Being able to create, whether it is art or film, can be one of human's best gifts to the world. But are we born to do it or is it nurtured?
We humans have been constantly evolving and being creative is an important component of that evolution. We are naturally creative. Always have been.
According to Dictionary.com creativity is defined as “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination”.
Imagination among humans knows no bounds. We as a species are adept at creating theories, notions, conceptualisations in our minds and converting them to actual dance forms, literature, films, art, real products that may be rational and steady or even ideas that are fantastical, whimsical and fictional.
According to psychology, broadly speaking, we have the power for reproductive imagination and creative imagination.
Believing In Better
Via reproductive imagination we create based on what we have experienced or have come across at some point in our lives and through creative imagination we use a greater part of our fantasy and inspiration which give us the ability to create something and is not restricted to our past experiences.
This even applies when we are doing those things that are commonplace and humdrum.
What affects creativity the most is repression and oppression. Repression leads us to throw out of our being, the thoughts when we consciously or unconsciously ‘create’.
This is when suppression happens and we purposefully, through our conscious mind, just try to survive. Oppression happens in many forms even in educated and free societies.
This can be an unjust employer, a disagreeable parent, racial inequality, an abusive partner, even what gets planted in the news on a day to day basis.
Michaelangelo
Those who must live hand to mouth or month to month, just meeting expenses, are known to be less creative.
Can you imagine an oppressed Michelangelo Buonarroti? No. He was an entirely free spirited man and greatly generous to his assistants who were instrumental in all that he created.
He was also a badass who fraudulently treated a sleeping cupid with acidic earth to make it look ancient and sold it to an art dealer who further sold it to a cardinal, all at a fancy price.
The same man went on to create “David” from a junked block of marble and many artworks for nine different Popes. I’m sure you’ll agree it also took creativity to make the cupid look ancient.
The industrial revolution began in 1760 and changed the face of transportation, communication, industry, weaponry and illumination all due to human creation.
This is when the world saw the steam engine, the cotton gin, the transatlantic cable being laid, the telegraph, the telephone, the incandescent light and automobiles to speak of a few of the creations of that time.
Fast forwarding to the present times, we have seen more creations such as the desktop, the laptop, the television, microwave ovens, the internet and the smartphones to name some of the imaginative products that have changed our lives, once again.
Within Us
While not all of us can be a Michelangelo or Bill Gates, we all go about creating in our own small ways in everyday life, be it in the kitchen or in the garden and in our work.
Creativity is perhaps the greatest aspect that characterises us as humans. The ability to create has been the very elemental and intrinsic quality in our development.
Not all creations can be said to be of value. After all, it is we who created the atomic bomb, biological weapons, traditional weapons or perhaps even Covid.
At the same time in all fairness to ourselves, it can be categorically stated that most of the creations by humankind have been evolutionary. Think poetry and music for example.
Photos: Shutterstock
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