Fair enough if they’re not principally a feminist group, but that sounds like an expression of feminism to me. — AJJ

You cannot be serious.

Feminist groups already do (or did at the time Hitchens’ book was written) support the right to carry guns. Hitchens gives Armed Females of America as an example. — AJJ

AFA is NOT a feminist group. It is a group of women who support the right to carry guns. There’s a difference.

But I think the point is simply that the claim less legal guns equals less violent crime isn’t a straightforward one to make. — AJJ

Fair enough. I’m not sure where Lott got his statistics from, but I notice that only the first two years of data were available following the law changes when his book was published (1998). All the Australian data I’ve seen show the spike in gun homicides in 1996, after which the gradual decline that was occurring (before the massacre) resumed without much change. Still, this isn’t a convincing argument for gun control laws.

In my opinion, the aim of Australia’s gun control laws in 1996 was to enable police to prosecute more outlaw bikie gang members for possessing and brandishing illegal firearms (particularly against police), rather than actually reduce the incidence of shootings per se. But they won’t tell you that’s the reason. The decade prior to 1996 saw three other shooting massacres, all related to Melbourne crime syndicates, and the gun laws were already being discussed in parliament earlier that year. The massacre of 35 tourists and shopkeepers in an innocent little heritage town was a handy impetus to garner public support and push the laws through. Without it, the public didn’t much care about bikie gang wars or police safety.

Personally, I think the real issue with US gun culture (apart from feeding on fear) is that Americans see possession of a firearm as a fundamental part of their identity as a nation - in the same way as Australians see alcohol and gambling (which, incidentally, is where our major social issues stem from). There will be no effective gun laws in the US unless they can find a way to put aside this element of their identity. America without gun ownership is like Australia without beer (much less unnecessary violence and social destruction, if you ask me).

As for the argument regarding gender equality, to suggest that feminists should be supporting the right to carry a weapon because it gives women a more ‘equal’ ability to defend themselves that wouldn’t be there without the gun is beyond ridiculous, and attempts to direct the focus away from genuine feminist issues - such as the use of broad gender statistics which perpetuate the assumption that women are ‘generally’ less capable than men.

As a woman, if I believe I need a gun to feel safe, then there is something fundamentally askew - and it’s NOT with the world - it’s either with how I interact with the world, or how I think the world sees me.

I don’t have a gun, and there isn’t one on our property. I’m not going to pretend I feel safe 100% of the time. But to believe that possessing a gun and knowing how to use it makes you feel safer than without it is a delusion that feeds on fear, in my opinion.

This awareness of the universe as consisting of entities is a phase I believe we are in the process of evolving away from - and towards an awareness of the universe as a network of interdependent processes.

From ‘The Order of Time’:

If the world were, however, made of things, what would these things be? The atoms, which we have discovered to be made up in turn of smaller particles? The elementary particles, which, as we have discovered, are nothing other than the ephemeral agitations of a field? The quantum fields, which we have found to be little more than codes of language with which to speak of interactions and events? We cannot think of the physical world as if it were made of things, of entities. It simply doesn’t work.

What works instead is thinking about the world as a network of events. Simple events, and more complex events that can be disassembled into combinations of simpler ones. A few examples: a war is not a thing, it’s a sequence of events. A storm is not a thing, it’s a collection of occurrences. A cloud above a mountain is not a thing, it is the condensation of humidity in the air that the wind blows over the mountain. A wave is not a thing, it is a movement of water, and the water that forms it is always different. A family is not a thing, it is a collection of relations, occurrences, feelings. And a human being? Of course it’s not a thing; like the cloud above the mountain, it’s a complex process which food, information, light, words and so on enter and exit...a knot of knots in a network of social relations, in a network of chemical processes, in a network of emotions exchanged with its own kind. — Carlo Rovelli

Anger is a physiological response that prioritises the values of the ‘self’. But anger as an active response to anything is unhealthy because as humans we are capable of interacting on a more complex level than stimulus-response. I understand that there is more to the universe than what is valuable and meaningful to me and mine, even as my physiological systems might ‘naturally’ respond otherwise.

It’s a common mistake to assume that the Stoics had ‘control over their emotions’, or over their world, more than most. But it was more about perspective. The Stoics appeared to advocate a ‘view from above’ approach to each moment of experience.

The appropriate response to someone who has ‘wronged’ you, then, is to firstly consider (or ask for) the reasons they may have for their actions, rather than assume intended malice. Most people, outcomes and situations can’t realistically be expected to consider your feelings to be a top priority - it isn’t logical to be angry with them for that.

I have too long been guided by anger. It is a bad feeling that is all consuming. It detracts from the ruler within and is like a festering sore that prevents a person from feeling calm and relaxed.

We all know that anger breeds hatred.

A question. Why are so many people angry? What's so comforting about anger and hatred? — Wallows

I would suggest that anger and hatred can be comforting in that they reassure us we still have a handle on our world. This sounds counter-intuitive, but consider this: most people interact in a world that is comfortable because everything is more or less manageable. We set our own challenges, we’ve established relationships and arranged things just so, and we’re pretty confident that we can handle anything that might arise and quickly restore our pocket of the universe to this apparent equilibrium. There’s a sense of freedom in this state of mind - a belief that I control my universe.

Then someone does something that makes me painfully aware that there is more to this universe than I’ve been telling myself, and I am not in control. Anger and hatred, rather than acknowledging a position of negotiation, allows me to separate the universe into the world I still control and the one that is working against me. Anger arises when a part of the world I thought I controlled turns against me.

To let go of anger and hatred, I need to accept that I am not expected to have control over my world, but that I must continually be aware of, understand and nurture my ever-changing relationships with everything in the unfolding universe.

What would it mean for me to know and to experience that I have a completely free will? — charles ferraro

I get the feeling that we don’t want completely free will. Most of us cannot bear to take responsibility for the comparatively little freedom that we do have.

