideas that are further away in the brain.
However, all of that is just the basics: The true skill behind ideation, sworn to by the masters, is figuring out how to get control of and manipulate the prompt that's generating your ideas. For a fantasy writer, do you need an orc or a slave warrior? Taking that kind of mental step blows your creative pathways wide open (and hell, it's just for the ideas, in the end you can still call it an orc).
The second basic part of creativity is Iteration. It's not enough to have an idea. You have to take it and fit it into a specific useful shape. The only way to do that is to try over and over until you get the results you're looking for, changing something with every effort. I'm not sure of the standardized jargon here, but I would guess we need the following concepts:
- How close can you get with a first iteration? For a writer, is your first draft garbage, or is it pretty decent?
- How well can you see the ways that your next iteration needs to adapt? Is it really clear what you need to do in your second draft, or not?
- How well can you put your iterative vision into practice? That is, can you fix it or not?
- Based on these skills, do you have the creative stamina or willpower to develop the work to the point where it is successful?
Now, I want to go back to the video above. He makes a key assertion that creatives fail because marketing is really difficult. And it is. I studied marketing at a top-five business school. I can tell you there's a rare trait that you need to have if you want to be successful at marketing - the thing is, it just happens to be creativity.
I firmly believe that most creatives fail because they aren't being creative enough. I'll take that to my grave.
FifthView
Vala
I only watched the first video. And I loved it. I loved it mostly because of the sparks it set off in my head.
I don't know how I feel about involving myself in any sort of long debate about the issues—I suspect that a lot in the video might spur heated differences, heh.
On a purely theoretical, philosophical, and logical level (however idiosyncratic for me, heh)...and mixing in some personal desire to teleport myself into that class and debate the man...there are two things I'd want to address.
The first is his assertion that not everyone is "creative" after he has defined creativity in his particular way. I so wanted to ask him, "Have you ever heard of convergent evolution?" I feel he has failed to consider this in his theory. For those unfamiliar with the idea, it's a description of an evolutionary dynamic that describes two distant and/or unrelated species evolving very similar features. But I think the general principle could be applied to the issue of creative ideation. (Hah, I'm using some consilience here, which is possibly ironic in this context.) I'd also fold in the idea of...what's the term? That term that describes how two societies entirely lacking interaction nevertheless may develop the same technology? And of course, there are the famous examples of major technological and/or scientific discoveries being made independently by two or more individuals.
In short, the fact that multiple people come up with the same "answer" when presented with a prompt is not, in my opinion, a 100% certain sign of lack of creativity in those individuals. At the very least, this speaker should have addressed this dynamic of simultaneous discovery/ideation as some kind of outlier in his theory, or an exception, and qualified his argument.
The second thing that really jumped out at me was the way he addressed idiosyncrasy. On the one end of his scale are the people whose prompted ideas are basically common reiterations of common processes of thought and knowledge; on the other end are those who may well have unique, or at least idiosyncratic ideas that aren't understandable and/or useful to other people. Both are considered "uncreative." This is an interesting combo for the ends of his scale.
On the one side, the prompted idea is something like a Pavlovian response—people have, via their culture, nurture, etc., absorbed the patterned responses of their milieu, and merely regurgitate what is utterly expected. Heck, it's what they expect. For example, the writers of the Shannara television show had a character in S2 who becomes possessed, and her friend/lover kept saying, I know you are in there, keep fighting it! Yeah, we've never seen that before, right? When we write our own story, and one of our main characters becomes possessed, how shall we write the interaction between another main character, the possessed one's friend, and that character? Come on Bobby, just fight it! I know you are in there! Maybe I'm just letting my irritation with that show....show. Heh. It was awash in cliche and horribleness.
