The Global Castration of Creativity – Part 2: What Kills Creativity:

My Original Sketch

What kills creativity? In two words; everyday life. That is my answer. The things we encounter every day, from the moment we are born to the day we die, interact with our creativity. From day one we are told what to like and what not to like. We are educated about what is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable. We are bombarded with ads about good things, bad things and all things in between. And while some of the things we are taught are good teachings, such as “Murder is bad”, many of the teaching, especially around creativity are horrible teachings based on personal biases of the teacher and strictly matters of personal opinion. Coloring outside the lines is bad. Making macaroni patterns in our dinner plate is bad. One of the first lessons a child is taught is that not following the rules is bad and following the rules is not bad, therefore good.


Parents have the ability to nurture creativity in their children, but so many parents do the exact opposite of that. Parents generally want their kids to live fulfilling and successful lives. But based on the programming they received, to do that you have to get good grades, go to college, get married, have kids, have a demanding career and blah, blah, blah, blah. There is such a stigma associated with creative people’s lives; they are poor, unfulfilled, starving artist that become alcoholic, drug-using-mentally unstable individuals. This is not always the case, but it seems that this is the perception.



Childhood

 Parents are preprogramming their kids with the notion that they only way to have a good life is to following those rules, their rules. Parents believe this because those rules worked for them. And they learned those rules from their parents, who learned from their parents and so on and so forth. For the few parents that do guide or sometimes even push their child for creative success, it ends more times than not with the parents pushing the creative talent to a competitive level. The sad part of the creative competitiveness is that it takes only one competitive failure to start building the fear that encompasses so many lives.

Why do you think there are so few “successful” writers? Sure, there is Stephen King, Sue Grafton, and the lady who wrote the Harry Potter series. But for each and every “successful” writer there are dozens of unpublished writers who have talent and have a story worth telling, but live in fear and therefore never get published. Fear of the rejection letter, fear of being told they suck, fear of being publically humiliated; fear.

Fear is a powerful and real emotion. But it is our reaction to fear that separates the men from the boys. It is our reaction to fear that sends us down a one of two paths; Fight or Flight or as I like to phrase it, Try or Fail.



“Well, I guess we can see that creative writing and drawing is
not for you.” - My Fourth Grade Teacher

 I hate labels and avoid them like the plague generally. “Successful”, “unsuccessful”, “failure”… these are labels that do not fit in a successful creative person’s vocabulary. There are only two ways to fail as a creative person; don’t try and don’t learn. If you don’t try, you aren’t going to learn from the attempt. If you try, but don’t learn from the experience, what was the point of trying?

But my definition of creative success and failure isn’t what we are taught. The education system is all about grading all forms of work; they are the judge, jury and most times the executioner. Yup, I just said it; Educators, not all, but for the most part are creative executioners. While their type of grading mentality may work on a fact based subjects like a social studies, mathematics and Spanish subjects, when judging a creative result, there should be no grading outside of try and learn or didn’t try; pass or fail. Creativity is strictly objective, based not on facts, but on style, taste and preference. But the education system feels that testing is the only solution for the entire system. Can the student draw a straight line? Pass or Fail? Is the subject of the student’s photograph interesting and well composed? Pass or fail? Is the student’s story compelling? Pass or fail? Was the student’s music beautiful? Pass or fail? These are all subjective. Composition that works well for one person, doesn’t suit another. A written story no matter how compelling isn’t guaranteed to satisfy anyone, let alone everyone. A classical pianist is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. So who are we to judge what is good and what is bad.



Handpainted Mural for my niece by me and my wife

 This judgmental-educational method/mentality is programmed early on. Penmanship is one of the first school related learning situations that is based on creativity and interpretation. No two people write in print or in cursive the same way, but the school system teaches kids that there is a right way and wrong way to make each and every letter in the alphabet. So when a child experiments with writing the letter S in their homework, their creativity is judged, graded and a letter is assigned to the final result. A, B, C, D or it is an F? How do they judge someone’s creative expression, whether it is their penmanship or their finger paintings or their poetry or their portfolio? Who are they, other than the pompous arrogance produced by the educational system, to say pass or fail? If anything, the system is the failure.

Another tactic used by schools is the red pen for grading. Students are required to use blue or black ink or gray pencil (good ole reliable #2) on their assignments. When the graded paper is returned it comes back with red marks and scribbles all over it indicating where the failures happened. The red ink stands out, no, the red ink jumps off the page screaming “Failure!” Public schools, for the most part, and their teaching staff, again for most part, are the guillotine of creativity.

