Creativity

What is creativity? To me creativity is my life, I go about every day and I’m brought into creative situations. This can be the most simple of things like thinking about a book I’ve read and visualizing the characters and environments. I often escape to my mind on a trail of mostly nonsensical thoughts. This is creative because I am constantly thinking and switching ideas in my head. I was talking to a friend recently and about how fantasy has intrigued us to the extreme of we make up worlds and scenarios. I would as a child and still do now think up epic fight scenes using the elements as a base or start from a single thought and make it into a series of events. This is where I find dreams the purest form of creativity; you will see me go on about dreams multiple times, especially next year. I love them as they can have an unlimited amount of creativity with no restrictions to the real world.

The best way to describe this is to give you an example of a dream. Now I don’t have crazy dreams all the time, only sometimes and I love them. Once I was in a old Victorian city, every building curved in different directions, there were no straight lines not even the lampposts. When it would rain the people on the street with masked faces would hide in air pockets or bins in the ground. An air pocket consisted of a rip in the air that you could climb in, making you invisible but still able to see the outside world and not be affected by it. I for some reason climbed into a trash can in the floor…because that’s safe. Unfortunately I wasn’t alone, and she wasn’t alive, never the less she detailed that the acid rain would melt the skin from your body if you weren’t careful. That’s why people would wear masks, long clocks and an umbrella at all times. She told me about the ruler of the city who lived in the clock tower whose summit was in the clouds. He was…hard to describe but I can only describe with a picture of a character who reminds me of him.

Anyway I’ll stop and review what I said. Is this creative? Well to an extent but I am held back by my understanding and view of the world. It didn’t have to be a city, it didn’t have to be people but people I have learned this throughout my life even my dreams contain elements of the real world. Now If I was to give this first half of my story to a kid and tell them to finish, more than likely they will have me in space and eating prezels with an armadillo. Kids are far more creative than kids because they haven’t learned about the world yet. A study was done by George Land in which he he took 1,600 5-year-olds and tested their creativity using a test made by NASA to test their engineers and scientists. He then re-tested the same children at 10 years of age, and again at 15 years of age.

Test results amongst 5 year olds: 98%

Test results amongst 10 year olds: 30%

Test results amongst 15 year olds: 12%

Same test given to 280,000 adults: 2%

This is a weird statistic that we actually grow out of creativity because we have to conform to the rules of society.

“It’s been said that at the age of 5, children ask 120 questions a day, at age 6 they ask only 60 questions a day, and at the age of 40, adults ask 4 questions a day.”

I don’t even know if I ask 4 questions a day, but again this supports the theory of kids are more creative because they don’t know any better. Isn’t that kindof awesome, that if I want to be more creative I look on the web at cool images for hours trying to spark inspiration. I got these links and facts from;

http://www.creativityatwork.com/

TBH I think she’s reading into it way to much and have devolved ways to increase creativity and what not, but I guess that’s her job. 

I just watched an interesting video on youtube about creativity and how it kills us. Creativte people are more susceptible to suicide and mental problems later in life and she’s an author who talks about this and a new way on thinking about creativity. She talks about not being the vain of your existence by not giving yourself that vain. It’s a really good watch, inspirational and funny. Do please take the time to watch it.

I also watched a good link on introverts and extroverts. She mostly talks about the suppression of introverts in today's society but she goes on to say about how introverts are more creative because we need time to think, if you are extroverted you crave human interaction in a sense and need to be the source. This can lead to extroverts shadowing over introverts due to extroverts projecting their ideas and introverts being very reclusive with their ideas. This is a good lesson for the group project cause you should let everyone generate their ideas separately from the group to give them more freedom and creativity. I think no one person can be introverted or extroverted but live their life with a mixture of both but being predominant in one. Again its a good watch and I do recommend watching these links.

I think this leads me to the conclusion that growing up I use to have a lot more weird and creepy but awesome dreams because my knowledge of the world was little, I was also very introverted, pretty much just had my shadow to keep me company. I think I have less creativity now due to me getting older living with rules and developing my knowledge of the world and having to become more extroverted in university. That's not to say I have no creativity at all it has just decreased. This task has actually been a lot of fun, when I watched the links I was smiling and listening to the theories of theses woman and it's nice to hear this stuff in today's society rather than the rise in young pregnancies. 

"Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it."
Dee Hock