Thursday, May 1, 2014

Is Creativity a High Level of Thinking

Thinking things differently and making imagination roll into reality is creativity!


Creativity is a relatively new word invented by a Polish author in the 17th century - referring to poetry. Since then, knowledge has exploded, and creativity is defined more broadly as a mind skill (Static subject) or a process (Dynamic meaning) equipping us to make any new idea in any area. The range of scholarly interest in creativity includes a multitude of definitions and approaches involving several disciplines; psychology, cognitive science, education, philosophy, technology, theology, sociology, linguistics, business studies, songwriting, and economics, taking in the relationship between creativity and general intelligence, mental and neurological processes associated with creativity, the relationships between personality type and creative ability., etc (Wikipedia).

Creativity is about thinking beyond conventional wisdom: Creative thinking is unique and original, many other types of thinking are not..some are the habit, repetition of memory, the way of least resistance, emotional reaction, social conformity, approval-seeking, dogmatism, pedanticism, following, mendacity. A certain mental, psychological and conditional chemistry is needed to break-away from thoughts that others have thought about. So creativity appears to be beyond the conventional thinking - where you have left the confines of other people's thoughts.

Creative thinking is surely complex, but not necessarily complicated
It is more of thinking complexities to simplify them through intuition. The outline might be simple, but the details are intricate! Creativity is a higher level of communicating or perceiving the beauty and balance of natural creation, or what being called the law and source of the Universe. The creativity associated with aesthetics which allows us to see patterns and complexity at an intuitive level, without having to dissect it, as knowledge exceeds known boundaries takes on aesthetic quality.

Creativity is context-dependent. It is a higher level of thinking because it often imposes a higher cognitive load as you think 'harder' and consciously leveragr different kinds of thought actions and thinking tools like association, perspective-shifting, opposites, etc when you are wanting to come up with a creative solution to a challenge. When you are on a higher plane of thinking you are not confined by walls. You may see others confined by it.

Thinking things differently and making imagination roll into reality is creativity. Creativity is sparked by an implicit rather than explicit underbelly of knowledge. Human creativity has a quintessential facet compared to biological creativity: it can occur in microseconds whilst the latter can take millennia. Why being creative is not just about "knowledgeable" - because they are often at the edge of things and able to expands the boundaries of knowledge. It has to do with both of the brain hemispheres as well as with the human brain being represented by an iceberg. The cognitive is the tip, whilst the lower part-ranges starting down from the surface of the water and the subconscious till the deepest part of the Iceberg, the collective unconsciousness (C.G. Jung).

Creativity appears to require two styles of thinking, "associative" and analyticThe first seems to be more perceptually based, related to the "aha" phenomenon and can be below conscious awareness. The second is more cognitively based and entails labored working through the products of the associative process. That creativity in the human sense is not due to connecting of two shallow pools of knowledge, but the ability to dig deep and to make deep connections and build on those connections.

Creativity is both nature and nurturedSome people's thought processes simply do not work in a creative way. Some people are prone to constant creativity while others are not. Some people have a sudden flash of creative insight, and then their thoughts return to what might be considered their " normal state". Some people dwell within a state of consciousness which is in tune with what can only be imagined or is called imagination. Sometimes this imagination manifests into physical reality and oftentimes it does not. Still, creativity can be nurtured. The more you do it the more it becomes part of you and the better you get at it. Questions, doubts, uncertainty surely do trigger creative thinking because the human mind is made to want to find solutions to problems.

So creativity is hi-level thinking, either from content, context or by definition. One may just need to re-imagine, refresh or even reboot the mindset in order to discover such genius of creativity. 






0 comments:

Post a Comment