Creativity—the drive for connections and regeneration through new combinations—is the essence of life. Humans share this drive with all organisms at the neurobiological level; it is basic to our desire to attach and connect with others, to procreate, and to dream. This drive to generate meaning by relating one thing to another is also fundamental to the automatic and unconscious “connection making process” of learning.
The powerful drives generally associated with creativity exist alongside equally strong drives that work against creativity and toward conformity. Conformity, driven by the need for homeostasis, familiarity, security, and group affiliation gives us stability and predictability, both of which are critical for survival. But resistance to change makes individuals and societies wither and decay.
We can see the tendency to resist change in the discomfort many people experience when faced with two contradictory ideas. They find it difficult to avoid choosing one of the other ideas as true and dismissing the other. In fact, entertaining both as valid is commonly called “cognitive dissonance.” This theory describes how the natural and usual response to internal discord is to simplify it to one solution or view; the simplification tends to eliminate all other aspects of the situation and thereby reduces the tension.
But such reductionism also inhibits creativity because creativity, by definition, requires the disruption of established paradigms, patterns, and beliefs in the service of producing something new. Creativity exercises the imagination and playfully combines disparate elements while overcoming the discomfort and fear of change, uncertainty, ambiguity, and inconsistency—even to the point of celebrating paradox, puzzles, and the unknown.
In almost all animal species, especially mammals, creativity is intimately connected with curiosity and the drive toward discovery, play, and problem solving. However, in human beings creativity is additionally characterized by conscious, deliberate connection making and imaginative play by the combining and recombining of elements, things, or ideas with the goal of creating something new.
This kind of imaginative combinatory play includes metaphor-making, empathic perspective- taking and placing oneself in another’s shoes or oneself in another possible way of being. The exercise of this skill expands the capacity for holding multiple possible ways of being and of seeing anything. It is also the essential skill in the creation of meaning for one’s life. There are very few places where the creative imagination is actually exercised deliberately and sequentially, even in all forms of arts learning and performance.
This course will provide an opportunity to focus in on particular ways of expanding creative thinking and increase awareness of particular inhibiting factors through the introduction of theoretical concepts and experiential exercises both in the class and in-between classes.