Do we really hate creativity?

Last updated on: December 9, 2013 at 9:00 am by Kate Cousino

Do we really hate creativity? 2013-12-09T09:00:00-04:00 Kate Cousino

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

This piece in Slate argues that, for all of our societal glorification of creativity and creative minds, we are actually hostile to creativity, in school and the workplace, and that this is squashing our creative minds. The one bright spot is that rejection might actually be freeing for some square pegs, because it confirms their ‘otherness’ and allows them to stop trying to fit in a round hole.

Is our problem hostility to creativity? I think our problem is that we misunderstand what creativity is.

My school and coming of age experience wasn’t one where conformity was emphasized or creativity quashed. But it was one that made the same error this article does: conflating novelty and creativity, as though creative minds are trapped when given limitations and existing conventions. But what creative mind is really limited by convention? Can anyone transgress meaningfully a convention they haven’t first mastered? Could Picasso have bent perspective if he hadn’t first learned normative rules of perspective and realism? Convention is the breeding ground of creativity–first we learn the form, then we learn the limits of the form in attempting to broach or invert it, and when we really understand the purpose of the form, then we can take ourselves outside it.

We value the originality of the creations at the end of this process, and so we worry about squashing creativity. But I think some of the loss of creativity we suffer comes from this over-emphasis on novelty. How many fledgling writers have their spirits squashed by the pressure to create something that doesn’t resemble any other created work? And how many teachers, faced with the question of how to teach originality, will throw up their hands and stick to teaching things that can be measured?

I had an English teacher who refused to grade our unit on poetry, and as a result managed to teach us absolutely nothing about verse. Dead Poet’s Society is a great movie, but if you want to teach kids to love poetry, you have to help them understand that those beautiful verses didn’t come out of the sky like lightning to strike only a few select original minds. Teach the conventions the poets knew, and learned, and created: teach children to use those rules, grade them for their success in incorporating specific elements. Have them ape the voices of geniuses until they have them so thoroughly mastered that they can burn those conventions as fuel for their own creative drive, feed their own muse.

Yeats wrote:
We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, “A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.”

And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, “To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.”
I said, “It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring…

Even now, the biggest obstacle to doing what I love–writing–is the suspicion that I don’t have anything new to contribute. Never mind that I’ve been incredibly blessed by the writing of people who merely combine wonderful elements and ideas from our rich inheritance of human storytelling and human existence–like Yeats, who wrote (in rhyme) of love, women, fairies, and Ireland…not new topics at all. Still, in my head, I fear being ‘unoriginal’, to an almost paralyzing extent.

The ‘creators’ the articles cites aren’t, however, people who pulled original and unheard of innovations out of the air. They are people who took existing things and existing ideas and changed the context, changed the assumptions, looked at them a little differently. And while originality can’t be taught, creativity can, simply by encouraging people to make connections, to become generalists rather than specialists, to cross genres, to cross disciplines, to obsess a little (or a lot) when something is fascinating.

Do I doubt there are obstacles for creative minds on multiple levels? Not especially. Of course there will be people who are most comfortable with what they know, or who want the security if ‘proven’ ideas and methods, especially in business and economic contexts. But I don’t especially think this is the greatest obstacle to creativity, because I rather suspect that those creative minds whose ideas are rejected probably go on creating in whatever avenues they can…the internet provides evidence enough that humans still thrive most when we create.

I think the impulse to create is inborn and endemic. But if we disdain synthesis and imitation, we run the risk of so starving our creative minds that their fruits will only be anemic, at best.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

December 6, 2013

What I'm Reading this Morning

Next Post

December 10, 2013 Who decides what 'feminism' is?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category ADHD Blog Business Body and Soul Books Faith Faith in Action Family Feminism Fertility Awareness Friendship Geekiness Guest Post History Hope Just For Fun Love Marriage Memory Mental Exercise Movies Parenting Personalism Poetry Prayer Quotes Scripture Seven Quick Takes Striving for Holiness Television The Stories We Tell The World Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 August 2016 June 2016 March 2016 January 2016 November 2015 October 2015 August 2015 July 2015 May 2015 April 2015 February 2015 December 2014 November 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 August 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 November 2009 October 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

See, I will send the prophet Elijah before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. What will he do?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Call for repentance like a voice in the desert Turn the hearts of the parents to children and children to parents Announce judgment Prepare the way

Support this
Column