The Myth of Creativity & “New”
Sorry to burst your bubble, but nobody is creative!
In days when thousands flock to a platform like MEDIUM to highlight and share their creativity, to inspire and be inspired by others, when TED Talks draw thousands to hear and learn about innovation, innovative concepts, creativity and off-the-norm ideas, an article about the non-existance of creativity is hardly attractive to write, because it will draw few readers or endless bashing (I would prefer the latter over the first)!
I do it, because I do cultivate the idea in my brain that I am someone who has a strong off-the-norm approach to many things and a quite unique angle of view on many things. Indeed I feel that I am “creative” and create new thoughts and ideas. But fact is, I am not. Nobody is! And as hard as it may be to accept, this does include the likes of Sokrates, daVinci, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Edison or Picasso.
System-of-Systems
No matter if you believe in Godly creation or a natural force as the source of the universe you live in, you will agree that things here happen along rules. Philosophy, physics, math, religion, each in their way try to formulate these rules in comprehensive ways, comprehensive for our brains that is.
All these formulations constitute one thing: We as humans are — as an individual — a system and we are all a part of the overall system-of-systems called universe and whatever may lie beyond it in reach or before it in time.
We are inside it.
We can not stand outside it.
All we ever see, hear, smell, sense, all we will ever store in our brains as knowledge, experience, as lessons learned about interdependencies and interaction will be something from within the universe we live in.
All we own, our sensors, nerves, muscles, brain cells, any atom we are made of, anything is part of what some see as Godly creation and others as the creative force of nature. In any case: God rested after he was done, at least in Christianity, the faith I grew up with and which shaped the past 2000 years of development of what we call European culture and thinking (the interpretation I grew up with is just 500 years old though).
And while stars are born and cease to exist, everything in a “force of nature” based universe happens according to rules to which no new ones will be added, for any end of an existing rule would bring the end of the entire system-of-systems. In other words: New rules could not contradict old ones, thus could only be more detailed and therein could only prevent things forming within confinements formerly open to creation but not used for it. Only then nothing would disappear while room for creativity would actually get lost, an act not very creative by itself!
Exploring is not Creating
So if we are here in this system-of-systems and function according to either sets of rules invented by God for reasons only he knows, or for these rules forming as the logical consequence of natural creation needing them to take place and evolve from nothing. We are embedded in all of this and cannot break out of the rules of functioning that were there before us!
As a consequence we can not create anything new. Anything we produce, aka “create”, is subject to and limited by whatever came before us and was required to constitute what we later became a part of (in both the bible and physics humans were not the first thing to appear in the overall picture). When we showed up all creation had happened. Either God was finished or nature had all the rules it ever required (again chose freely your interpretation, the result is the same).
Not a single thing the human mind can create is creation or creative or new. We do not create, we can not be creative for all potential has already been created!
We are nothing more than explorers!
When we take a path we explore the limitations and confinements which exist since before us and out of which we did occur (either because of God’s will or natures course). We only explore the boundaries and interdependencies given to us by either God or nature.
Nothing we could ever come up with, that could be outside the possibilities already present. Things we do, happen on other scales and/or in other systems of this system-of-systems. That is either because we copy or copied behavior from what our perception could identify or because as a system of the overall system our solutions to problems have to be the same as elsewhere if they are optimal (see it as an equation which always has the same solution to it, no matter where or when or by which system (whom) it gets solved).
Just because we haven’t yet explored everything and have not witnessed everything, described everything and put everything into a context of either physics, philosophy, math, religion, maybe even information theory, it does not mean that anything we have ever done is not already there in one way or another within a different system or on a different scale within ourselves.
Call it Arrogance
I think it’s time to become more humble. We should stop being arrogant and believe that we ever created anything or will ever create anything for everything is possible in a system-of-systems which we cannot even define the borders of, much less reach them!
Anything we do is just tial and error. And given our many errors from considering earth being flat and the center of the universe, this galaxy or at least this solar system (see how we got more humble over time) to finally reducing our planet to an oddly shaped, life-supporting object which is being pulled by the sun around the center of the galaxy, forming a spiral movement behind our star on its oscillating path, we have all the reasons to let go of our arrogance of calling us creative just because the outcomes of some of our explorations do lead to seemingly impressive results!
While the days of the era of romance are over there is no scientific proof, that a symphony by Beethoven, Bach or Mozart in the succession of its tunes does not occur in another system in a different shape. Only once we have experienced everything, know everything for sure and without a doubt or an open, unanswered question, only then we will know!
Given the fact that we are just one occurrence within the overall creation, either because God put us into the picture or because laws of nature have a path inside them, which made us possible, it is just consequent to accept that we have no reason to believe we could ever come up with something new, innovative, creative, revolutionary, totally game-changing or rewriting the rules of the system-of-systems we live within, for there is nothing about us or within us that would not be a part of and come from the limitations around us which again apply to anything and everything.
We Remain Little Children for Always
The only creative process that ever took place was either Godly creation of everything from nothing or nature creating the set of rules along which everything did took and still takes place thereafter or it is a mixture of both or another act which we still have no clue of (that is if you are open minded about creation and have not yet settled with either one of the explanations for creation I refer to here).
But we, we as humans, under no assumption can be creative. As a system which is woven into the overall system-of-systems through everything we physically are and through everything we can perceive, we have no means to break out of who and what we are and create something new, something that’s not there yet.
For all we can do is make something out of what is already there inside us or around us and re-arrange it. That is in fact what little children like to do with great joy and seemingly endless energy: They arrange and re-arrange their building blocks to find that round objects do not sit well on triangular shaped ones and that some structures simply cannot grow endlessly in height.
Given the fun we had doing so, the urge, the necessity, the stress to be creative these days and to show creative talent looks more like depressions from finding too few paths for exploration prior to adolescence or not treating them respectfully?
Everything from nothing was / is the privilege of God or nature. We may explore and thus explain anything to the degree it is accessible to our thinking and feeling but we do not create something new ever, even if saying and thinking such a thought boosts our morals and self-esteem.
Some call humans “God’s children” while others see humans as “the children of mother earth” and again others as “children of the stars”. In all the underlying paths of exploring ourselves, seemingly fundamental differences exist about seeing and interpreting us and the system-of-systems we live within.
Yet in all of these approaches one theme is consistent: That of being a Child created somehow by someone or something, trying to find the ways it can grow into this world by exploring its opportunities. Given our ever-equal cycle of life, this thought isn’t very creative at all, nor does it actually constitute fundamental differences between the views held!
“Nur in unseren kühnsten Träumen sind wir kreativ,”
“Only in our most daring dreams we are creative.”
You want to feel like reading this contribution was no waste of your time, so hit the green heart to recommend it! Alongside you, also I shall feel good :-)
Re-arrangements of mine on MEDIUM include
- Identifying a success factor shared by Apple and the Taliban (9 minute read)
- Defining Facebook, Twitter, Pintetest & Co as Linkfarms (5 minute read)
- Calling BigData Marketing and Online-Ad re-targeting socially incompetent stalking (12 minute read)
