Are you creative? A Critical Analysis of Creativity
The question of whether you are creative is self-defeating. Being creative is more than just a black and white, boolean trait. You’d think that given the nature of the term that people would be more generous to apply all sorts of shades and hues of color to the spectrum rather than such cold extremes. But yes, as it is with pretty much anything else in the world, we all have some creativity in us, perhaps some more than others but that quickly becomes irrelevant when all is said and done. Every healthy human being is creative whether they try to be or not.
Let us look at the definition of the term before we venture further. Creativity is how we measure the amount of something that is being produced, generally in regards to ideas as everything we do beyond that is founded on the ideas it came from. A house cannot be built without plans, a computer cannot perform tasks without first receiving instructions and neither would those tasks be considered actual tasks without some purpose or idea in the first place. So to be able to measure how creative someone is, we first have to understand the idea of an idea.
We often think of an idea as something that is created, never before existing in the order, time, and place of it’s conceiving. I’d argue that since nothing else in our reality can be created or destroyed that neither can ideas. Just like if I found a bucket in the woods, I did not create that bucket. Yes, it is new to me, and while I might claim that bucket as my own and go show everyone my bucket telling them of this wonderful new thing of mine and everyone would have perceived that I indeed had produced a bucket, that bucket would have still existed had I not stumbled upon it. Such it is with ideas. Our universe and reality exist as one cohesive idea which can be broken down into infinitesimal parts. We can stumble upon these ideas much like we can a bucket in the woods but they are hardly created. So on a universal level, no, ideas are not created. However, on an individual level, the idea is most certainly new, and since the structuring of the idea all took place inside our brain, our most personal organ, we will claim that idea as our own creation.
You might now see where I’m coming from when I say that if you’re a healthy living human being, you most certainly are creative. If you have a properly functioning brain, new ideas will constantly be structured as you perceive new things. Now you might jump to the conclusion that this means once you’ve stopped seeing new things that you’ll stop being creative. There’s some truth to this which is why many artists will seek out new locations to visit, new people to interact with, and anything else that will bring in more of the universe to their consumption. But one thing we mustn’t forget is memory. If our minds are constantly creating new files, things are going to start getting pushed out of relevance pretty quickly. Once they’ve fallen out of relevance they still reside somewhere in your mind but require a breadcrumb trail to recover. If you’ve disciplined your mind to leave those breadcrumbs constantly then you can retrieve them in any order you’d like making as wild of combinations as you so desire. This allows you to “perceive” the universe without it having to come to you first. This is what most people refer to when they think of creativity.
Someone who has absolutely zero creativity then would be someone with perfect short-term memory loss that somehow permanently deletes everything from their mind as soon as it enters it. This doesn’t happen by the way to even the dumbest of humans that still have part of their brain in tact. All short-term memory loss patients are capable of doing some kind of retrieval process no matter how severe their condition, piecing together the fragments that they can bring back to relevance in whatever ways they can.
Someone who has absolutely zero creativity then would be someone with perfect short-term memory loss that somehow permanently deletes everything from their mind as soon as it enters it. This doesn’t happen by the way to even the dumbest of humans that still have part of their brain in tact. All short-term memory loss patients are capable of doing some kind of retrieval process no matter how severe their condition, piecing together the fragments that they can bring back to relevance in whatever ways they can.
Someone who has perfect creativity would be what most people perceive God to be. Omniscient and omnipotent. Both being able to perceive the entire universe at one time as well as having complete control over it all. The latter brings up my final point.
Skill. Execution. Delivery. All words describing how quickly you can get what is in your brain to be manifested in it’s full glory by something more than the neurons the idea consists of. An omnipotent god would be able to do this instantaneously. Now this is my main point that I want you to remember. Your physical body should never be the limitation to see your ideas brought to pass. If you’ve fully fleshed out an idea in your mind, you can make it happen despite your circumstances. It might be slow going at first. You might feel like you’ve imagined something impossible but remember that you wouldn’t have been able to imagine it if weren’t possible.
“But Jarom! What if I want to fly? I can imagine doing it in my head so why can’t I in real life?” Well, random inquisitor in my head, you can. If all you want to do is be off the ground for more than a few seconds there are countless ways for you to do that. If you want to levitate in thin air using only brain power to fight gravity, might I suggest you first look to the sources of the idea and to the purpose behind it, then if it truly requires the violation of real world physics, I will direct you toward virtual reality.
My point is, if there is a will, there is a way and you are as creative as you set your mind to be. How creative will you let yourself be? -
Hey, so I'm not C. Louis S.! My name is Jarom Madsen. I am a full-time independent game developer that likes to delve deep into philosophy. Cameron was kind enough to grant me the privilege to write a guest post for this blog. If you enjoyed my thoughts and would like to hear more from me be sure to let me know in the comments section below. To find out more about me and what I do you can visit my website at jarommadsen.blogspot.com or follow me on the Twitter @Jarom_Madsen
Skill. Execution. Delivery. All words describing how quickly you can get what is in your brain to be manifested in it’s full glory by something more than the neurons the idea consists of. An omnipotent god would be able to do this instantaneously. Now this is my main point that I want you to remember. Your physical body should never be the limitation to see your ideas brought to pass. If you’ve fully fleshed out an idea in your mind, you can make it happen despite your circumstances. It might be slow going at first. You might feel like you’ve imagined something impossible but remember that you wouldn’t have been able to imagine it if weren’t possible.
“But Jarom! What if I want to fly? I can imagine doing it in my head so why can’t I in real life?” Well, random inquisitor in my head, you can. If all you want to do is be off the ground for more than a few seconds there are countless ways for you to do that. If you want to levitate in thin air using only brain power to fight gravity, might I suggest you first look to the sources of the idea and to the purpose behind it, then if it truly requires the violation of real world physics, I will direct you toward virtual reality.
My point is, if there is a will, there is a way and you are as creative as you set your mind to be. How creative will you let yourself be? -
Hey, so I'm not C. Louis S.! My name is Jarom Madsen. I am a full-time independent game developer that likes to delve deep into philosophy. Cameron was kind enough to grant me the privilege to write a guest post for this blog. If you enjoyed my thoughts and would like to hear more from me be sure to let me know in the comments section below. To find out more about me and what I do you can visit my website at jarommadsen.blogspot.com or follow me on the Twitter @Jarom_Madsen
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