The evolution of creativity and the creativity of evolution

The evolution of creativity and the creativity of evolution

Much like creativity used to be the province of the lone genius, enlightenment was the province of the individual sage. But our understanding of creativity is evolving,and I believe our changing understanding of creativity may shed some light on the emergence of a new understanding of enlightenment, a more collective enlightenment.

Many discussions of creativity start by pointing out what remarkable and fascinating phenomenon creativity is. There usually follows a list of equally fascinating great geniuses. I agree – creativity is fascinating. But I have to confess that I have never been terribly interested in the nature of genius, or discussions along the lines of whether there was anything really special about Einstein’s brain. It’s not that I think genius is uninteresting, but there’s so much more about what we call creativity that’s worth exploring. In fact, most of my attention has been directed to the aspects of creativity that haven’t received special attention. Somewhat more esoterically perhaps, I’ve also been interested in how we have created our understanding of creativity. Because our understanding of creativity is, after all, also a creation. Now this may seem to verge on the esoteric or at least the suspiciously academic, but I’ll show that the implications are considerable.

My argument here will be that creativity is evolving, meaning at least that human beings construct an understanding of what this thing or process is that they call creativity, and that this understanding changes over time. We are now at an important turning point where our under-standing of creativity is undergoing a considerable transformation. During times of transformation,it’s important to get a good sense of where we’ve been in order to get a better sense of where we could be going, and to avoid the embarrassing and potentially dangerous possibility of thinking we’re changing when in fact we’re just doing the same old thing, and making the same old mistakes. Let’s at least make some new mistakes, don’t you think?