But on the other side of that scale....more or less the same thing? I mean: The person being "creative" by always taking his or her own highly idiosyncratic approach may be merely regurgitating the habitual response. In this case, the habitual response is basically the knee-jerk decision informed by nothing other than the irrational impulse of self. Possibly, id. Is that creative? How is this different than instinctively pulling a hand back after you've touched a hot stove? Something almost everyone does. Is that instinctive reaction....creative? I'm not really arguing this particular point but merely conceptualizing, in my own (idiosyncratic?) way, that speaker's ideas.
I don't know how I feel about involving myself in any sort of long debate about the issues—I suspect that a lot in the video might spur heated differences, heh.
On a purely theoretical, philosophical, and logical level (however idiosyncratic for me, heh)...and mixing in some personal desire to teleport myself into that class and debate the man...there are two things I'd want to address.
The first is his assertion that not everyone is "creative" after he has defined creativity in his particular way. I so wanted to ask him, "Have you ever heard of convergent evolution?" I feel he has failed to consider this in his theory. For those unfamiliar with the idea, it's a description of an evolutionary dynamic that describes two distant and/or unrelated species evolving very similar features. But I think the general principle could be applied to the issue of creative ideation. (Hah, I'm using some consilience here, which is possibly ironic in this context.) I'd also fold in the idea of...what's the term? That term that describes how two societies entirely lacking interaction nevertheless may develop the same technology? And of course, there are the famous examples of major technological and/or scientific discoveries being made independently by two or more individuals.
In short, the fact that multiple people come up with the same "answer" when presented with a prompt is not, in my opinion, a 100% certain sign of lack of creativity in those individuals. At the very least, this speaker should have addressed this dynamic of simultaneous discovery/ideation as some kind of outlier in his theory, or an exception, and qualified his argument.
The second thing that really jumped out at me was the way he addressed idiosyncrasy. On the one end of his scale are the people whose prompted ideas are basically common reiterations of common processes of thought and knowledge; on the other end are those who may well have unique, or at least idiosyncratic ideas that aren't understandable and/or useful to other people. Both are considered "uncreative." This is an interesting combo for the ends of his scale.
On the one side, the prompted idea is something like a Pavlovian response—people have, via their culture, nurture, etc., absorbed the patterned responses of their milieu, and merely regurgitate what is utterly expected. Heck, it's what they expect. For example, the writers of the Shannara television show had a character in S2 who becomes possessed, and her friend/lover kept saying, I know you are in there, keep fighting it! Yeah, we've never seen that before, right? When we write our own story, and one of our main characters becomes possessed, how shall we write the interaction between another main character, the possessed one's friend, and that character? Come on Bobby, just fight it! I know you are in there! Maybe I'm just letting my irritation with that show....show. Heh. It was awash in cliche and horribleness.
But on the other side of that scale....more or less the same thing? I mean: The person being "creative" by always taking his or her own highly idiosyncratic approach may be merely regurgitating the habitual response. In this case, the habitual response is basically the knee-jerk decision informed by nothing other than the irrational impulse of self. Possibly, id. Is that creative? How is this different than instinctively pulling a hand back after you've touched a hot stove? Something almost everyone does. Is that instinctive reaction....creative? I'm not really arguing this particular point but merely conceptualizing, in my own (idiosyncratic?) way, that speaker's ideas.
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FifthView
Vala
Devor, this stood out to me for the ideas it prompted in me. I can't objectively disagree, but I wonder whether the true metric is "distance" in the mind of the creative or "distance" as viewed from outside that mind--i.e., by others.
In my personal experience, the ideas are close together for me. But I've had many strange looks. My own looks, heh, and looks from others.
I suspect the very notion of divergence is possible only through a process of social normalization. I.e., "divergent" takes the common view as its base; everything not aligning to that normalcy is called "divergent."
In any case, in my own head, there's not much a sense of distance between ideas unless I allow myself to view the ideas by pretending to be "outside" my own head, or that is, trying to see their relationship as others might see it. [Edit: Surely this is a process of trying to be "objective" when considering the ideas. A great philosophical argument might ensue, whether objectivity is truly possible, heh, or at least whether objectivity is possible when describing these internal movements of one's own mind.]
