NANDINI NAYAR
 May05 Enid
Blyton II
Apr05 Enid
Blyton I
PENI GRIFFIN
Mar05 Last
Column
Feb05 What's
In Your Notebook?
Jan05 Read
A Little Louder
Nov/Dec04 Creativity
IV
Oct04 Creativity
III
Sep04 Creativity
II
Aug04 Creativity
Jun/Jul04 Social
Angst and All That
May04 Reading
In Public
Apr04 Elephant
In The Living-Room
Mar04 Literary
Synchronicity
Feb04 The
Most Important Thing in the World
Jan04
Year-End Wrap-Ups
Dec03 Editors...
They Ain't Want You Want, They're What You Need
Nov03 The
Secret Formula for Originality - Revealed!
Oct03 An
Incoherent Message Concerning Narrative Structure; or 'Reality. What a
concept.'
Sep03 Preaching
to the Choir
Aug03 FanFic
on ACHUKACHAT, the website discussion board...
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Creativity
by Peni Griffin
An analyst programmer was discussing time budgets with an administrator whose task it was to allocate work hours to projects. He wanted the A.P. to predict how long the programs for each project would be and the length of time it took to write a line of code, so he could multiply those figures and come up with an accurate time estimate.
This administrator was around programmers every day. How was it possible for him to imagine a) that the lengths of the programs could be predicted, b) that each line of code took a predictable amount of time, c) that each line of code would only have to be written once, or d) that writing the code constituted the bulk of the work?
It's absurd, and it's sad - and it's not that unusual. I get similar bizarre misperceptions about my work; often, from people who ought to know better. Instead of looking at ourselves the way we are, we deal in labels and assumptions, false dichotomies and unexamined generalizations. During the next four columns I will be organizing some of my tools for tearing down this wall of assumption when I run up against it. Maybe after you read them you'll understand the world I live in better. Maybe you'll understand your own.
Or maybe you'll think I'm a pretentious navel-gazer. It's the risk we all take.
Part 1 - The Insane Elite 1) Creativity is a special state. If you have it, you are among the elite. Or you're crazy. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
You only have to look around to see that creativity is a normal human trait, the Siamese twin of intelligence - for what is the point of acquiring new information, if it cannot be applied in novel ways? Don't be fooled by the myriad forms creation takes. At a procedural level, there is no distinguishable difference between the arts, the sciences, the trades, and the professions. Solving problems is what we do as a species, and you can't solve a problem without creativity.
What varies is the degree to which an individual is creative, the amount of creativity a particular task requires, and (this is no small thing) the visibility of creativity in the result. The Shakespeare of real estate appraisal will die, not unwept, but unhonored and unsung, because the mental gymnastics involved in finding the perfect comparable sale, or determining the appropriate amount of a non-standard adjustment, are invisible in the finished product even to other appraisers. And nobody wants a creative accountant!
Just because creativity is normal does not mean that it is universal, either. Sight is normal, too, but not all humans can see; and some who can, see everything except red and green, or only with corrective lenses. Such people must be accommodated - but any attempt to create a world that catered to them at the expense of the normally sighted would be greeted with scorn and hostility. Why, then, are school and work organized in ways that, while adequate for the creatively challenged individual, are crippling to the majority?
If we recognized creativity as normal, we would never put up with the abnormal straitjackets foisted on developing minds today - the standardized testing, the rigid schedules, the busywork, the unattainable and undesirable ideal of authoritative control in school and workplace. If the world would accept creativity as normal and govern itself accordingly, I'd live a much more relaxed and happy life, and we'd see less depression and suicide overall.
Because here's the thing - lots of creative people are depressed. It's expected of us. The tormented genius, who produces great art out of the agony of his despair, is a staple figure. I personally have a biological tendency that way, though I'm nothing like a genius.
But y'know, it's not being creative that gets me down, and I don't do my best work from that state. I may not do any work at all, if I feel bad enough. If I am prevented from writing for some reason, I become insomniac, restless, and anxious. Depression is creative inactivity - the brain caught in a hamster wheel of unproductive hopelessness. Manic patients in hospitals often write or paint compulsively, but their work isn't very good from an artistic point of view. (I'm not qualified to judge its therapeutic qualities.) Creativity is not the problem - but the way creative people are treated may well be.
If I didn't know I was supposed to be crazy, it'd be a lot easier to cheer up. If I weren't treated as if my most essential traits were bizarre aberrations, I wouldn't forever feel I was hovering on the edge of society. If my direct personal experience hadn't been consistently dismissed by people who didn't have any idea what I was talking about and wouldn't listen long enough to find out, even though they asked me about my experience in the first place, I wouldn't have a well of despair, darkness, and anger to draw on.
Nobody - well, hardly anybody - did this to me on purpose; but it was done to me all the same. I make people uncomfortable; I see things they don't want to see and say things they don't want to think about; I have a different perspective, and they don't want to know, whether because they've made their peace with their own helplessness or for some other reason they won't discuss honestly enough for me to understand. If they won't be honest with themselves, I can hardly expect them to be honest with me. But if you meet someone who says he's full of admiration for your accomplishment, but who acts as though you've done something nasty that must be swept aside - well, how can you possibly deal with such a person? How can you be who you are, if society repeatedly tells you that you're not?
You can't raise a kid in a box and then blame him for having abnormal limb development, regardless of any inherent quality in the bones. We learn from experience and from example; and what we learn is that our natural tendencies are valuable and inconvenient, too special to belong to us and too strange to be worth having, laudable in strangers and ridiculous in us, essential to our happiness and inimical to our ability to make a living.
No wonder I get depressed, and bitter, and angry.
August 2004 © Peni Griffin
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