Within the confines of my existence and who I have become to this point (i.e. the personality/character I have ended up with), I have more freedom than I am aware of, and more freedom than I could want. Insomuch as I am conscious of my capacity to participate in this existence, I am more free.

Insomuch as I focus on the boundaries of my own existence, however - on the impact of the universe upon me - I have less freedom to speak of.

I agree that completely free will does not exist. For me to know and to experience that I have completely free will, I would have to BE the infinitely unfolding universe in its entirety. This is the desired experience of limited consciousness. Let me illustrate at a simpler level.

A stimulus-response existence initially perceives the physical organism as the infinite universe. Any external stimulus is then interpreted as either a boundary to that ‘universal’ existence (an indication of less freedom), or as evidence that there is more to the universe than first perceived: a freedom to explore and interact with a universe beyond that existence.

Once aware of the stimulus, there is a desire to go back to that initial perception of being the infinite universe, rather than to step forward into an unfamiliar universe and accept a broader experience of freedom. Regardless, the interaction cannot be undone, and so the choice with each interaction is to process the information as either more freedom or less.

Gun ownership is tightly restricted in the UK. I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, but according to Hitchens’ book they tightened their gun laws after ‘96 and violent crime went up significantly over the first two years. — AJJ

This statistic is no surprise but, to me, it gives no valid argument against tightening gun laws. The method for tightening gun laws in Australia in 1996 began with a voluntary surrender of weapons that would fall outside the new laws, including unregistered and unregisterable guns.

So a gun owner could choose between surrendering his weapons to the authorities, keeping them in defiance of the law (and identifying as a criminal), or unloading them on the black market, perhaps for a tidy profit. One can imagine a flood of weapons in the hands of violent criminals and organised crime syndicates, and a shrinking window of opportunity to get away with activities such as armed robberies before the full force of the new laws came into effect.

So what happened after the first two years?

While I agree that a specific creation can result from the creative process, I disagree that a creative process ‘surely’ results in a specific completed creation. I hope you follow the distinction.

From the creator’s perspective, a pure result of the creative process is always a work in progress, never a ‘completed’ creation. It is ‘completed’ only in terms of the limitations of product specifications, contractual agreements, value systems, etc. To anticipate a specific result in the creative process is to limit the process. It is not a requirement of the creative process to ‘complete’ a creation, let alone a specific one.

I disagree that it must contribute to survival in order to exist.
— Possibility

I can’t see it any other way. — Brett

This is what I mean by examining the creative process from within the process - it exists for the creator long before it contributes to survival, and has the potential to continue existing even as his creations fail to contribute to survival (whether he falls back on another survival method or perishes). All it takes is for someone to be aware of it.

The creative process and rational thought work together, natural selection has the final say. — Brett

Not the way I see it. ‘Final’ say on what, exactly? The creative process is such that there is no finality except what we make of it. Every step in the process has the potential to be a dead end or a step forward, depending on how we look at it and interact with it.

By ‘fiddling’ I do mean how we “correlate between entities, value and meaning“. That is being creative, maybe being conscious and being creative are the same thing: “how we process and integrate information”. — Brett

This is how we’ve been creative in the past, but I don’t think it’s how we’re being creative now. I will try to explain what I mean by this, because the way I see it, to be creative now requires us to be conscious in a further dimension. Instead of interacting with an objective self as universe (like most animals), humans developed the capacity to view the previously ‘universal’ self as a finite entity within an infinite physical universe, where we interacted with everything not as stimuli but as other entities from specific positions within space and time, to which we attributed objective values and meaning.

But we’re now developing our capacity to view the previously ‘universal’ physical cosmos as a complex web of finite processes within an infinitely unfolding universe. Here, we interact not as entities, but as interconnected processes on complex trajectories across spacetime, value systems and networks of meaning.

I don't see why that would take a lot of education, but, I do like the point that you make. — thewonder

By ‘education’, I just mean second or third-hand (abstract) experiences that point to information, rather than first-hand experiences in which we process the information directly.

I see freedom as something that everyone already has. Everyone already has a limitless potential for agency. Subjugation relies on pathology. That there are people who are not free is resultant of some form of cult or another. In short, the problem is largely psychological. — thewonder

Freedom is stifled by our awareness of that potential for agency. You can try to convince someone that they have limitless potential or that they can or can’t do certain things - but in the end it’s how we see our own potential in relation to space, time, value and meaning structures of the universe that determines what we can’t or won’t do.

In order to spontaneously jump into a song and dance routine, for instance, we need to believe that the sum effect of spontaneously jumping into a song and dance routine on our subjective experience of the universe will be positive. For some people, this may take a lot of education or new experiences that alter the structures in their subjective experience of the universe for them to even see this potential, let alone recognise its overall effect as positive.

But IMHO it is often a fear of this limitless potential in others that motivates us to willingly subjugate ourselves (and those with whom we interact) to value and meaning structures designed to limit freedom.

I’d like to try and clear up a few things, if I may.

I agree that mixing things up is a factor in the creative process. I disagree that this ‘desire for fiddling’ encapsulates creativity. It is how we process and integrate information as we ‘fiddle’ or generally experience the universe that gives us our creative advantage. We can fiddle all we want, but if we couldn’t recognise and correlate between entities, value and meaning, then we wouldn’t be where we are now.

I agree that the creative process contributes to survival. I disagree that it must contribute to survival in order to exist. I understand that this is difficult to follow - unless you can relate to the experience of being aware of partially formed or continually evolving ideas.

I agree and have already stated that the creative process alone is not enough. Something needs to be produced from it, otherwise we lose track of it - but to call it a ‘result’ in terms of a ‘completed’ act is false, because the creative process is ongoing. I can produce something that attempts to demonstrate where I am in the process right now, but by the time the paint is dry on a tangible result, I could begin another to demonstrate how much the process has already evolved. An example of this is the evolution of iPhone technology.

