The Trouble With Creativity

Creativity is all good, should be good. One can claim, with ample justification, that creativity of people is the main reason for progress. If everyone was just satisfied with what they got in life, and never explored the edges, we shall be no better than we were a few hundred years back; even, we would be at the same state we were a million year back.

Yet, creativity isn't mainstream. People are afraid of creativity some times. Indeed, because it invariably challenges the status quo, but there is more to the fear of creativity. I would argue some of this is due to the insistence that the usual rules don't apply to creative pursuits.

One can argue it shouldn't. Usual is boring. This is probably correct, but we live our lives 'usually' - like eating, drinking etc. Some rules therefore must be followed. Grabbing others' food isn't acceptable, and similarly, being responsible to oneself and to others must apply to everyone too.

Having said that, I know it is the slavery of day to day life that keeps us un-creative. Sometimes, the deliberate delinquencies of the creative lot is a desperate attempt to free the mind by freeing the body. However, often the mortgage fetish is replaced by cocaine addiction, and there the trouble starts.

There is also the question of accountability. Accountability is narrow and boring, but anyone creative must be accountable in some sense. Preaching violence isn't the mark of a creative genius, and a poem must be written to be read. Creative pursuits in that sense is about discovering the discipline which makes the creator one with the audience, finding that unity of thought and shall I say, language, which is a deliberate, painstaking exercise.

Comments

Vedantika said…
Very well conceived Supriyo.....infact we human beings have this weird tendency of justifying the movements of our thoughts and actions.....Thought is free but there should be some reasonable restriction to this freedom...I am sure a lot of so called creativity must have been responsible for the 11/9 massacre...yet it would remain as a shameful episode in the chapter of human civilisation....Creativity should lead to "ever widening thought and action" and not lose its way "into the dreary desert sands" of irresponsible insanity.

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