On Creativity
What is creativity?
What separates something that is “creative” from something that is trash? Mihály Csíkszentmihályi writes in Creativity that - like everything - we cannot consider creativity in a vacuum, but rather see it in its environment. Truly creative work is a synthesis between sender and receiving audience.
Creators might be ahead of their time and die without knowing how future generations might perceive their work. On the other hand, many works that are considered highly creative for a short time, are considered derivative or pedestrian shortly afterwards.
Open and closed modes
The best and most entertaining example of creativity has to be John Cleese’s Legendary 1991 Speech Watch on YouTube
But these same concepts are similarly covered in The artists way and Csíkszentmihályi’s Flow. The basic concept is that there are 2 modes of being: open/creative and closed/editor.
Open mode is allowing yourself the safety of making mistakes. Closed mode is reducing mistakes by driving towards a goal. Neither one is “better” than the other but real creativity can only take place in the open mode. We switch between these modes constantly. Kids operate a lot in the open mode. Adults learn that the world is unsafe and operate often in the closed mode.