At best, in my own head a more solid description of the differences between ideas might be: those that come most immediately to mind (my conscious mind) and those that I believe are lurking in my mind somewhere but I've just forgotten them for the moment. Heh.
*Edit: To clarify, the prompt is an idea, the moment I've begun to consider it.
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So first, divergence is a tiny piece of the creativity puzzle, and I don't want the fact that we've isolated it for discussion to give it outsized importance. Again, I would say that for ideation, the key is to find ways to manipulate your prompts so that you can generate more and surprising ideas.
However, yes, divergence as a creative skill is about connecting ideas that are far apart in the mind. Going from baby to suit, with bossbaby as a shortcut, is a lot different than going from baby to suit, because seven years ago a baby spewed on your jacket and you thought, "So glad this wasn't my blazer." It may seem like a technical difference, but it isn't. Lots of people saw Boss Baby (Lord help me, I wish I could unsee it). Whatever short-distance connections you can make with that movie might seem fresh at the moment, but other people will be making them at the same time you are.
But then again, that's probably unfair because that's using Boss Baby as the example. If the connection you make is from, say, an obscure french book from the 50s, nobody else is going to be making that connection. So as a practical matter, it's fair to say that being very well read and exposing yourself to a lot of different ideas can help you to achieve similar, and probably better results. And you should.
However, it's still very important for ideation to get control of your prompts to help find more and better ideas, and to take an active role in developing your creative skills, and don't simply use exposure to many ideas as a substitute for developing your creative skills. I think that's a mistake some people make - "I read lots, so of course I have ideas...." No, you've read a lot so you have access to ideas, but that doesn't mean you're using them to the best of their potential.
FifthView
Vala
This may illustrate what I wrote before re: divergence being a description of how someone outside the creative's mind views the connection between ideas rather than how the creative views it. While this example utilizes a peculiar context to explain the short distance for the person making the connection, in the sense that Boss Baby is still freshly on his mind (or some unusual personal experience in the past etched the connection in his mind when a baby spewed on a jacket that was not, thankfully, a prized blazer), the connection is immediate. The two things are close in that person's mind—however idiosyncratic. A second person without that context or experience (or a similar experience) will see "baby" and "suit" as being distantly related or unrelated things.
Or...
That baby's going to grow up and freely adopt the prison of a business suit, one person thinks, or else be hounded and hunted by suits. —Here, I'd illustrate an issue which doesn't seem resolved. Will every two things always have "connections" available between them? Are any two things truly divergent, lacking connections or only able to be related through a long series of connections? Are any two ideas truly far apart, distant from one another?
That baby's going to sew sequins on his business suit some day.
The person drawing the connection for others to evaluate probably does so because the connection is close rather than distant in his own mind. He might be entirely wrong in an objective sense, even making an untenable connection for those he gifts his observations to—idiosyncratic, private, or simply not sufficiently illustrated for the outside viewer.
As a practical matter, for the purposes of offering advice to would-be creators, I'd say that the first step should be this:
Do not assume, starting on your journey, that things by nature have distant relations only, or that they are isolated, naturally unrelated things.
Rather, assume that all things are closely, intimately related.
Apropos for this topic, I'd say check out these images of neurons, heh: picture of neuron - Google Search
Things come already connected, all things interrelate, the whole package is tightly interwoven. A context exists, already.
^This may seem hyperbolic, but I think it's a much better starting point than having a mind full of discrete ideas, or believing that things are by nature discrete. Discrete, "unrelated" ideas are more like smooth spheres bouncing around in a vacuum, hardly coming into contact or else bouncing far from each other with each collision. Unlike a neuron with its many "feelers" and tendency to interweave with other neurons.
This is the kind of faith necessary to ward off despair re: the creative task; it opens up avenues for success. I wonder whether this starting point goes to the heart of the concept of fluency.
Another necessary step, and perhaps a more daunting step:
Your task is to illustrate those connections for someone outside your brain. Heh. Give the proper context.
