Creativity
Created | Updated Sep 30, 2012
Our writer offers a new perspective on the creative process.
Creativity
In order to cultivate creativity there are some guides we can consider.
Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” is a good read. Inspired in part by her “Sacred Circle Rules” on page 210, I offer the following bits intended to cultivate creativity here, there and everywhere.
Creativity like a delicate flower, is something to be cherished. But in the wrong place it may be actively uprooted. In the reality of our world we need more flowers, but, as a culture, we spend most of our time and energies designing buildings, cars, roads, computers, and the other trappings of prosperity. To be sure, we often make special places for flowers. Perhaps along the roadway you will find some landscaping. But in the middle of a thoroughfare, cars just smash whatever seed happens to be there.
What else do we smash? People, dogs, and cats are all too often the sorry victims along the road to success. Every victim deserves consideration but only some get justice. To take your imagination to an extreme, consider an ant that died in that same vein. The ant gets little or no consideration. Why? This kind of question can bring us to places in our integrity most cannot air out in public. Perhaps you avoid stepping on ants; perhaps you still cannot help the fact that you kill a few. What are the social implications? Society has become callous to some life falling in the name of progress. In some cases even people are the unjust victims of “normal” sociological proceedings, run down by runaway ideas.
In your society, what is the punishment for accidental manslaughter [killing without malice]? Rhetorically, why is that different for killing a dog or cat? Is there no concern for the wildflower seed in the road?
When we set aside a place for flowers, that place needs to protect the flowers there, unlike the seed in the road. Likewise, in a place especially for creativity, we need to protect the creativity there. Still, not all flowers will survive. Creativity is but a delicate flower.
Not only does Creativity need safety, but there are other guides to consider. To flourish, there must be a positive atmosphere; friends blowing gentle winds of direction, not vicious destructive foes with oppressive heated puffs of anger.
The creativity of all people great and small deserve protection. In the real world, only the powerful can protect what is valuable along their road to achievement.
Having said the above, the real world must acknowledge death and disadvantage to be unavoidable. Some ideas will die that we think should not, some will flourish that we think should not. Douglas Adams’ work was fundamental in developing my understanding that great losses just happen. After all, Earth is really inconsequential in some ideological “bigger” scheme of things. It would seem to be a fact that some ideas must be sacrificed that other ideas will thrive.
As individuals, it is incumbent on our souls that we express our creativity. Therefore, if we violate the creativity of another individual, we are guilty of violating that soul. After all is said and done, the success of another does not really preclude our success, usually it is quite the opposite.
Only today I found “My Vision for H2G2, by Douglas Adams,” A550955. So it is with a newcomer, it takes time to even see the important things, let alone everything, let alone understand bits of what we may never fully appreciate. I got the idea that Adams sort of bungled his way into founding the Guide. This seems like throwing ideas to the wind, to see what takes hold.
Perhaps there is the idea of a knowledgebase implicit in his vision. Almost in direct conflict with preconceived notions of knowledge is the concept of creativity.
In my humble opinion, there is already a ‘net based encyclopedia that is snow-balling into an impressive repository of facts. What seems better suited to the culture of h2g2 is a creative distillation of the spirit of modern knowledge; something that might make us drunk, but at the very least, would lessen our in-habitations when it comes to handling facts.
