When culture is readily available to us, we tend to refrain from creating additional culture. We feel no need since it is so readily available to us. Overall, there have been some who continue to be creative while the rest of us devolve to simple consumers of culture. I read about this phenomenon in the book Remix by Lawrence Lessig about three weeks ago, but it has since stood out to me. This tragedy is preventable, especially at an individual level. One may argue as well that it can be prevented at a more societal level with education reform, but I won't go into that now. I absolutely loved the clip of President Uchtdorf talking about creativity that was shown in class. In it he said,
"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before. Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty. You might say, I am not the creative type. If that is how you feel, think again. Creation is your opportunity in this life….. Start small. Creativity does not require a brush, a pen, or the keys of a piano. Don’t let the voice of critics paralyze you. You will make the World a better place. Improve, beautify, extend, smile, cultivate, develop, create."
These are truly inspiring words coming from one of God's special witnesses, and I like it so much that I had to include the whole thing. All too often, some of us choose to be only the beholder rather than the artist, when in reality we are artists at birth. We have more tools to create readily available to us than any generation has ever had. What we need to do is wake up from our sluggish ways. There are already some who are making so much use of the tools available, and they are able to accomplish so much. From virtual choirs to improved farming methods, we've seen it all. No. We haven't seen it all. That's the point. We think we have witnessed so much creativity from others that we refuse to. I wanted to list out some examples of creativity, but I couldn't. It's whatever we make of it, and enumeration is part of the problem. Too many feel that creativity can only be music, drawing, interior design, engineering, or writing. This is a bold claim, but there is not an aspect of our lives that we cannot be creative in.
In a TED Talk "Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value", Sir Ken Robinson used statistics from the chart above which measures divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is a measure of creativity and is defined as thinking in an unusual and unstereotyped way to generate several possible solutions to a problem. Different age groups were measured for this characteristic, and Kindergartners outscored other age groups by a long shot. Robinson suggests this is due to our education system. I however, think it is based more on two other factors: 1)the increase in conformity as we age and 2)our access to culture. Both, as I stated earlier are preventable at a personal level. Also, the first factor may even be a result of the second. We can choose to break the trend for ourselves and invite others to do the same.
In a somewhat related note, We value the gems that we dig for. As consumers of culture, we cannot adequately appreciate what we consume without being familiar with the process of creating. When we've gone through the process for ourselves, we realize what it takes to create. It causes us to understand the rigor of the means. Otherwise, we only take in the end result without being able to properly determine the value of the work of others.
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