theres a problem. ill call it individuality versus creativity.
at first they seem inextricable from one another. they seem to come hand in hand.
the problem is that i have becomed opposed to the idea of individuality. but not creativity. let me explain. it is because so much strife comes of individuality. the entirety of american youth is built on the idea of individuality. i cant find it in me that individuality is possible in a culture; language, art, music, all of culture define the wayt people think and act. a person from russia is independant from a person in ethiopia, but not from another in russia. essentially, individuality is impossible to express between poeples who use the same word for individual. the world is more universal in some respects now, as well. clothes; pants, shirts, skirts,etc. for someone to dress individually, they would have to dress in something they made that is not wnything like what other people wear.
now; individuality isnt exaxtly impossible. it's like an idea which extends beyond the possibilities of our representations of the world: like perfection, perfection can certainly be seen at times in things, but not in full, as in a common concept of God being the perfection.
so, i dont reject that individuality is possible in some sort of useful degree, but the way we see things as absolutes, it is not.
so where does creativity come in? the dilemma comes in with my struggle with philosophy being so void of humanity. but i dont think it is, it just seems to be so removed from it because people think its more important to worry about the ideas and forget about the people. this presupposes some sort of objective and non-esoteric quality of thought, which i doubt.
the thought came to me when i was readin about nietzsche and his struggle to break away from everything and be himself as an individual. it seems that kant underwent a similar struggle, though he did so much more reservedly and systematically in tune with his philosophy, whereas nietzsche let his humanity play a large part in shaping his philosophy.
so creativity. it is certainly a more feasibly possible to be creative than individual. but if we are not individuals, if we arent seeking self-autonomy, then what is creativity for? entertainment? for the sake of taking a stand on our beings?
the only easy day was yesterday
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Monday, January 21, 2008
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7 comments:
if we were meant to be individuals in the extreme sense, we would not find the need for other humans, and we would become extinct rather quickly. this does not mean there isnt room for individuality in shaping things like the community, through creativity. individuality becomes dangerous when there is a weak understanding of its role. in America it can be taken to the extreme where people feel the need to "Establish themselves as individuals", this is undoubtably a result of the fact that America has no dominant set cultural order like almost anywhere else in the world. i want to think this is a bad thing, but i have to ponder. creativity seems to be the force used by individual members of a culture to shape that culture. in America there is great freedom to do this, but there are also great forces acting against you...mass media/advertising. by instilling wants and needs that previously did not exist, these aforementioned forces appear to crush individual creativity with marketed industrial creativity. manufactured to perfection. ill think about this more
anywhere theres things like advertising. where there isnt capitalism there is probably some other dogma that one is taught that is probably more intellectually trapping than what we have here. i dont mind that it influences us, in fact it necessarily involves some creativity, whatever the motivation; i have no grounds to believe that i should care about what motivation drives creativity. for example i saw a great sony commercial the other day during a playoff game. there were a bunch of clay bunnies, green, blue, pink, yellow, etc, and there was some happy music playing. it was visually interesting and i thoroughly enjoyed the intruige of figuring out what it was that the add was for. the influence or reason for creativity isnt my problem i dont think. but then that appears to eliminate the possibility that i care whether it is motivated out of some want for imaginary individuality.
it is a concern for myself. if it so happens (as i believe, but am not sure enough to claim, that it will) that my findings about myself will resonate with other individuals and enlighten people or something, then good on me (im watching tennis from australia), but i am only privy to my own being and cannot make claims about the status or the motivations of others' beings.
thus my concern is; why should i be driven to be creative? as a component to experience my humanity fully? becasue i feel increasingly pressured by the experiences i have and things i read to embrace the creative abilities inside me?
>>this is something like heidegger does. i dont want to claim to know any other kids of beings, only those that i encounter. i am actually privy only to my own being; whereas heidegger says he makes his judgements for beings he encounters, for now i will make my judgments only on beings that i experience, which is only my own. the example brought is some tribe on madagascar or something; i have no idea how they experience, what creativity is, how they define or experience their components of humanity, but just the same i cannot judge what others cope with the world. so i will only concern myself...
define creative and creativity please.
creativity doesnt have to be physical- it seems like it is inherent in just opening your mouth and saying something you didn't hear on the television. Its an expression of your understanding or your relations to things that are outside yourself, or maybe things that get integrated within yourself due to the contact with whatever it is you're in contact with. Simply, i think creativity is an energy we have that is encompassed by the human nature to be social..to reach out and to expend some sort of energy while doing it. I think thats what creativity is- the energy someone has for the purpose of being social and interacting with their surroundings...which comes from within them.
creativity. firstly, by nature it is probably a concept best left without definition. but pushed to give one, i suppose it would be the result of a mental or physical expedition which one has never taken or experienced before. it needs to be loose because so many things are creative. puns are creative, and paintings are creative, and thoughts people have on their own walking down the streets are probably quite often creative. not creative i suppose is something familiar to someone, known to have been experienced or experienced oneself. an uncreative life is going to bussiness school and working in a big nameless city eternally in a suit yadayadayada. products of thoughts which are original as far as the thinker knows: both darwin and wallace were creative at the same time, about and thinking the same thing.
i think that maddy has too much energy to boycott this blog for months with.
i also think that there are a lot of ideas that are begging to be unfolded in there. im not sure that sociality is in any way a necessary part of creativity. i seem to be under the impression that many of the more creative people in history were not social people.
the relevent thing (though certainly not the only thing) that your statement brings up is the very distinction which we started with. one between individuality and creativity.
could we reach a better understading through this? is individuality an external, and creativity and internal struggle. certainly it can be said that any sort of struggle with individuality is a social struggle; if not for the perception of others, one would not worry to differentiate, because there would be nothing to differentiate from besides things wholly different from oneself. creativity is tougher. if i am creative, i will often like my creativity to be appreciated by others, yet i dont need others to actually be creative.
but surely, if we consider an imaginary human who is void of all sociality. we will eventually see that this human exhibits creativity. it will probably make tools and possibly draw and worship things on which he depends to live. there are clearly creative possibilities in an asocial life. but if we question yet further, we may see that it is quite possible that our friend not only has the ability to be creative, but also will have a very unique and steadfast sense of himself, sense of his individuality in the universe. he wont have language nor would we ever be able to communicate this with him, but one could imagine that a mind like ours would develope a strong sense of autonomy in an asocial world.
ill leave this here...
"being social and interacting with their surroundings"
i dont know if i am interpreting this wrong, but from this statement by miss madeline it appears as if being social doesnt necessary need to involve other people, but rather "surroundings" which could very well be people or not.
but social implies other people.
your diction brings another interesting turn; as far as i believe at this point, whether it be in the form of ideality, or a more open 'useful' form, the interaction with one's surrounding is interaction with ones mind. i suppose this holds as well for other people. the mind may define and identify with the things it designates as akin to itself - other people - giving them a complicated construction, but with simple objects, we ineract of the basis of their meaningfulness to our lives; their use as tools, their use as things to observe (which becomes a complicated relationship), etc. what does this mean? maybe creativity is jumbling up the comfortable forms of what things mean to us in our daily lives. some things are immovable or our worlds would go sort of nuts, but messing around with what a role of toilet paper means and what relation it has to other things and the experience of life you are having could end up as a creative endeavor...
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