In light of having read some deconstructionist philosophy, I feel compelled to make a comment about the narrowness of our perspective on creativity.  This also works in conjunction with what I was saying earlier about dispelling the myth that creativity is an inborn trait.

Although the point has been raised in class--about other cultures who may not prize creativity in the way that we do--I feel as if we have not given it enough or a properly radical consideration yet.  A good part of the field of creativity research works off the assumption that creativity exists and that there is A WAY to be creative.  The very question, "how can I be more creative," should be read: "creativity definitely exists in this fashion and is attainable."  But we are working from the perspective that to be creative is to generate masterworks, masterworks that are almost always Western.  Beethoven and Einstein, in our opinion, are immensely creative, having produced these foundational hallmarks of our culture.  But even if they were innovative, we only accepted them because they came within a specific tradition.

Philosophy, music, science, etc. IS the way that it is because of its predecessors.  We find something cool or valuable because it adheres to rules that society has produced.  Those rules are NOT to be found fully-formed within the brain/body when a person is born.  Perhaps the capacity to absorb and manipulate those rules is an innate capacity, but the rules themselves are totally constructed.  And once a certain art/discipline starts down a particular path, it seems difficult to alter it entirely.  Thus what we ultimately have on our hands are arbitrarily brilliant things.  

In other words, what would an Aborigine do with a Bach fugue?  What would a 19 year old male do with traditional Chinese guqin music?  Creative things are senseless to someone unless they are indoctrinated into a specific culture.  So how can we hold them us as shining perfect beacons of universal brilliance?    

In class on Tuesday, when, as a last class exercise, we re-visited the questions that incidentally BEGAN the class, I found that my attitude toward answering them had changed dramatically. Whereas during the initial question-asking period, I felt disconnected and almost disinterested in the topics, I felt very strongly about each of the questions when re-posed a second time after our experience with the research.  Clearly, a lot of that has to do with the whole pre/post-test distinction.  I've always viewed pretests as a kind of cruel joke on the part of the teacher.  It's like the message of pretests are "Haha!  Look at all of the knowledge that you do NOT have!  Let me PROVE to you that you know virtually nothing."  So it was not surprising that my attitude toward the whole process was standoffish and a bit disdainful.  But I would argue that, if anything, my experience in the class made me recognize the relevance of these questions such that I felt an actual need to be engaged.

The particular question that really hit home for me asked whether or not we thought that people were born with a certain amount of creative ability.  If one were to support the thought that creativity is an inborn trait, then creativity has to be considered an entity: a physical thing to which we can point.  I have problems with that thinking, because to me, creativity is a a totally social creation.  I think we believe that creativity is its own function because we lump different brain processes like memory, language us etc into one amalgam that fits a kind of social use.  Furthermore, that social use differs from place to place: thus the brain-definitions of creativity would have to change as well.  Creativity, the "force" is a social consideration.

I am pleased with the realization that now, with more information about creativity research and after having had a good amount of time to reflect on this information, I too am invested in dispelling creativity myths.  

"I put my cup down and examine my own mind.  It is for it to discover the truth.  But how?  What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will avail it nothing.  Seek? More that that: create.  It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day."

-Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol. 1: Swann's Way

WARNING: Extreme pretentiousness to follow

I have just now realized what it is that really bothers me about the whole Big-C creativity issue.  I do not have a grand problem with clarifying and teaching the Big-C creative process for academics and scientists (this includes anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc).  I have a huge problem with clarifying and teaching the Big-C creative process for businesses.  Here's why:

When I lashed out in my last post proclaiming somewhat violently that I did not want to be a Big C creator, I realize now that what I did not want to be was someone who creates for creation's sake.  But most of the creativity researchers would argue, none of the successful creators want to create for creation's sake: they are "intrinsically motivated" to work on problems in the field of study about which they are passionate.  For example, I realize that I lied in the last post.  I do have a desire to continue amassing knowledge in the field of philosophy so that I can work on really intriguing problems in an accurate, informed way.  The motivation there is, however, not to make a contribution to the field but to satisfy a personal passion.  I'd argue that this is the motivation for most academicians, except for the really miserable ones.

But business creativity: creating for creation's sake.  Another model of an Ipod, another sort of television that creates an even more compelling image, another kind of special offer at Starbucks designed to do nothing but lure more people in.  The grand bout n'est que l'argent!  So when someone's passion is business, when someone is intrinsically motivated to build and maintain successful businesses, the are essentially intrinsically motivated to generate capital.  

How can we be ethically satisfied with being intrinsically motivated to generate capital?  We can be satisfied with the desire to provide a necessary or valuable product to the earth's citizens, but honestly, apart from being somewhere in the mission statement, is that the point of business?  Does the cluster-fuck that is Wall Street exist for the purpose of providing goods or services to humankind?  No.  It exists to reward the lazy, to widen the gap between the wealth of the classes.  We can NOT in good conscious justify studying the process that continues this social, political evil.  

Clearly, I'm forgetting that business is a great part of what constitutes a society that is able to enjoy certain freedoms.  I'm classing all businesses together without regard to the different sorts.  I'm generalizing here, and I realize that with more careful evaluation, I'd revoke some of this or amend it.  But the general sentiments remain, and I remain attached to them fiercely.  

