User:Tommi/On Creativity
What does it mean to be “creative” in the era of mass content creation
? At the beginning of Uncreative Writing: Managing language in the digital age, Kenneth Goldsmith paraphrases Douglas Huebler, writing:
The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.
How can we be sure that whatever we are writing or generating has not been conceived by someone else, somewhere in the world, sometime in history? If we cannot, how important and how determining is it for us that the outcome of our creativity is something unique or unprecedented? Let’s assume that there is no other similar thing about what we are “producing” anywhere else in the Universe. Can we say this idea is ours, and ours alone? How can we prove that a creative outcome, no matter how special, has not been indirectly co-created by the virtually infinite inputs that sparked our inspiration, or the building blocks of knowledge that we required to formulate an opinion?
Goldsmith’s provocation about true authorship questions the very core of the definition of creativity. Let’s take Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. The genius of Albert Einstein is not in the invention itself, but rather in the ability of combining, “marrying” previously disentangled theories.
Happiness and fulfillment
Being aware that probably all one could have ever think of has been already written, portrayed, or performed somewhere is a venomous limitation to the spark of inventiveness and creativity.
What is the value I can add? If I cannot read, watch, or experience paramount representations and variations of what I am feeling, of what I am thinking about, does it have any sense for me to just spit it out?