Finding "Sex" in Junior Mints - It's there

This continues through college for most kids. Professors place rules around school work. I once had a math teacher that started his class out with this phrase; “50% of your grade will be based on the punctuation, spelling and grammar of the papers you turn in.” I was utterly baffled. A math class where half of my grade was based on an aspect of school not even math related. I deduced rather quickly that if I were to get only 30% of the math problems right and get 100% on spelling and grammar then I could still pull a C. That means I don’t have to focus as hard on learning the math and focus more on grammar aspect of my math homework. That is too bad because I am going to need as much math as I can get to prepare for my Engineering Degree.

Entertainment is a great killer of creativity as well. Television shows, movies, music, the internet and even literature are true killers of creativity in not only adults, but our young as well. In the era of the www.this and www.that, people are becoming complacent with instant gratification. Look at the housing market collapse. People were buying house they couldn’t afford simply because they wanted it and wanted it now. If you want a song, you can download it. If you want learn something, you can browse for it. Your phone, most likely, allows you to get directions without asking directions.

Entertainment today is about technology and technology is reducing human connections to 140 characters or less. Creativity is based on human connections. Every word written in a book, every drop of paint added to canvas, every pixel captured in a photograph is there to connect to a person. But these days, it is not unusual for someone to send a lunch invite via email to someone sitting two feet away rather than actually turning and talking to them. People are not connecting with people any more. People are connecting with 0s and 1s. This is why I hate text messaging. While I have a texting plan on my phone, it is only because people in my life refuse to not text me. It drives me crazy, but what can I do… not respond? Hmm… I think I may have a new strategy.

The Joy of Fall

Now, I know that stating something like technology is killing creativity is a bold statement, but I am here to make that statement. Technology is killing creativity. Technology is deepening our need for instant gratification. Technology is deepening our dependence on it for entertainment. Creativity is not as important as the fun-factor is. How many video games been made in the last twenty years? Most of the video games are based on common themes and story arcs, yet they continue selling new version of the same crap year after year. In the last twenty years, how many new video games released have been sequels or even sequels of sequels? In an essence kids are being taught through entertainment that you don’t have to be original, you just have to be fun.

So why would a kid want to write short story for the simple purpose of being creative and expressing themselves when they can sit in front of the television and kill zombies all day. Why take the four hours to read the book when the movie only takes 90 minutes to watch. The kid wouldn’t write a short story because writing takes a long time to see results and killing zombies can happen in minutes. The kid wouldn’t read the book because they aren’t getting the visceral visuals and audio blasting at their senses. The movies and games don’t require the use of any imagination. And the downside to that is imagination is like a muscle. Exercise a muscle and it becomes strong, dependable and enables you to do more, but if you stop using the muscle it becomes flaccid, weak and eventually becomes useless. Please don’t’ get me wrong. I love entertainment and movies, video games and other forms of digital entertainment have their place in the world and definitely in my life, but considering the current consumption rates of these technologies, they are making people creatively impotent.

Parents are to blame for this. Parents are responsibly for teaching an important lesson in balance. But the lesson in balance usually falls behind in priority to convenience. Today, parents now have the simple task of keeping their kids entertained; by keeping the computer, console game or internet connections up lazy parents have a live-in babysitter. Never mind what that babysitter might be teaching their child, parents are free, thanks to the technology babysitter, to pursue anything that doesn’t involve being a parent.



Don't Kill Your T.V.

 In the end, the loss of creativity is the road to complacency, laziness and unfulfilled non-creative lives. It isn’t just kids either. Many adults these days don’t know how to be creative. They don’t know how to create. Why would they need to? If they want something, they can go buy it, and probably don’t even need to leave their house to do that.

I am not one of those bumper sticker types, but if I had one bumper sticker, it would say, “Unplug three days a week”. I am not a fanatic, like those “Kill Your Television” types, but I believe that there is a benefit to disconnecting several days a week. If you are unsure of what to do with the time unplug time try reading, hiking, talking with your family, meditating or volunteering. Better yet, take a pair of scissors and a folded piece of paper and make a snowflake and then share your snowflake with the world!

Read Part 1 Here
Coming soon... Part 3: The Birth of Courage