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FifthView
Vala
There's another issue.
Given A and B—baby and suit—and having the task of finding a connection between them is somewhat different than the process of being given only A and somehow arriving at B.
We do both these things when writing. Hmmm...
Given A and B—baby and suit—and having the task of finding a connection between them is somewhat different than the process of being given only A and somehow arriving at B.
We do both these things when writing. Hmmm...
I mean, I guess some people can just be "weird" in how they make connections in their brain, so that things which would normally be distant are instead really close. And on an academic level that would be really hard to capture in a test. And if you think that's you, then okay, I sure wouldn't challenge it. And of course, everyone is their own person, and when the creative challenge is something as broad as storytelling, you've got to embrace your own personality with it.
However, "distance in the mind" is definitely a thing. If you make a list - say, 20 ways to fell a tree - you'll start to see the kinds of mental gymnastics you have to make in order to get your list to twenty. That's going to be especially true if you stop and combine items that are very similar and push for more divergent answers - knocking it over with a bulldozer or a wrecking ball are functionally the same, aren't they? One thing you'll notice is that you'll jump a hurdle, and sometimes three or four answers open up at once - beavers, termites, a pack of oxen pulling it over with ropes - and then you're stuck again. And eventually you've got to really squeeze the brain for each ideas - dig it out from one side and then push it over. Hack out a little whole and put in a piece of dynamite. You'll see patterns. Burn through it with acid. Burn through it with a controlled fire. Burn - freezer burn - do the same with cold and it'll break when it thaws?
So the long and short of it, is that "true divergence" represents a function of the brain that you can isolate and develop like a muscle. Yes, sometimes people can achieve similar results by virtue of being weird, or by being well-exposed to many different ideas, and I wouldn't want to knock either of those qualities.
But there's a difference between looking creative and actually being creative. There's a specific mental function that we're talking about, and if you're not using it, you're not using all of your creative abilities.
I find that phrasing a bit long winded, but yeah, basically. The concept of ideation, I would say:
You want to find useful connections between lots of different things. And they're there if you look for them.
To me this all sounds terribly muddled. All humans create something over the span of their life. When this fellow, or most people, speak of creativity, they're really talking about a "creative person" but what is that? Do six acts of creativity make me creative? A thousand acts? There's a fellow who lived here in Idaho, spent his whole life creating things, but he was a hermit. No one saw it. The handful of people who knew him, or knew of him, would not call him creative. Not until he was "discovered" at the very end of his life by a university professor was he called creative. Now his works are preserved and studied.
I've been a historian and a computer tech. Now I'm a writer. Am I only now creative? What was I doing before?
The old line is, I'm not an art critic but I know what I like. That is, perception of art is personal. I could argue there's no such thing as creativity, there's just being human. I can say Smith can't draw and Jones can't sing, but this wouldn't mean neither Smith nor Jones aren't creative. I'm sure there were people among the peasants I study who might have been painters or poets, had they only had paint, had they only known how to write. But their fellows who could shape tools with little more than a hammer, or make peas and cabbage palatable, were these not also creative? And if we grant such wide scope to the word, does it even retain meaning?
When this guy started to claim that creative acts must have utility, I bailed. I've seen Jeremy Bentham dance and I was not impressed.
I've been a historian and a computer tech. Now I'm a writer. Am I only now creative? What was I doing before?
The old line is, I'm not an art critic but I know what I like. That is, perception of art is personal. I could argue there's no such thing as creativity, there's just being human. I can say Smith can't draw and Jones can't sing, but this wouldn't mean neither Smith nor Jones aren't creative. I'm sure there were people among the peasants I study who might have been painters or poets, had they only had paint, had they only known how to write. But their fellows who could shape tools with little more than a hammer, or make peas and cabbage palatable, were these not also creative? And if we grant such wide scope to the word, does it even retain meaning?
When this guy started to claim that creative acts must have utility, I bailed. I've seen Jeremy Bentham dance and I was not impressed.