And I disagree that there are pointless creative acts, because all acts have the potential to advance the creative process - just as the man who escapes a wild animal only to perish in the fire can provide vital new information for another man observing that may not be immediately apparent. The more we are aware of these creations that ‘failed’ or disappeared with their creator, the more information we have at our disposal. It pays to be aware, to interconnect and to enable others to achieve, even as we fail.

Of course the creative act opens us up to other potentials, but it can’t keep opening up potentials endlessly, forever. — Brett

Are you sure about that?

A potential is exactly that, the capacity to develop into something. What is a potential that never develops into something? — Brett

A potential isn’t exactly anything - it’s more open-ended than you might think. Potential is the capacity to develop. I don’t see specific potentials, therefore, but rather ‘potential’ as a source to draw from.

Integrating information from a long series of failed experiences, even across several generations, can increase our chance of success. Likewise, pursuing information from anomalies and atypical data that might otherwise have been discarded by scientific process helps to advance our understanding of the universe. This is how the creative process operates alongside natural selection and rational thought, to increase overall achievement.

As I understand it, you (and I would imagine, many others) see a ‘creative act’ as an act in which one creates - and so any creative act that does not result in anything objectively tangible or useful is a waste of time, energy, attention and effort on the creator’s part. Because if nothing can objectively exist as evidence, then what’s the point? Please correct me if I’m wrong. I can see the logic in this argument.

It’s hard for me to make clear, and I maybe missing something myself, that without a creative act that contributes towards survival there will be no second act. And as a consequence, only those who can manipulate that creative act will survive. — Brett

It seems like you’re referring to a particular survival situation as an entity: those who can create fire will survive, while those who don’t have sufficient experiences to make a correlation between the flint, wood and their own hand movements will... freeze to death? I’m not sure what specific situation or pending threat you have in mind that is averted by being able to create fire. In a certain life-and-death situation, yes - only those who can make fire will survive. But to me, the creative act incorporates the integration of all the necessary information/experience in order to recognise one’s own capacity to use making fire as a tool for survival, and act on that awareness when the situation arises. Of course that recognition may only occur in the moment, but the information must already be a part of the system.

I’m trying to offer a different perspective here, because I get the impression that you are attempting to describe a creative act from the outside. Have you ever tried to describe it from within the act? As a participant - not as an observer or even a creator at the completion of the act, but as someone being creative right now?

When you see another human ‘creating’ something, what you can observe or deduce from them about the process is taken to be the creative act in itself. But what about when it is you being creative? Do you recognise the difference between the question ‘how am I being creative?’, and ‘how does it appear that I am being creative?’

The result is purely chance. Early man was not seeking a specific result. You cannot say I’m going to invent a specific thing, because you must already be aware of aspects of that thing. Once the original thing is made real then it can be applied in different ways. — Brett

I’m not suggesting that early man intended to invent fire. Early man intended to not be killed - this is a specific result. He had to already know that fire existed, and that it could be ‘created’ under certain conditions, before he could determine how he could create it when required for the specific purpose of survival.

Chance is observing (and remembering) the spark that occurs when a flint rock happens to fall on another. Chance is happening upon a fire in its infancy and observing a spark turn into a flame. A combination of chance encounters with fire over time, as well as deliberate interactions (fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits) both with and without requiring specific results - all of these subjective experiences (including internal thought processes) were integral to a ‘completed’ act that first demonstrated ‘man creating fire’.

But the entire creative process on which this ‘completed’ act depends can’t be described as creating fire or surviving without distorting our view of it - reducing it to less than the complex web of its necessary contributions. Hence a specific result, anticipated or otherwise, cannot be used to accurately describe the creative process. If we’re hoping to understand creativity and what it means to be creative - to possess a tendency or inclination to create - I think we have to get past this focus on a completed creation.

Though your fire story could be regarded as a creative act, or thought, that has a beneficial result. I really don’t know how to classify that. — Brett

It’s the need to classify it that complicates our understanding of it. It’s not like humans ‘creating fire’ can be mapped out or clearly defined as a single, linear process with a start and finish. It’s a complex, multi-dimensional process of integrating information across a wide variety of experiences. To suggest that someone happened to be idly rubbing a sharp stick against wood and accidentally ‘created’ fire, then looked for different ways to apply it, is ignorant of the wide variety of ways we receive, process and integrate information.

But eventually it’s possible they saw having male children as beneficial to their survival when they have grown. — Brett

Consider an early human who must continually be aware of and then run from wild animals outside of his cave in order to find food and water to survive. A human who runs from an animal towards a bushfire will escape the animal but perish in the fire, producing a null result in terms of evolution.

But a creative human not in immediate danger who observes this situation can recognise the potential of fire to deter wild animals. By integrating this new information with:

- what he knows from interacting with fire in situations when he isn’t trying to survive a wild animal but instead trying to survive a fire, and

- what he knows from interacting with fire when he isn’t threatened by either the fire or wild animals,

the creative human can then determine a way to harness the potential of fire in deterring wild animals, thereby increasing awareness of his own capacity - in this instance for survival.

I see human creativity as an additional dimension of awareness that enables us to integrate information from both stimulus-response and memory to increase our awareness of potential. As described in my previous post, this potential is not necessarily limited to survival - rather it is our focus on survival that limits it by requiring a specific result.

Any specific completed creation is surely the result of a creative process? — Pattern-chaser

It can only be an anticipated result while the process is occurring. Because a process is still creative even if a result is not yet specified. For it to be purely creative, the process should be sufficiently open-ended so that, while some kind of result may be anticipated, no specific result/creation is expected to be completed within a certain timeframe - otherwise the creative process is limited.

Most creative process, particularly in industry, is necessarily limited because a result is expected in within a timeframe. These observable or measurable limitations provide evidence of the process - they are not the process.

We book-end the creative process with a nothing and a something because we can’t measure or define the process itself. But in my experience, creative process begins with nothing more than awareness of potential that arguably was always there, and ends only when awareness ends.

