Kirsten Wright is noble to suggest writers block be solved with crayons and a coloring book to embrace juvenile creativity, but why must we stoop so low?
Why is creativity served with childhood? I’m going to buy a box of crayons tomorrow because I just realized I don’t own a box and, when you stop and think about it, it’s very closed-minded to associate crayons with prepubescent development. Shouldn’t everyone draw? It would be juvenile to think otherwise.
Before I continue, please watch this non-crayon creative bit:
Where is the essence of creativity in today’s social media innovations? Tools and upgrades are released every day, social media experts claim to know the best way to do things–despite the notion they’re apparently nowhere to be found–and now there is talk about building an information society with semantic technology.
Say what? It sounds very brain-driven to me. Is that what creativity means today? Creating with the brain?
As I type this sentence on my computer, I may as well be paralyzed from my waist down. Computers do not require lower body movements. We use our eyes, ears, fingers, and other upper body parts to send emails, surf the web, talk on the phone, watch TV, and other technological experiences. Sure, I could walk and talk with a Bluetooth earpiece or digital eyeglasses, but that continues the mantra of using the head.
Kneale Mann writes about human innovation as the product of invention and creativity.
As soon as something is invented, creative minds get to work on improving it. Once we are introduced to something new in our lives, we somehow seem to find a need for it or seamlessly adapt to its existence.
Tell me a social media tool, service, website, anything, that does not focus on one of the two senses of sight and sound. We live in an audiovisual society, and eyes and ears are prime real estate for application developers to tap into. Or am I wrong and there are social media tools intended to be used by our torsos, legs, and feet?
The public education system, if Sir Ken Robinson is correct, was established in synchronization with industrialization. Children are not nurtured to be creative; they are taught to be literate and lose their creativity by adulthood, epitomized by Kirsten’s suggestion and my realization about crayon drawing.
Next time you talk to a child, ask him or her how many hours during the school day drama and dance are taught. Then, ask him or her how many hours are spent learning math and science. Ask the questions to an elementary school student, a high school student, and a college student. I’ll hazard a guess the percentage ratios will be similar in each level.
Why?
Aren’t we not growing creatives anymore? Did the spark of electricity and neotechnic processes of computational algorithms cause society to change its focus? Why are sports programs cut from school budgets? Why aren’t math classes and physics instruction cut? Think about it.
Before you think with that brain, do listen here to Ken speak. It takes about 20 minutes, but he inserts so many jokes, the time passes quick. Please do. I think you’ll enjoy it–and be inspired to do something. Ken inspired me to write this post.
Perhaps J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Father of the Atomic Bomb, said it best:
This world of ours is a new world, in which the unit of knowledge, the nature of human communities, the order of society, the order of ideas, the very notions of society and culture have changed, and will not return to what they have been in the past. What is new is new, not because it has never been there before, but because it has changed in quality…. One thing that is new is the prevalence of newness, the changing scale and scope of change itself, so that the world alters as we walk in it, so that the years of man’s life measure not some small growth or rearrangement or moderation of what he learned in childhood, but a great upheaval.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Ari,
I see creatives sprouting all about me. But maybe that’s because I look for them.
“Ah, the rogue creative gene. Nice.”
Thanks for adding more insight into my post on creativity. While I did suggest to use your ‘inner child’, I also included that crayons are still one of my favorite tools. I don’t find them juvenile, but the masses seem to.
Why do you think the masses do?