Being a little more familiar with how the academics talk when it comes to creativity, I can say that he meant "utility" in a sense so broad that it's hardly worth mentioning, basically that creativity is divergent but not bizarre and nonsensical. the meat power sky scout. That sentence was totally divergent but didn't serve any point (except it did, but you get the idea).
I do agree that his emphasis on completed creative achievements was completely missing the point, and felt very dated to me. For example, a more recent study showed that when people at a factory were asked what they were most proud of on the job, it was very often a creative achievement, little things like having the idea to put an intercom where there wasn't one before. So the emphasis on new product launches and musicians felt very shallow.
The Meat Power Sky Scout is totally the name of my next book.
This business about creativity has resonance with me. For a long time I distinguished between creativity and originality. I was creative, I said, but not original. I could take existing ideas and riff on them in genuinely interesting ways, but give me a blank sheet of paper and I was hopeless. That's why I was a historian; the raw material was already there. And it was why I was not a writer. The raw material had to come from me. From thin air (is there ever any thick air?)
One day, I decided I was wrong. I don't recall any catalyst for this change in perception but I do recall it being important. I decided a couple of things. One, my distinction was fundamentally false because while it was possible to the words in different ways, the differences are not consistent and ultimately not useful. The only sense in which originality is useful is in defining its obverse, plagiarism. This was important because it removed originality from my shoulders. I could go ahead and do what I knew how to do and now it was suddenly good enough (for me, at least).
Two, this is when I decided that everyone is creative and the whole mystique of the artist is mainly elitist nonsense. I could go on a whole rant about how art was appropriated by the aristocracy in the early modern era, but that wobbles dangerously off topic.
I wonder if others here have wrestled with the creativity/originality/art demon.
One day, I decided I was wrong. I don't recall any catalyst for this change in perception but I do recall it being important. I decided a couple of things. One, my distinction was fundamentally false because while it was possible to the words in different ways, the differences are not consistent and ultimately not useful. The only sense in which originality is useful is in defining its obverse, plagiarism. This was important because it removed originality from my shoulders. I could go ahead and do what I knew how to do and now it was suddenly good enough (for me, at least).
Two, this is when I decided that everyone is creative and the whole mystique of the artist is mainly elitist nonsense. I could go on a whole rant about how art was appropriated by the aristocracy in the early modern era, but that wobbles dangerously off topic.
I wonder if others here have wrestled with the creativity/originality/art demon.
You can thicken air by mixing it with anticipation.
Yep.
I feel like threads about whether something is original or not are pretty common here - or if it's cliche.
i haven't had much issues with it myself, but then I started writing pretty late, and I was already plenty familiar with the quote "Talent borrows, but genius steals."
I'd heard it somewhere as pretty young and I'd kept encountering it. It had made me think quite a bit about the concept of originality and what it means. The idea that originality is only useful as a way to define plagiarism is new to me though, but I have to admit I like it.
Svrtnsse, do you distinguish between creativity and originality and art? The fellow in the video was not at all clear in that regard.
Yeah, people do stress over the converse idea, which often comes with a heading of cliche. Or trope. I think it's telling that in nearly every case, the stress is over an idea rather than over a completed piece of writing. With ideas, people worry about originality and such. With a finished story, the only question is whether or not it works.
Yeah, people do stress over the converse idea, which often comes with a heading of cliche. Or trope. I think it's telling that in nearly every case, the stress is over an idea rather than over a completed piece of writing. With ideas, people worry about originality and such. With a finished story, the only question is whether or not it works.
I have to admit, I didn't get around to watching it yet. I opened the thread when it first appeared, but something got in the way...
...as to the question.
Now that I think about it, I realise this is the first time I think about it.
I would say I don't make any significant distinction between creativity and originality. I could probably figure out definitions regarding what the differences are, but I'm not sure how relevant that is (for me).
pmmg
Myth Weaver
Well, this guys interviews are depressing. I feel I might just skip to the end and put my head in an oven now for all the chance anything I might create has.
