What creates creativity?

First, before we get to creativity, let’s take a quick detour.

Let’s examine stupidity.

The Icelandic word for stupid is heimskur, which finds its roots in Old Norse:

heimskr:

• foolish, silly
• who seldom leaves his home to gather tidings
  (from heima, “home”)

I love this etymology—that stupidity, or ignorance, can be derived from staying home.

And, considering it further, perhaps the focus is that staying at home leads to a lack of worldly experience. Then, those that never seek out the world beyond their comfort are doomed to ignorance.

It makes sense—if you live your life within the confines of comfort, your understanding of the world will be confined just the same.

With this in mind, one would hope that the antidote to ignorance might be doing just the opposite. That perhaps venturing beyond the confines of comfort might be an element of brilliance. That breaking routine and expanding one’s experience might lead to better understanding.

But what does this have to do with creativity?

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.
- Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

This idea is often promoted, and I largely agree with it. Perhaps there are no new ideas. Perhaps creativity is nothing more than combination. And perhaps the designation of originality has more to do with the audience’s awareness of sources, than the creator’s uniqueness of thought.

But this definition is recursive.

If all ideas are combinations of other ideas then where does it stop? If we follow the etymology of an idea might we eventually arrive at some atomic root?

I think so.

Perhaps there exist atomic ideas at the root of all others, and, if so, I believe these ideas would be observations of reality. Then, the root of creativity is our human understanding of the world, faithfully derived from our experiences.

If this is the case, then the only un-dividable ideas are those that come to us from experience—from leaving home.

While complex ideas are the outcome of combination, if you want to be truly original you might first try to enlarge your sphere of experience.

It’s like an artist adding paints to their palette. While, technically, a few primary colors are all you need, more specific additions will make the creative work substantially easier.

And, after all, what is originality? It is merely undetected plagiarism.
-Herbert Paul, The Decay of Classical Quotation

And what is a better source to plagiarize from than the universe itself?

All this to say: Don’t become satisfied with the regular. Don’t find yourself caught in a routine, never expanding your sphere of experience. Seek out the unknown, and within it find your uniqueness of perception.

Or, put even more simply: Don’t be stupid.

2021-09-12