"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.