By most standards, I have a funny definition of creativity. We shape our minds, our entire persons, by responding actively and properly to what lies around us, below us, above us, and in us, where all prepositions — `around’, `below’, `above’, and `in’ — should be understood in both spatial-temporal terms and also metaphysical terms. By way of proper responses, we shape our very selves to encapsulate what lies around us, some shaping themselves to very particular environments and communities, some shape themselves to more general environments and more general communities and possibilities of communities — any shaping to imaginary views of reality which aren’t part of the narrative movement of this universe will lead us from reality and into dangerous regions indeed. We properly shape our minds, our entire human beings so that we become persons in imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ and then we share in the true creativity of God. We shape our minds and the behavior of our mortal selves to God’s acts of creating, creating from nothingness and shaping the raw and abstract forms of being into more concrete and more particular forms of being. One funny and interesting aspect of this is that reality does ratchet up in complexity and richness, as well as opportunities and problems, as our understanding also increases in complexity and richness.
So, how can we better respond to the problems and opportunities of this universe? Can we just exert our allegedly free wills and become open-minded and courageous, charge forward in an effort to understand the works of the Creator? Can we just decide to flow over with a willed faith?
No. We must intend to move forward into the future, more willing to cooperate with the true story of our world and that requires us to learn how to respond properly to God’s Creation. We must intend to enter into a communion with the Almighty such that we share His divine freedom, though we get there as students watching as He creates and shapes and imitating His acts by shaping our own selves and helping to shape other entities. We can’t create from nothingness and we have limited powers to shape created beings, even our savings, but we must do our best, however humble our vocation or however great our vocation might seem by mortal standards.
However grandiose my recommendation might sound, we must shape our own selves by one small act at a time. And some of those acts might seem strange, even vaguely sin-like to some of a Puritanical viewpoint. For example, there’s shots of vodka as in the article, Vodka delivers shot of creativity , where we can read:
A moderate alcoholic high loosens a person’s focus of attention, making it easier to find connections among remotely related ideas, the scientists propose online January 28 in Consciousness and Cognition.
…
Intoxication may aid verbal creativity partly by lowering the ability to control one’s thoughts, comments psychologist J. Scott Saults of the University of Missouri in Columbia. He and his colleagues have found that alcohol reduces recall of sequences of sounds and images but leaves working memory unaffected.
My criticism of the article would have more to do with my preference for good Bourbon whiskey rather than vodka. When I need to escape ruts — including meaningless mental activity, when I need to relax and move on in my thoughts and in my story-telling efforts, I like to end the day by sipping a double-shot while reading poetry or a novel or maybe a history book. (I can’t really do this anymore because of my budget and my preference for good-quality whiskey.)
There’s also a way I escape ruts by means of a minor medical problem which is certainly not under my control. I sometimes suffer attacks which seem to be caused by floods of histamine which put some parts of my brain out of commission; though disturbing at the time, this problem sometimes clears my mind so I can make tough decisions the next day or so and to move on.
Some of our psychiatric disorders might turn out to be extreme versions of oddities in the human metabolism which serve a good purpose in the overall story of our race. A drink or two, not as many as Hemingway or Faulkner took, might break up logjams in the thoughts of anyone facing a problem which can only be solved by creative thought, outside-the-box thought. A burst of some mood-altering hormone or neurotransmitter might have the same effect in breaking some out of their ruts.
Scientists have now found some evidence for a strange way to help a generally non-creative human being to climb out of ruts and engage in creative thinking: tell that human being that it’s expected for her to be an individual and to do or think out of the ordinary. This article, Pressure to Conform Can Inspire Creativity, tells us:
New research suggests less-creative people do more innovative thinking when they are told individualism is the norm, and instructed to conform.
Conform to non-conformity, much like the hippies of my youth, or the purple-haired adolescents who come and go.
I think the tentative conclusion we should take away is that there are more potentially creative human beings than you might expect but many of those need to be forced out of their ruts. Those who aren’t self-motivated, who don’t take the initiative to look for new ways to behave or think when the old ways don’t work, might show some creativity when they take a good stiff drink or when they’re told to be creative. Maybe we can see how the descendants of the resourceful pioneers of North America settled down to lives as couch potatoes?
Let me return to my unusual understanding of creativity as being a sharing in the thinking and acting of God — thinking and acting are one for Him. To me, the problem is forcing someone to look outside of their own dreams and thoughts which were put inside of them by schools and television and street-corner conversations. Most human beings settle into their comfort zones and need to be challenged to move somewhere more promising or perhaps just need a little buzz to quiet all those thoughts pushed into their heads. As is often the case, perhaps I’m in synch in many ways, not totally for sure, with William James:
To continue thinking unchallenged is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, our practical substitute for knowing in the completed sense. [William James, The Meaning of Truth, page 116 of the Dover reprint edition]
We need to be forced out of our ruts, out of our comfort zones, so that we may complete our knowledge, a little, and share with God in His true creativity, the creativity which created the objects and relationships of a truer and more complete knowledge.