When I ‘finish’ a creative work as part of my job, it’s only according to the specifications of the job that I can refer to it as ‘complete’. The process in my experience is ongoing because I am still aware of potential in the work. I can theoretically repurpose all of its components to meet alternative specifications if required.

I am puzzled that, in this discussion, some posters seem to minimise the importance, or even presence, of creation in the creative process*. Have I misunderstood, or missed something? :chin:

* - I claim only that creation is at the heart of the creative process. Important to state there is more to the creative process than creation, though. :up: — Pattern-chaser

I understand the confusion. The suffix ‘-ive’ turns a verb into a tendency, inclination, character or quality. This, for me, suggests that the potential is known to exist, but doesn’t require completion of the act in order to be true. Someone doubting this tendency, though, will obviously require a completed act as evidence.

But in my view a specific completed creation (particularly a successful one) need not be part of a process that tends towards creation in general.

I would find it difficult to view these as anything but survival features. — Brett

I agree - it does require a paradigm shift. We’ve learned to view traits as beneficial from either a survival perspective or a reproductive perspective, and this now comes as natural to us as apologetics to a fundamentalist. But in terms of evolution I wonder, for instance, how we determine that the live birth of a child, who is then completely dependent on an interactive parent for several years, is a survival feature. Do you get the feeling that we’re forcing some features and behaviour to fit the theory because there’s no alternative reasoning and it appears to work for everything else?

Human behaviour along the lines of altruism or love seem to suggest that we have the capacity to override our survival instinct - or is it perhaps to undermine it? This is not an exclusively human capacity, after all. Many animals ignore their instinct to survive and give their lives to a greater ‘cause’. Many religious traditions also suggest that we’ve lost our way, and are trying to regain some position we once had through these acts of unconditional love and altruism, selflessness and martyrdom - that there is a greater calling to connect with and help others that inspires us to ignore our survival instinct in the process. Traditional thought has been that this calling comes from some extraneous ‘being’ - I believe there is no evidence to support this, but I can’t ignore evidence that we can be inspired to risk our life and even give it up for love, creativity or the pursuit of new information.

Religious hocus pocus aside, I think we can either twist altruism, love, creativity, etc into survival traits of some kind, or we can consider the possibility that there is something we haven’t quite grasped yet about what drives us. I understand your preference for the former and I might be completely misguided in this, but to me it feels a bit like squeezing a round peg through a square hole.

What is this ‘awareness’? You seem to be saying that in the beginning was awareness, then came creativity.

Your quote states that “Human creativity comes from a gradually developed capacity for awareness”.

What does this gradual development stem from?
And without tools for survival how would the organism, us, survive, enough to develop awareness?

I have no idea how it happened but somehow man learned to make a fire, create fire from nothing. That must have come before awareness, otherwise he would have died and with it awareness.

And how is awareness passed on? — Brett

Fire existed as a process in the environment before humans had the skill to ‘create’ it. A human learns from interacting with fire, developing awareness of it as part of his environment (including its benefits) before developing the skills to create it himself.

What I mean by awareness is receiving new information. We don’t so much pass on awareness as develop it through interaction. In my opinion, our capacity to receive, integrate and transmit new information is a physical process that has developed alongside natural selection, not as a matter of productivity or survival necessity itself. The evolution of the human being demonstrates an abandoning of survival features in favour of developing the capacity for increasing awareness, interconnectedness and collaborative achievement: from the brain and sensory organs to child-rearing, communicative ability and social structure.

IMHO Human creativity derives from a particular level of awareness, but general creativity (as a process of integrating new information) derives from an inherent drive that could be traced back to the origin of life and formation of the cosmos. My descriptions of this ‘drive’ are my own understanding of it, not a definition as such - which I’m not sure is possible.

“The creative act is a human instinct: to fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits, stuff we all do. It’s also observed in the form of tool making in some animals, more commonly in apes.”

I believe it’s a human instinct. I’m happy to hear any theories you might have about it’s origins. — Brett

My theory is that its origins run much deeper than instinct. Human creativity comes from a gradually developed capacity for awareness, enabling us to integrate new information, but I believe the drive to seek new information in the first place is inherent in all matter - and is limited by our evolutionary focus on productivity and survival, not enhanced by it.

For most animals this limitation is unconscious - the majority of physiological systems are necessarily limited in focus towards productivity and survival, so most of each organism’s energy is applied towards these aims. For these animals, the organism IS the infinite universe.

But then there are those of us who develop awareness of the organism as an ‘entity’ operating in a broader infinite ‘universe’. We develop the capacity to attribute abstract value and meaning (as additional dimension) to all interactions, and so we rationalise this application of energy to mean a priority for the organism, even as we recognise that other entities have different priorities, and that a broader ‘value’ system (objectivity) operates within the universe.

The development of the human creative animal began with this initial awareness of ‘self’, which opened up our capacity and unlocked an inherent desire to interact with an infinite universe on a new level, and see it as not just consisting of stimuli in time and space, but of entities, value and meaning. Acutely aware now of our physical vulnerability, those who survived found sufficient safety to “fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits”, determining a network of relationships between these entities, values and meanings with which we must inevitably interact. For us, the physical world then became the ‘infinite’ universe. Meanwhile, for other animals, their capacity to grasp abstract concepts of value and meaning has been limited by their inability (or refusal) to recognise the organism as a ‘subject’ within a broader universe rather than the ‘objective’ universe itself.

Our current area of human creativity, then, is in developing awareness of the myriad of alternate value systems and how they interrelate within the broader universe, including an understanding of the ‘cosmos’ as a finite physical entity within an infinite ‘universal’ concept. But much of this current work lacks the courage to step outside the systems of ‘value’ or ‘meaning’ as a subjective dimension in how we interact. We try to conceptually relate an ‘objective’ physical universe to ‘the infinite’ without first acknowledging the subjectivity of the ‘physical’ world itself - just as we had to recognise the subjectivity of the ‘self’ before we could fully grasp the concept of an ‘infinite’ physical universe.

