The Significance of Creativity
Throughout our known universe lies a paradoxical balance that must both be adhered to while being at odds with in order for all of this to work. Newton’s Laws assert that the desired state of all things is stability. Yet, for this to be achieved, there must also be an ever-present amount of instability. At an atomic level, an unbalanced atom will undergo a transformation to become stable, moving to a state where it contains the least amount of potential energy. However, it must first adversely expel a tremendous amount of radioactive energy before realising its equilibrium. By doing so, it has affected its surroundings creating a chain reaction of this process. This is observed in our second law of thermodynamics, where entropy (amount of disorder) across any and all systems is always increasing. Everything affects everything.
Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher, wrote “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” He recognised that the virtuous path is through the challenges that directly obstruct us from the goal we strive towards. Yet, without the obstacle a journey doesn't exist and without the journey, we can not strive towards a goal. The goal is to overcome the obstacle.
Although different in their application, whether it be from a scientific or a philosophical perspective, they are both rooted in the same understanding that order and chaos (progress and adversity) are not only born of each other but their continual existence is dependent on and for the purpose of the other. This paradigm exists everywhere and affects everything. It is the cause of perpetual change and the driving force behind our disposition for imaginative thought, discovery of new and original ideas and their connections to form solutions to problems. All things we encompass as creativity.
Abstract thinking, planning, innovation, and symbolic behaviour are characteristics that flourished in humanity 65,000 to 50,000 years ago in what is called the “The Great Leap Forward” reflecting the evolution of a fully modern human brain. Although the modern Homo Sapien evolved around 300,000 years ago, modern “behaviours” evolved more recently. Anatomically, there was little difference in our brain sizes, so what was it that precipitated this creative evolution in humanity?
Dr. Nicholas R. Longrich, palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, advocates that our journey out of Africa was the catalyst of our creative development. Different environments demanded innovation as a matter of survival. As our tribes grew, so did our manpower and greater ability to specialise which perpetuated a growing population. This triggered a feedback loop accelerating a cultural evolution which further encouraged creativity. Although our tribes splintered and adapted to their own environments, there were many cultural commonalities - formation of social groups to fulfil our need to belong, cooperation to wage war against and to help one another, morals and reverence for a higher power - that suggest an inherited understanding from our African ancestors of what makes us human and what it takes as a species to survive.
Sumerian cuneiform tablet circa 3500 BC from Uruk, the city-state that we now know as Iraq. The etchings and pictograms formed the world’s first known written language. Image: Britannica
As cultures flourished, so too did creative expression. About 6,000 years ago our ancestors began diverging from art as the only form of inscription to using symbology. These symbols were representative of shared cultural ideals and beliefs which connected people and formed stronger communities. They were bestowed a potency by the people as a conduit to a higher power, to something greater than them. Something so powerful, it was worth dying and killing for in the name of preserving one’s own ideals and the eradication of the counter. Like an atom, our desired state is to achieve stability in realising purpose and meaning. The symbol encapsulated this, giving the nuances tangibility. The threat of diminishing it is a threat against the self. For as much as symbols unite, they also divide.
“order and chaos (progress and adversity) are not only born of each other but their continual existence is dependent on and for the purpose of the other.”
Today, we harness the power of symbology in all facets of our lives. Every line, curve, shape, colour and tone creates a form that tells a story loaded with cultural considerations and implications. It is the foundation of communication and the sharing of ideas through letterforms and characters which are pieced together to construct words and language that represent meanings. These forms can unify and segregate. They can empower and oppress. We impart intrinsic value in products and commodities that carry certain symbols - or logos - and not dissimilar to our ancestors, we brandish them as an expression of the self, to find meaning within and to be part of something greater. We create societal norms through design that we ascribe to as a way to maintain order. Red is to stop as green is to go and without this universally accepted symbology, the ramifications are deadly.
Although not perfect, there are many communities that are far removed from needing to worry about merely surviving which allows for pushing the boundaries of creative prowess. Much like the feedback loop our ancestors experienced that caused a cultural evolution, our creativity has grown exponentially into unfathomable areas. Just within the past 1,000 years or so, we have gone from inventing gunpowder to being able to live-stream the landing of the fifth Mars rover. In 1514, Copernicus challenged ideals and radically proposed that our earth was not the centre of the universe and that it revolves around the sun. Almost 400 years later, In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright invented the first powered aircraft when many others had failed. Merely 66 years after that, with our combined knowledge of astronomy and aeronautics, Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon and became the first humans to walk on the lunar surface. Today, we are staring down the barrel of commercial human spaceflights, we can experience artificial digital worlds indistinguishable from reality, interact with robots who express human-like emotions and behaviours and we can access libraries that collectively contain literally everything we as humanity have discovered right at our fingertips. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.
For every creative system we have engineered, we have intrinsically manufactured a slew of challenges that wouldn’t have otherwise existed. The greater the accomplishment, the greater the adversity that preceded it and that will follow. This is humanity’s perpetually compounding entropy. Like our ancestors who began to question our purpose, we still continue to despite our advancements and accomplishments. But by doing so, have we missed that we are in fact realising that purpose with every creative spark that fires? If the words of Marcus Aurelius had any truth to them, “What stands in the way becomes the way.” tells me our way isn’t towards anything in particular but rather it is the purpose in itself. Creativity is the cause of adversity and the product of it while also being the passage to our impossible equilibrium. It is the goal, the obstacle and the way. As a species we have been given the gift and the curse of creativity and the power to wield it at our choosing. Does there need to be any more to it?
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