I think this guy has put on the filter of viewing the world through what it takes to be creative and has managed to define everything through it. Truth is, I think maybe everybody does this, even if they don't know it, but some do it more prominently than others. Its neat to listen to, cause certainly he's figured out some things that may be true in that context, but it always falls short of being all encompassing. I fear that often discussions like put on display a filter, and less of what it means to me. But sometimes, we need that.
I think if I just take creativity and remove from it the pressure to be successful at it, everyone is creative in some way, some more so than others, so I think most of this might better be described as sliding scales and not categories of creative types and non-creative types (though I kind of like the example of thermostats better than sliding scales). I do appreciate that creative types tend to be more liberal in their political leanings, but I think there are a lot of reasons for that, and it does not all fit in the basket of liberalism comes from creativity or vice versa.
I suppose the question is, does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Cause in the effort be creative, in a way that is statistically different from others, but still relatable, well, it has match up somehow to what is relatable to people, and so must be founded in something they understand. I can be wildly creative with the ways to chop down trees, but not very much of it would make sense in the story I might be creating.
Why do we tell stories? Stories are the art form we choose speak about the world through, in the hope of reaching others, I would assume, and finding in some way a vioce. So, it may be that I have to use a fairly mundane way to chop down a tree in my pages, but what I am trying to say really would have little to do with that. Personally, I want to say things about mankind, the human condition, and about the universe I see around me, and maybe inspire a little subliminal thought, or shine a little light in under-shined areas.
For myself, I feel I am more than averagely creative, I am not sure that I am all that original (and I am cursedly too slow, so even my original ideas become un-original as time tends to show me), but I work pretty hard on my art. I may be only painting an apple, but its going to be damn good apple when I am done.
Turth be known, I intend to make the best art I can, and I am happy if others recognise it, but ultimately, I think I would like to be remembered for some of the ways the stories spoke to people and became meaningful in their lives. I am not sure if I have ever achieved that. That does not make me uncreative or put me in the uncreative category, or that I am not making art.
And yes, I do have a day job. I might starve if I did not.
(I did like how we suggested that the working world tends not to favor creativity and creative people would not thrive in them. I find I wrestle with this a lot, cause I think I am somewhere in between. I am for whatever works, and that is often different for different people. But in IT, the demand is always for one solution fits all. It never quite works out that way.)
I think this guy has put on the filter of viewing the world through what it takes to be creative and has managed to define everything through it. Truth is, I think maybe everybody does this, even if they don't know it, but some do it more prominently than others. Its neat to listen to, cause certainly he's figured out some things that may be true in that context, but it always falls short of being all encompassing. I fear that often discussions like put on display a filter, and less of what it means to me. But sometimes, we need that.
I think if I just take creativity and remove from it the pressure to be successful at it, everyone is creative in some way, some more so than others, so I think most of this might better be described as sliding scales and not categories of creative types and non-creative types (though I kind of like the example of thermostats better than sliding scales). I do appreciate that creative types tend to be more liberal in their political leanings, but I think there are a lot of reasons for that, and it does not all fit in the basket of liberalism comes from creativity or vice versa.
I suppose the question is, does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Cause in the effort be creative, in a way that is statistically different from others, but still relatable, well, it has match up somehow to what is relatable to people, and so must be founded in something they understand. I can be wildly creative with the ways to chop down trees, but not very much of it would make sense in the story I might be creating.
Why do we tell stories? Stories are the art form we choose speak about the world through, in the hope of reaching others, I would assume, and finding in some way a vioce. So, it may be that I have to use a fairly mundane way to chop down a tree in my pages, but what I am trying to say really would have little to do with that. Personally, I want to say things about mankind, the human condition, and about the universe I see around me, and maybe inspire a little subliminal thought, or shine a little light in under-shined areas.
For myself, I feel I am more than averagely creative, I am not sure that I am all that original (and I am cursedly too slow, so even my original ideas become un-original as time tends to show me), but I work pretty hard on my art. I may be only painting an apple, but its going to be damn good apple when I am done.