But I disagree that creative acts today are either tamed or stillborn - it’s only that most aren’t valued or meaningful within what we consider to be the ‘real world’. If you want to find genuine creative acts today, I suggest you look at those moments where a ‘creative genius’ seems to ‘lose touch’ with their audience (or with ‘reality’) and pursue a more ‘personal’ project, or take a look at what they started to produce as they went ‘off the rails’. The creativity will be in what they’re attempting (and probably failing) to actualise here, not in the quality or value of the work as determined by the industry, genre or medium, or in our ability to find meaning in it. Likewise, our creativity continues to develop and advance through interaction with any and all ‘failed’ attempts to produce valuable or meaningful works - from STEM and philosophy to art and politics.

But to see the attempt in the failure, one must understand it as creative process, not as a single act - just as we’re beginning to understand the universe and everything in it as an unfolding of interrelated processes rather than entities.

Evolutionary the creative act has made us what we are, it’s our great advantage. Once there were great acts, radical and life changing for everyone who new of it. Today those acts are far removed from their origins. As I said, today they appears as modifications. Modern society seems to get by on this, but getting by may not be good enough in the long term. So the ‘creative animal’ still exists, but only like an animal in the zoo. — Brett

Once, when we were very young children, everything was a great event: radical and life changing. Today most events appear as only modifications on previous events. We’re no longer particularly surprised by life.

So is it the events that have become objectively less ‘great’, or that the novelty - the amount of new information - is gained from each event in a smaller proportion than when we were children? Does this mean there is objectively less new information available for us in the universe now, or only in our perspective of it?

The more we do the same things, the less we learn, and the less capacity we believe we have.

This means that to me the only true freedom we can have is of the mind. Our deliberate thoughts. The monkey mind can be quietened and you can cultivate a peace in which your mind is free, endless and yours. — 420mindfulness

Everything else is a negotiation; an intricate and ever-changing set of relationships through which we convert that potential of our minds into ‘reality’ in the context of our interaction with an unfolding universe. Without interaction, our mind has only potential freedom.

Yes, there is a certain level of self-confidence in being able to see potential where others see a dead end, and then to develop the skills to make that potential so obvious as to be undeniable. You need to have personal confidence in the subjective vision because without it you literally have nothing to act on.

But the paragraph you’ve quoted here reflects societal (and my own personal) response to the creative work of others over time, not my own ability. When we see aspects of our lives or society reflected back to us in a certain way, it can wake us up to the futility or ridiculousness of it, or to its beauty and grace, in a way we don’t always see from our place in it.

As @I like sushi explained, this kind of work is being ‘true to oneself’ - that it becomes public is often guided by the unselfish thought that someone else might get something from it. And that it sells is because someone else does get something from it.

If you think this is hubris, so be it. I’m past the point of apologising for seeing the world differently or pretending to agree with the ‘objective’ stance on how the world works just because I can’t prove otherwise. I will interact with the universe as I see it just like everyone else, make my unique contribution to it, and perhaps time will prove me crazy or visionary - I’m ok with either.

To return to the purpose of production for the artist. I have invested countless hours into my own creation - I never set out to make my creation/s public and it is only due to the thought that someone else may get something from it (in an unselfish manner) that brings me to want to expose it. At the end of the day the partial completion of any task within my personal project, where there is some ‘product’, is for my observation. Meaning I create to see how my vision manifests and what is missing from the ‘product’ - it may turn out that what I considered pivotal to my project will be nothing more than a meaningless distraction; this can only be revealed once I interact with the vision as a material object. Much like an architect would draft a building design that in reality wouldn’t stand up fro more than a day; this knowledge may only make itself known upon, or during, creation and then lead to adjustments and alterations to render the best approximation of the original image, and/or alter the original image beyond recognition as the creators approach becomes more refined and in a ‘flow’. — I like sushi

I can relate to this. In some of my creative pursuits I have less of an intuitive grasp of the materials and how they interact than others, so it helps to produce ‘something’ earlier in the process with which I can interact (and perhaps also others can interact) before I’m able to see where it needs adjustment, or where it will ultimately fail. What is produced in these instances is often never meant to be a ‘product’ as such, and its use-value is only to help move the overall creative process forward, to demonstrate (only for me) whether or not I’m onto something, if I need to refine things, or if I should scrap a section of the project and start again on a different tack.

In this way, an artist can produce something that helps their audience to see where our broader projects such as life, being or society may need adjustment, where what we considered pivotal to these projects is nothing more than meaningless distraction - but can only be revealed once we interact with this perspective reflected back to us as a material object.

Creating something is an act, an action. In its most basic form it might be described as producing something that did not exist before that point. Someone might create an idea in their head and let it remain there, so there would be no evidence of it existing, but nor would it have any effect on the world. So there cannot be a creative act without the result, what it produces.

Maybe your using the term productive in the sense that a factory is productive. — Brett

But there can be creativity without the result. This is the point I’m trying to make. The fact that you have to write ‘creative act’, ‘creating something’ points to creativity as not necessarily productive (as in producing any result), despite your assumptions. I’ve already mentioned that I agree creativity must eventually have a result in order to have any effect on the world. But it need not have any effect on the world in order to be creativity.

This strikes me as being incredibly subjective. Change it to what, something you think should be? — Brett

It is subjective - necessarily so. The creative process is highly subjective - it will always derive from your subjective view, regardless of the supposedly ‘objective’ constraints. It is your view of the malleability of these constraints - their subjective nature - that allow you to play with them, to be creative.

