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").
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.
(you say "baby" I say "suit," you go "wow that's divergent," I go "not really, the kids are watching Boss Baby behind me").
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.
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.
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.
You can thicken air by mixing it with anticipation.(is there ever any thick air?)
Yep.the whole mystique of the artist is mainly elitist nonsense.
I feel like threads about whether something is original or not are pretty common here - or if it's cliche.I wonder if others here have wrestled with the creativity/originality/art demon.
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...Svrtnsse, do you distinguish between creativity and originality and art?
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.