The curse of creativity
Thursday, 21. August 2008, 23:26:25
You know, it is funny in a way. My primary function is not to crank out code or to do graphical design or be involved in business development. My real job is to be a problemsolver. To be creative. Whenever a situation arise, I need to find a workaround.
Regardless of what we are doing, we need to be creative in one way or another. There is no difference for animals either. Either you find a way to solve issues at hand - or you get extinct. It is as simple as that. Of course - we must never rule out the power of luck either - but let us not complicate things unnecessarily.
But then what again is really creativity? From my perspective, I'd say creativity is similar to educated guessing with a healthy dose of intuition thrown into the mix. The educated guessing bit must be there because creativity is all about breaking the rules, but the first law of breaking the rules is to know what rules exists. So you have to be knowlegdeable. The intuition bit is somewhat similar. Intuition is described as the brain subconsciously interconnecting and finding patterns in the chaotic and unstructured databank that is your memory.
Perhaps this is the reason why it is so difficult to be creative on command? There are a number of different ways to be creative. You are creative with visual media in a different way to when you are working with text, or when crunching numbers, compose or create programcode. There is a theory that talks about some of all the different kinds of intelligence that may exists. My guess is that each intelligencetype would also support its own set of creativity.
This is when things may start to get interesting. Because you have to be able to handle a number of different skills in todays society. Modern day composers may not only be able to compose music and know the rules of harmonics, but they will also most likely also know how to program sequencers and handle complex music software, they will have to proficient organizators and be able to use the internet to distribute their music or get new impulses.
In other words - modern day man may have to excersize his creative "brain muscle" more than ever before. Perhaps this is the reason that the amount of inventions today are getting closer and closer to the 0-point. But new methods of measuring IQ seems to indicate the the general IQ level has peaked and is instead starting to slowly decline again, partly being described in the Flynn effect. Can this perhaps be caused by the need for creativity, that we are relying more and more on the brain to interconnect information instead of actually processing it?
I don't know. I am no neuroscientist. What I am, is to be good at rambling - and looking for patterns and opportunities. Which is why my real question is this: if mankind is getting more and more creative and knowlegdeable - why is it so darn hard to be creative on command?
Most people have probably experienced the frustration of sitting in front of a computer or papers to get work done ... and then have a completely and utterly total mental block. No ideas whatsoever pops up. That is - until you finally get so aggrevated by the lack of progress that you leave the table and goes for a walk or make some dinner. And then - just when you are away from the workplace and have completely given up - then the ideas starts to pop up all around.
There exists of course very good scientific explanations for this as well - it has to do with stimulation of different parts of the brain through activity while other subconscious processes continues to grind away on the problems you worked on earlier. As a matter of fact, it was more or less the exact same words David Potter of the National Autistic Society said in an interview with BBC News a few years ago: "Some scientists believe that the essence of creativity is not a state of mind but an activity".
So there should be no reason to not get up and go for a long good walk if you hit the creative wall. But why do I still feel so guilty when I do it myself?
Regardless of what we are doing, we need to be creative in one way or another. There is no difference for animals either. Either you find a way to solve issues at hand - or you get extinct. It is as simple as that. Of course - we must never rule out the power of luck either - but let us not complicate things unnecessarily.
But then what again is really creativity? From my perspective, I'd say creativity is similar to educated guessing with a healthy dose of intuition thrown into the mix. The educated guessing bit must be there because creativity is all about breaking the rules, but the first law of breaking the rules is to know what rules exists. So you have to be knowlegdeable. The intuition bit is somewhat similar. Intuition is described as the brain subconsciously interconnecting and finding patterns in the chaotic and unstructured databank that is your memory.
Perhaps this is the reason why it is so difficult to be creative on command? There are a number of different ways to be creative. You are creative with visual media in a different way to when you are working with text, or when crunching numbers, compose or create programcode. There is a theory that talks about some of all the different kinds of intelligence that may exists. My guess is that each intelligencetype would also support its own set of creativity.
This is when things may start to get interesting. Because you have to be able to handle a number of different skills in todays society. Modern day composers may not only be able to compose music and know the rules of harmonics, but they will also most likely also know how to program sequencers and handle complex music software, they will have to proficient organizators and be able to use the internet to distribute their music or get new impulses.
In other words - modern day man may have to excersize his creative "brain muscle" more than ever before. Perhaps this is the reason that the amount of inventions today are getting closer and closer to the 0-point. But new methods of measuring IQ seems to indicate the the general IQ level has peaked and is instead starting to slowly decline again, partly being described in the Flynn effect. Can this perhaps be caused by the need for creativity, that we are relying more and more on the brain to interconnect information instead of actually processing it?
I don't know. I am no neuroscientist. What I am, is to be good at rambling - and looking for patterns and opportunities. Which is why my real question is this: if mankind is getting more and more creative and knowlegdeable - why is it so darn hard to be creative on command?
Most people have probably experienced the frustration of sitting in front of a computer or papers to get work done ... and then have a completely and utterly total mental block. No ideas whatsoever pops up. That is - until you finally get so aggrevated by the lack of progress that you leave the table and goes for a walk or make some dinner. And then - just when you are away from the workplace and have completely given up - then the ideas starts to pop up all around.
There exists of course very good scientific explanations for this as well - it has to do with stimulation of different parts of the brain through activity while other subconscious processes continues to grind away on the problems you worked on earlier. As a matter of fact, it was more or less the exact same words David Potter of the National Autistic Society said in an interview with BBC News a few years ago: "Some scientists believe that the essence of creativity is not a state of mind but an activity".
So there should be no reason to not get up and go for a long good walk if you hit the creative wall. But why do I still feel so guilty when I do it myself?
WIDGETIZE