I’ve always loved the story behind the piece of marble that became the famous statue of David. This block of marble was supposedly rejected by some of the most celebrated sculptors for 70 years before Michelangelo, a young upstart of 21, took on the challenge. The stone was marred by weaknesses that prevented any hope of successfully producing a traditional product. And the idea of producing a statue of David (according to convention) from this block was considered impossible. Yet what Michelangelo produced surpassed all expectations and challenged the conventions of sculpture at the time, as well as demonstrating an intuitive grasp of the creative space and a view of humanity and potential that continues to challenge conventional perspectives even now.

Convention and objective knowledge of this block of marble limited its potential - it takes a subjective view to unlock a potential that no-one else thought was there. So it’s not so much what it should be, but what it could be that you change in the minds of others who interact with it, by changing how they interact with it.

So your view is essentially the same as Brett’s, that it goes no further than a problem-solution relationship. Inventiveness. In this case, creativity for someone else's benefit would be work, in the sense that most cultures find this type of activity to be so. And to create only to the benefit of industrialists would be a type of mild slavery. — kudos

Creativity must necessarily be constrained eventually by interaction with the world, otherwise it is only potential. In that way I agree to some extent with @Brett - there are no slaves here, and creativity must ultimately be productive. But the ‘agreement’ must be open-ended to some extent in order for creativity to occur, and the more open-ended it is, the more creativity can occur.

This society does value creativity to an extent - we just struggle to measure that value, so we reduce it to a problem-solution relationship. But in reality this isn’t a classical, straight-line relationship - it’s like the path of a photon between measurable points.

we are most creative when things like survival, productivity and physical existence are not threatened -
— Possibility

I hate be contrary, but I would argue that’s when we are most creative. History would probably back me up.

What you seem to be referring to is some state of mind, some higher existence that can be achieved through art. — Brett

There seems to be some continued confusion between being creative and being productive. You seem to think that when the chips are down our creativity increases, but this isn’t the case. When the chips are down, we are compelled to force any ongoing, relevant creative process towards activity or production. History can only provide production as evidence, not creativity - that’s why it appears to back you up.

I don’t see it as a higher existence or state of mind as such. I think those terms suggest a ‘mystical’ quality to creativity that prevents people from seeing their own potential for it. I think it requires an open mind and a certain amount of courage (or perhaps a sense of security) to consider the possibility that what your mind actually sees is not what is but a version of what it could be, and it only takes you seeing it differently and interacting with it as such to change that. But most people haven’t considered what their creative ability is apart from what others tell them it is, so this probably won’t make much sense.

This I agree with. It’s probably reassuring to a lot of people. But it also strikes me as being the luxury of a society that can afford such things, which is why I sometimes use the word ‘indulgence’.

I think art once had an essential part to play in communities, which I’ve discussed in another post, but, like creativity, it’s become a watered down version of its origins. — Brett

As I have said, we are most creative when things like survival, productivity and physical existence are not threatened - so, in a way, creativity that goes beyond these constraints can be seen as ‘indulgent’ from the point of view of someone who believes these to be our top priority.

Personally, I believe our human capacity goes way beyond these constraints, and the arts are an important avenue to communicate that, and challenge us to see the universe as valuable to us beyond our own survival, existence or physical capacity. The arts industries, on the other hand, attempts to justify themselves to a world that is focused on survival, productivity and physical existence, on measurable data as evidence of use-value. In this way they constrain creativity in ways that stagnate our growth.

“To say that the work of a theoretical theorist is not valued for the actual product, i.e. a result, is ridiculous. Neither he nor his employer would believe that.”

I should modify this statement a little. For the artist or physicist there is obviously pleasure in the process, it’s what they love. But the idea that it’s not done for a result doesn’t work. — Brett

I should have said not valued just for the actual product. The artist or physicist derives personal pleasure from the process, but what pleasure is that? What does it mean to ‘love’ a process? I guess it depends on what they believe.

There are many artists and physicists whose pleasure comes from the belief that their part in a process that extends well beyond their own physical contribution is valuable in itself. The ‘result’ they may be seeking is often non-descript and exists well beyond their lifetime, and their contribution may only serve to suggest a direction rather than produce anything actual. Theoretical papers or saleable artwork are products that satisfy the need for tangible benefits or evidence of productivity within the industries and justifies their salary or position - but this can be more of a task than a pleasure.

Our true creative capacity is unleashed. To do what? What is the result? Is it personal or universal? — Brett

That depends on where one believes ‘personal’ ends and ‘universal’ begins. The atomic bombs on Japan are an example of creative capacity unleashed to interact with a part of the universe beyond what was valued, but this result was neither for personal nor universal benefit, but somewhere in between.

Your hubris is showing here. By this you seems to be saying that myself and others, as opposed to ‘us’, you, are not creative, otherwise we would understand your point

First of all you have no idea who I am, and secondly someone is only creative according to your terms, otherwise you would not exclude me from being creative. — Brett

I apologise - that was presumptuous of me. I was trying to present how I see the arts as valuable, reassuring in their lack of use-value. I actually think everyone has the capacity to be more creative, but most people actively resist it because of the way they believe the world is or must be.

There must be more because stopping here we’d be in danger then of claiming that a work that took weeks by Salieri took more creativity than a work that only took one hour for Mozart. Even though Mozart was trained from childhood and it maybe took him less effort. — kudos

You’re right - creativity is not measured in effort or time (despite the structure of industries such as graphic design). It’s the intangible creative process - the playing with new ways of interacting with the world, the exploring past the constraints of rules and conventions, the ability to work in that potentiality space between nothing and something - that has value. How do you measure that?

In my opinion there are two aspects to creativity. One is an awareness of or familiarity with the materials and constraints of a particular creative space that tends towards intuitive. The more intuitive, the more creative. Much of this, I think, has to do with brain structure and development. The period between 0-5 years can be crucial in developing a brain structure that is more creative in a particular aspect. My son, for instance, has developed an intuitive grasp of music and mathematics, whereas my daughter has developed a more intuitive grasp of language and emotion.

