#104. Creativity

The modern world is all about efficiency. A large chunk of human efforts are now pouring into activities that help us either automate or eliminate rote activities. All of this is with the intent of allowing ourselves to spend time on what our brains are truly meant to do, which is creative work.

At the same time, we now have more than our fair share of tools that can even do the creative work we were freeing up our calendars to do. Well then, what the hell is left?

Today, we will try to decipher this very aspect of creativity, and how we can cultivate more of this generative, facet of life.

Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.

– George Kneller

There was a time where the human society had no option, but to involve in work that was not necessarily fun, but was mandatory for its sustenance and flourishing. These were tasks that were fundamental for the survival of human race like hunting and gathering. If the tribe did not hunt, they did not get anything to eat. That was a source of discomfort for the whole tribe and if it would have been paid attention to for long enough, it would also have been the cause of its extinction.

Over a period of time, our primal ancestors realised that efforts into making the process of hunting and gathering would benefit from a combination of resources that existed around us, like wood, sharp stones and vines. Thus came into existence the profession of toolmaking. Someone from the tribe who specialised in creatively tying the raw material together would benefit the entire tribe.

Also, someone realised that unless the tribe had something to cover themselves with, the weather conditions would result in bodily harm, and in worst case scenarios, death. So, they creatively produced clothing. In my mind, clothing was intended to be man’s armour against difficult climate.

See a pattern so far? Every human problem in the early age was solved by creativity.

Fast forward to the modern, or the “information age”, we have thousands of organisations (dare I say, tribes), trying to solve every problem that exists (or doesn’t even exist yet) with computers, internet connections and other hardware, software or technological solutions in the most creative fashion.

I have spent time to irrefutably establish a fact that we all know deep down.

Creativity is foundational to human existence and problem solving.

Today, being creative is easier than it has ever been. We have these “second brains” available in the form of generative artificial intelligence, which is available to us for free, and at the clicks of a few buttons. These second brains are eager to provide us with information available from all over the world we may need in the context of the problems we are trying to solve.

However, the question that I would like to probe more into, is what allows us to be creative?

There are a few things that I can think of, and I will try to articulate them in this one.

1. Critical Thinking: Our ability to critically analyse the possible consequences of a sequence of actions is what has allowed the human race to exist for as long as it has. If not for that, all of human race would have gone extinct the moment we discovered fire or a deep reservoir of water. I feel that this is an underrated facet of creativity, due to the apparent softness of it.
2. Mental Bandwidth: Our ability to free up our mental resources of everything bothering it at any instant to solve a given problem is another that I believe fosters creativity in us. This ability allows us to flesh out a problem, identify resources around us that could be employed to solve our problems and then deploy them to indeed solve them.

This is a short take on what I understand creativity to be. If there are more factors that influence it from your perspective, comment them down below.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one. 🙂