Turth be known, I intend to make the best art I can, and I am happy if others recognise it, but ultimately, I think I would like to be remembered for some of the ways the stories spoke to people and became meaningful in their lives. I am not sure if I have ever achieved that. That does not make me uncreative or put me in the uncreative category, or that I am not making art.
And yes, I do have a day job. I might starve if I did not.
(I did like how we suggested that the working world tends not to favor creativity and creative people would not thrive in them. I find I wrestle with this a lot, cause I think I am somewhere in between. I am for whatever works, and that is often different for different people. But in IT, the demand is always for one solution fits all. It never quite works out that way.)
>everyone is creative in some way,
Exactly this. Which is why I bridle when people try to claim creativity is some mysterious gift held only by the few. It's aristocracy (i.e., rule by the good and the beautiful, the aristoi) dressed up in new clothes. It doesn't even need explaining. Some people paint. Some people write. Some people design airplanes. Some people make fishing lures. In every endeavor, some people do it well and some do it poorly.
I try not to be too hard on the guy. He took a shot. I didn't find much useful there, but that doesn't mean someone else won't find something that resonates profoundly. People are funny like that.
(but it's still mostly vapid nonsense <g>)
Exactly this. Which is why I bridle when people try to claim creativity is some mysterious gift held only by the few. It's aristocracy (i.e., rule by the good and the beautiful, the aristoi) dressed up in new clothes. It doesn't even need explaining. Some people paint. Some people write. Some people design airplanes. Some people make fishing lures. In every endeavor, some people do it well and some do it poorly.
I try not to be too hard on the guy. He took a shot. I didn't find much useful there, but that doesn't mean someone else won't find something that resonates profoundly. People are funny like that.
(but it's still mostly vapid nonsense <g>)
Something I've been thinking about lately is how people take pictures of the food they're about to eat. To a certain extent it's bragging about the fancy meal they have in front of them or the expensive restaurant they're at, but it's also about showing off something they've created - for food they cooked themselves.
A lot of people don't create art, but they still create things, like they cook their own meals, and they want to show it off when they do and they're happy with it.
Similarly, people share pictures of the things they do to share the story of their life. It may not be horribly original, and it may not necessarily be very interesting for anyone else, but it's still a story they're creating.
A lot of people don't create art, but they still create things, like they cook their own meals, and they want to show it off when they do and they're happy with it.
Similarly, people share pictures of the things they do to share the story of their life. It may not be horribly original, and it may not necessarily be very interesting for anyone else, but it's still a story they're creating.
valiant12
Sage
Jordan Peterson is very good at making me sad.
I honestly don't believe that everybody is creative. Some people are too conformist to be really creative. Some people are lazy. Others lack the curiosity to explore new ideas. IQ differences should also impact creativity.
That been said, I agree with you that creativity is relatively common trait and there isn't anything mystical in it.
My personal theory about creativity is that creative people are the ones in the middle of the introvert-extrovert spectrum. Obviously there are exceptions.
I honestly don't believe that everybody is creative. Some people are too conformist to be really creative. Some people are lazy. Others lack the curiosity to explore new ideas. IQ differences should also impact creativity.
That been said, I agree with you that creativity is relatively common trait and there isn't anything mystical in it.
My personal theory about creativity is that creative people are the ones in the middle of the introvert-extrovert spectrum. Obviously there are exceptions.
I just don't know what "creative people" means. I've known people who have created things. Are they all "creative people?"
The phrase seems to denote some specific category of humanity. That's the piece I don't buy. And since I don't buy that, I don't even rent explanations for why they exist or how to become one of them. The most I'll grant is this tidy tautology: a creative person is a person who has created.
The phrase seems to denote some specific category of humanity. That's the piece I don't buy. And since I don't buy that, I don't even rent explanations for why they exist or how to become one of them. The most I'll grant is this tidy tautology: a creative person is a person who has created.
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