The other aspect is the capacity to interact with the highest potentiality of that creative space - to approach that aspect of the universe and all of its subsequent relation to the universe in terms of what it could be, rather than what it is. The difference I see here I can best describe in terms of quantum theory: some people see only the particle, while others see varying degrees of potentiality - a lack of collapse in the ‘wave’ that enables them to interact with it in unusual ways, and to explore its capacity to interact with everything else in the universe in ways others cannot see until it’s happening right in front of them.

When you combine these two aspects, you get an ability to confidently play with the constraints and conventions, to break rules and push the boundaries of a particular creative space.

The second aspect at its highest enables a creative person to navigate a variety of creative spaces, but they also work best with narrower constraints. The first aspect at its highest is seen as a prodigious gift or talent, but is dependent on the second for its flexibility in terms of a long-term or broadly ‘successful’ creative career. Those with high levels in both aspects are both highly creative and highly volatile - like a burst of pure energy.

Somehow the arts have taken ownership of the word ‘creative’. My thoughts are that the creative act is a human instinct for survival. Whether it’s an instinct I’m not sure. But today these instincts (if that’s the right word) are really a watered down version of their origins and appear as acts of modification, like your car design. (It’s possible that this watered down version, like a fiddling at the edges, is responsible for the stagnation in our growth). They still have tangible benefits in that they contribute to our welfare and survival.

The ‘arts’ do not exist like this at all. They offer no tangible benefits. It can be argued that they contribute to something we need, but there’s never any hard evidence apart from some idea of “increased awareness, increased interconnectedness or increased overall achievement/capacity“. — Brett

Personally, I don’t see creativity as restricted to the arts at all. It’s a large part of theoretical physics, for instance - but they don’t call it creativity. The work of theoretical physicists is valued not for the actual product, but for the demands of the creative process - as much for their failures and ‘nearly there’ moments as their potential for success.

When we reduce all human nature to our welfare and survival, we constrain that underlying creative process. It is this constraint that I believe is responsible for the stagnation in our growth. The creative act is instinctual (for want of a better word), but in my opinion it runs deeper than survival, and is actually constrained by our focus on the values of survival, productivity and physical existence, rather than enhanced by it.

It is when we ignore these values or are set free from their constraints that our true creative capacity is unleashed, for better or worse. The creative animal is most creative when they’re in a position where they’re not fighting for survival (financial, career, life, etc), not under pressure to produce, and not worrying about physical evidence of their creative act. That doesn’t mean they can’t be creative under pressure, but it’s really only random chance that produces success under these conditions, not creativity as such.

So when you argue that the arts offer no tangible benefits, no hard evidence of contribution, etc, you’re contributing to the stagnation you lament. For those of us who are creative, who see the universe in terms of potentiality, it is the value placed on the creative process over the tangible benefits in the arts that reassure us that what we do has value when those around us demand results.

This is interesting, so someone who arranges a photograph with an AI program and another with their eye. Though to the viewer there is no conscious difference these are nevertheless not equivalent. — kudos

Also someone who adjusts the settings on a camera and waits for just the right combination of subject matter and lighting before taking a photograph to enhance certain elements and someone who digitally adjusts the lighting, colour and subject matter on an existing photograph are both being creative - and to most viewers of the two final products, there appears to be little value difference. The first one, however, is more valuable - not because it has a higher use-value, but because the creative process is more demanding and time-consuming, and much of the creative act that produces this one photograph never makes it to the production stage.

Focusing on survival or productivity is being creative, it’s not counter to it. You seem to be intent in seeing survival and productivity as some evil aspect of capitalism and not basic to human nature. — Brett

That’s not my view, but I do see survival and productivity as externally influencing and constraining an inherent creativity that underlies what you see as basic to human nature.

So being "creative" doesn't necessarily involve actually creating something? <baffled> Then we should coin a different word for it, one that doesn't communicate actual creation. — Pattern-chaser

No, it doesn’t. But being creative does necessarily involve creating new and different ways of interacting with the world. This can mean rearranging elements in such a way that it changes our perspective of something. But it need not be a new product or an actual, physical thing that is new.

Creativity has value apart from use - that’s my argument. You don’t agree. You seem to see the creative act as producing something ‘objectively’ useful, but this often only occurs at the end of an industrial creative process. The rest of the creative process looks like playing to you, because you don’t recognise the usefulness of open-ended play in creativity. A child playing with blocks is still being creative - creating new and different (from the child’s perspective) ways of interacting with their world.

What I’m trying to say (i think) is that the only true creative act today is one that has ‘value-use’, because creating is an instinct for survival. It has to have a purpose that benefits survival or movement forward, otherwise it’s indulgence. — Brett

I get that you have a problem with the apparent ‘indulgence’ of Art. But I disagree that creating is purely for survival or moving forward. In order to move forward, we must have the capacity to see a way forward that no-one else sees before we take a step, or we must be prepared to take a step ina direction that no-one else has taken - to play with new ways of interacting with our world. This is the creative process, and it cannot be an instinct for survival because it often runs counter to survival. It’s hard to be truly creative when we’re focused on survival or productivity. A work environment that genuinely inspires creativity, therefore, must be one that values and trusts the creative process: where not all time, effort, thought or research is evident in the end product.

The fields you worked in have different objectives. Website design, advertising, marketing, they’re driven by pure ‘use-value’, a monetary value and measures of success. There’s very little subjectivity here, it’s all market driven, measured against costs and returns. Fine arts, theatre, they reside in pure subjectivity, there’s no real value to a painting or a play except that attributed to it by those who like it. — Brett

The objectives are different, but the creative process is essentially the same. As I said before, creativity is always constrained in some way, whether by the materials and discourse or the value systems and measures of success. This is the difference between them. Subjectivity drives the creative process in both.

In website design, advertising and marketing, there are many more scientifically generated constraints but in my opinion they can present more of a creative challenge than a painting or a play where you’re choosing many of your own constraints as part of the creative process. The capacity to produce something ‘new and different’ - to have a broad vision of the potentiality - in such a narrow scope demands a high level of creativity: a more flexible subjective view, if you will.

