Creativity

Creativity

by Marco M. Pardi

“When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: ‘Only stand out of my light.’ Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for the creative men and women is to stand out of their light.” John W. Gardner.

“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.” Albert Einstein

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” William James, MD. On Thinking. Lecture. 1907

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Since my childhood was dominated by religious people who droned on and on that “God created everything, from nothing”; that we are all “God’s creatures”; and, that we should appreciate “creation” I’m inclined to react with gale force flatulence on hearing anything rooted in “creation”, creativity included. But of late I’ve softened my views, holding the ill winds in abeyance.

I still bristle at the suggestion of something from nothing since quantum mechanics do support my philosophical insistence that the presence of a state, such as nothingness, demands and therefore manifests the co-existence (even if undetectable) of somethingness, the classic Hsiang Sheng (Mutually Arising) of Tao. Thus, the assumed pre and post relationship of one to the other is negated, each by the concurrent presence of the other; At Onceness is manifest.

These thoughts on the nature of being are most commonly associated with philosophical discussions, often going until the morning light. But while many discussion participants cite – or drop, depending on your perspective, famous philosophers’ names, increasing numbers of scientists are making their presence known in ways more rooted in their philosophical origins. This should not be surprising. After all, until very recently in our history what we call science was known formally as philosophy.

One such philosopher/scientist I have been revisiting is William James MD Harvard (1842 – 1910), considered the Father of American Psychology. A recent book spoke of the people you would want to meet “in heaven”. James and I agree there is no heaven, but I sure would want to spend some “time” in discussion with him.

James saw the self as a composite of four elements: the Material Self, things that identify a person; the Social Self, the various roles we adopt; the Spiritual Self, our core identity; and, the Pure Ego, the soul or mind. Of these four, the Pure Ego is the most inaccessible to scientific analysis. And while creativity, if loosely accepted as the presentation of new and even unique features, can be accepted in any of the other three elements, its origins lie in the Pure Ego. This position then challenges the apparently presumptuous act of judging someone’s creativity.

For example, in prep school and undergraduate college my Humanities classes included sections on “music appreciation”. I very certainly appreciate certain music, but I am utterly unable to grip how and why a person devises sounds the way they do. I could not appreciate what a composer was supposedly trying to convey. I knew only what I liked, and disliked. The same held for the visual arts and I have often wondered at the commentary from fellow gallery visitors as they viewed what I had assumed were the same paintings I had just seen. In fact, I asked art professors and artists I knew how anyone could judge art. Invariably, they pointed to technique. But I felt this did not address “creativity”.

But the worst affronts came in my college literature classes. The class was challenged to identify the “Christ figure” in each of the assigned literary works. While others debated I repressed the urge to ask: Did anyone contact the author and ask? I could just imagine the authors’ response: WTF are you talking about?! And, when I asked how certain famous writers could get away with such miserable grammar I was told, It was their style. So why test for grammar at all?

James excoriated organized religion, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud, religion for its sellout to autocratic politicians, Darwin for failing to counter the Tooth & Claw ethic which gave rise to Social Darwinism and the ethic of a pointless universe, and Freud for his abysmally unscientific presumptuous hierarchy of Super Ego, Ego and Id. The Darwinian and the Freudian schools were both based in an inescapably negative view of human action, the former in mechanical determinism, the latter in the cursed birthright of aggressive instincts and drives.

While in graduate school I maintained my cross-cultural interest in how cultures devise religious delusions and I applied myself to studies of evolution and genetics. Unfortunately, the internationally famous professor, Dr. Jules Henry, under whom I had come to study Psychological Anthropology lingered and died after a major stroke and the other significant professor, Dr Pertti Juto Pelto, returned to Cornell. As a University Scholar, Research Assistant, and Teaching Assistant I continued their work and took the opportunity to meet with a practicing Freudian Psycho-Analyst in St. Louis. Although she fully informed me of the principles and techniques underlying her discipline I left her company with a certainty that Freud had serious issues and that my imaginary Id was not plotting to draw me into varied and nefarious bumfuckery.

James, however, seemed onto something. Among the first to separate mind from brain, he proposed mind as an amorphous field-like entity capable of exchanging information with other minds, even unknowingly. This immediately put sense to the word inspiration, deriving literally from the idea of some thoughts coming in through infusion from an immaterial (spiritual) source. Okay, here some may want to imagine a God whispering in the ear. I do not. But we certainly have examples of “coincidence”, such as Darwin and Wallace independently and simultaneously coming up with evolution from “lower to higher” life forms.

James also explored visualization, the effect the mind has on the universe of probabilities. That is, the role of the observer in the manifestation of the observed. In this he was perhaps a century ahead of modern physics. Just for fun, consider Edgar John Rubin’s Ambiguous Figure Vase.*

As an observer, what do you see? Have you created two faces, or one vase? And who can say your choice is incorrect?

Of course, just as Social Darwinism arose from Darwinian evolution and pop psychology from Freudian fantasies, the Visualization fad arose from James’ insights and the growing realization of the observer effect which was becoming obvious in physics. The Creative Visualization Workbook : Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life by Shakti Gawain became one of the more influential books in this development. Since its publication I have wondered how many purchasers have tried to visualize getting their money back. The take away is: Imagining doesn’t make it so. Staring at your bank balance will not enable you to pay the mortgage.

The saying, “There’s nothing new under the Sun” recently gained new life with the publication of Biocentrism : How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe by Bob Berman and Robert Lanza. Saying essentially that all life forms are of equal moral standing and that life creates the universe, Biocentrism is fundamental to several ancient and current religions, Jainism the most pronounced. Yet Biocentrism relies heavily on our quickly growing understanding of quantum mechanics and theoretical physics. In ways it is also dependent on the insights of William James, proposing the interconnectedness of all life consciousness such that particular and specific origins for ideas, or “creations”, are difficult if not impossible to ascribe. It is the umbra surrounding the person who, when asked how he or she arrived at a particular inspiration simply says, “I don’t know. It just came to me.”

Nonetheless, we still reward what we call creativity. Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemical engineer who combined existing elements and invented dynamite, established the foundation which awards prizes across a broad spectrum of fields. But are these given for creativity or for inventiveness? If we distinguish these concepts by saying inventiveness is the reconfiguration of existing elements into a new package which can be used in a way the pre-existing elements could not, should there not be equal credit given to the existence of the elements? For example, words are elements. They exist. Is the Nobel Prize for Literature an award for inventiveness or for creativity? Does a visual artist merit a prize for arranging perceptible elements creatively or inventively? And upon what basis do Juries, whether for literature or visual art, make their award selection? Who, with anything greater than their own subjectivity, can tell you your painting is amateur or your short story is nonsense? And by the same token, who can tell you your work is creative?

I’ve often said, If you are willing to take the credit you should be willing to take the blame. The same holds true when understanding one’s role in the unfolding of the universe.