In Defense of Little C Creativity

We were recently asked how we can use elements from Amabile's article about fostering business creativity in our own lives to push us to be more creative people, and I answered accordingly, addressing what management techniques I can apply to my life in order to be an individual that produces something novel, inventive, something middle-sized to big C creativity.  

Well dammit, what if I do not want to be that person?  If I have no desire to amass a pile of knowledge and work furiously to manipulate it for some kind of social gain, then am I a stranger to creativity?  I think that I am not.  Despite its lack of objective verification, I'd say that little C creativity is just as much creativity as Big C.  In fact, I would like to propose that we stop using the word "creativity" to name what is apparently the socially-situated process of innovation.  I would also say that one can be a successful innovator in the social context (a.k.a. a Big C creator) without being "creative" as such.

I would say that our conception of little C creativity is central to many lives, lives of people who will never make discoveries or innovations of widespread, societal proportions.  To be creative is to have an interesting outlook on things, to enjoy playing with common-place perceptions of common-place things, to push oneself to take on new projects, to delve into new, unexplored territories.  Creativity is the search for uniqueness, but uniqueness in a way that it is enriching, not necessarily "progressive."  

When we call a kid creative, we seem to mean that the kid exhibits a passion and curiosity for discovery and creation.  When we call a friend creative, it is because when we are around that friend, she brings up things perspectives we've never thought of or because she engages us on multiple levels when we're only ever accustomed to evaluating something linearly.  One finds oneself actively searching out ways to interact with one's world in a dynamic, different way after being around creative people, and this attitude is part of the foundation for an interesting life. 

This kind of creativity isn't studyable.  It's definitely "new-age-y" as Sawyer would say.  But I think it's the kind of creativity towards which we ought to strive, more-so than the "Big C" kind.  

After having taken metaphysics last semester, it is easy to spot metaphysical attitudes in a variety of disciplines, despite a widespread distaste for this branch of philosophy.  The word metaphysics is, for most scientists, psychologists, etc., like the word "government aid" to extremely right wing republicans.  Perhaps it disgusts you, but you simply would not function without it.  Similarly, I see no inquiry of any sort, academic, technical, or even practical, to be completely devoid of a metaphysical mindset/spirit.  

To "do" metaphysics is to assess the reality of something.  The pure metaphysics of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Hegel, Heidegger, and many others, are, granted, rather up-in-the-clouds. But the general principle involved in a metaphysical inquiry is looking "behind," "underneath," "around," and "through" what we see and hypothesizing about its foundational components.  It's an attitude of envisioning plausible frameworks, of hypothesizing about possible models.  This sounds exactly like science to me.   

Granted, the grand difference, as anyone in the whole world will tell me immediately, I'm sure, is that there is no plausible way to test the findings of a purely metaphysical inquiry.  And although I can think of some ways (perhaps unconvincing) that kinds of testing of such hypotheses occur, I understand this problem.  At the end of the day, as Csikszentmihalyi points out, like any good scientist would, that a scientific inquiry ought to be objective and testable. 

He poses a question at the end of his conversation about van Gogh: even if his work had not been "interpreted...in terms of new aesthetic criteria and transformed...from substandard efforts into masterpieces," would the work of Van Gogh still be creative "even if we didn't know it?"  But he ultimately rejects the question itself calling it "too metaphysical to be considered part of a scientific approach" (321). 

I find it paradoxical that disciplines that use metaphysical approaches to answer tough problems refuse to evaluate metaphysical problems.  In any case, I would claim that many topics he handles could be considered metaphysical topics disguised as testable social scientific concepts.  For example, I'd like to know more about Durkheim's "organic solidarity."  It sounds a bit up-in-the-clouds, if you will.  Perhaps Csikszentmihalyi is a metaphysician after all and simply didn't know it.   

I was quite surprised that in our various discussions about what makes music performance creative, we never talked about "conveying an idea." To me, this is absolutely central to any musical performance, "classical" or otherwise. The audience leaves a great, creative performance with a sense of having been "moved" or "affected." I would venture to say that this impression left on the listener is a result of the performer's deliberate efforts to communicate an idea through her music.

William Westney, pianist, lecturer, and author of The Perfect Wrong Note, gave a master class at Millsaps this past fall semester. After each performance, he turned to the audience and asked us "So, what was she/he trying to say to us?" In other words, did the artist do a good job of conveying a sentiment to the listener? Was the sentiment conveyed the sentiment intended to be conveyed? Did the artist perhaps feel as if she were coming across one way but being interpreted by her audience in a different way? For Westney, then, what was central to being a musician was first the recognition of an idea, a story, or a feeling in the music that one plays and then a conscious effort to make that feeling known using a variety of musical techniques.

I feel as if I can be extremely creative with many of the pieces that I am playing right now. Schumann's Davidsbundlertanze is a set of 18 character pieces that depict a Polterabend, or a pre-wedding party. It's immensely fun to explore and discover different means of "sounding drunk" on the piano for no.5, and it's challenging to determine how to best convey the schizophrenic battle of Schumann's two alteregos in no.1. In imagining scenarios that correspond to pieces, the emotions can be more real and easier to communicate to the audience.

All of this seems creative. But I'm not sure how this kind of creativity fits into C's model, because it is not an element that can be objectively monitored or evaluated. However, the emotional affect of a piece is something that truly exists; ask any concertgoer, whether that concert take place in Carnegie Hall or in some sketchy dive of a bar.