Fine arts and theatre, on the other hand, demand the ability to constrain your own creative process according to the changing social climate - parameters that are much more difficult to pinpoint, and rely on having a subjective ‘feel’ for what resonates with your audience. It can be a lot more hit and miss, and there are many more poor artists and writers than there are poor website designers. The music industry, I imagine, makes use of both market data and that ‘talent’ for connecting with a given market (the ‘it’ factor), to constrain the creative process of artists and produce creative work that has ‘real’ value. Artists who have the flexibility to shift their own constraints on creativity according to changing markets have a longer career (eg. Madonna).

That your work demonstrates a different perspective of any aspect of the universe is creative, and therefore has value in that it forms part of the creative process
— Possibility

This is the same subjectivity that the post on art and elitism got bogged down in.
‘... a different perspective of any aspect of the universe.’ What exactly does that mean in terms of being creative?

What you’re saying is that a different perspective of the universe forms part of the creative process because what you’re doing is creative. That doesn’t explain anything. It’s an endless loop. — Brett

No. What I’m saying is that an act or product that demonstrates a different perspective of the universe is creative because it forms part of the creative process.

By ‘different perspective of any aspect of the universe’ I mean a novel arrangement of parts: whether those parts are words, code, plastics, metal, pixels, etc. We’re not creating something from nothing - it only seems that way - we’re only seeing potentiality where others cannot, and then actualising that potentiality. That’s the essence of creativity.

Sure, but a different perspective of the universe? — Brett

No - a different perspective of an aspect of the universe. I’m speaking as broadly as I can about creativity here. I’ve personally worked in a range of creative industries, from fine arts to website design, from advertising and marketing to playwriting and directing.

One thing we know about creativity is that it involves the creation of something that is somehow, in some way, new and different. To describe creativity in a way that emphasises its non-creative aspects, and doesn't even mention creation, is very odd to me. Why deny (by omission) the central attribute of creativity? — Pattern-chaser

I agree with your first statement, but your perspective of exactly what constitutes ‘new and different’ implies ‘something from nothing’ that unnecessarily mystifies the process. I don’t think @Terrapin Station is denying the central attribute of creativity at all - ‘new and different’ relates essentially to awareness and perspective, not to actuality.

I get where you’re coming from, and I disagree - although I do concede that creative activity is not totally selfless, and neither can it be said to have evolved out of selflessness.

Creative activity can be motivated externally by a specific problem of survival, but the creative process can also arise from an inherent drive to increase awareness, interconnectedness and overall capacity/achievement. The former does not preclude the latter, and while the former can be totally selfish, the latter is not.

My feeling is that all creative acts have ‘use-value’. In a world of survival no ‘use-value’ means death. — Brett

There is a difference, in my opinion, between a creative act/work and the process of creativity. A creative act without use-value doesn’t sustain - but that’s not to say it cannot exist and have value (without use) within the creative process.

Creative work is ultimately constrained in some way, whether by the materials/parts available or by the discourse or value systems in which they are often required to operate. The creative animal is acutely aware of these constraints and strives to explore just beyond them, to challenge them in the creative process.

The creative process, in my view, is an open-ended interaction with these constraints of subjective experience. This is how we discover new ways of seeing the world, new ways to relate to the world and relate elements of the world to each other, and new capacities or ways to achieve. The creative animal refuses to accept slavery and finds value in pursuing creative acts or works that have no useful end product - even those that mean death, as you say.

All value systems are subjectively imposed except for the potentially infinite diversity of the unfolding universe - and it is here that the creative process operates. That your work demonstrates a different perspective of any aspect of the universe is creative, and therefore has value in that it forms part of the creative process - like any novel rearrangement of parts (which I agree, @Terrapin Station, is pretty much all creative work), and including those temporary creative acts/works that have no use-value at all.

Potential Originality and Effectiveness: The Dynamic Definition of Creativity

Thank you for explaining this and for the quotes. I think I see it more clearly now. The distinction between authentic and inauthentic is much finer than I originally thought, and I think there is a tendency for summaries of Heidegger to avoid this area in order to make clearer other aspects of his approach (which are easier to navigate). The nuances of the journey from Part I to Part II in terms of discourse suffer as a result.

But I’ve always understood discourse as rather obviously encompassing more than language or words, so I have no argument here. We do communicate more in what we do than what we say, and the lack of subject-object awareness in much of this inauthentic behaviour begs comparison with that of self-aware yet non-linguistic animals such as chimpanzees, as I suggested before.

Chimpanzees don't have "being-with" (which makes the activity or behavior to discourse, i think). So, other chimpanzees moving around the chimpanzee taught to bake don't have an understanding that there is a "baking" going on. That is, there is no effective discourse existing in that situation. Humans are in a world where there is "mowing the lawn" over there, "baking" over there, "nothing happens" over there, "something strange" over there etc etc. Every one basically "knows" what is happening. Every one is i n discourse. Chimpanzees are basically just feeling pleasure-unpleasure with regard to sensations. There is no "pleasurable b a k i n g", "unpleasurable m o w i n g the lawn". There is no such basic units of meaning in chimpanzees "world". It could be said that chimpanzees are governed by causality, not by discourse/sense. (Through the expression "causality" we try to give a certain sense to chimpanzees' nonsense random activity.) — waarala

Their discourse, of course, is quite different to that of humans, but I don’t think we can assume they don’t have ‘being-with’, or that some of their intelligibility of being in the world cannot overlap with our own. The problem is that we only have our own discourse with which to make sense of it, and we necessarily prioritise language in that process, where anthropomorphism looms large. But we can and do put language aside, nevertheless, to actively explore those elements of discourse we have in common - discovering elements of being-with that we may share, rather than intellectually avoiding the space in order to maintain some sense of superiority.