By Renee Shay, Harvesting Thought
–explore–
What drives a human beings need for creativity and wanting to share what they create with others? Are they creating to fill a need for themselves, for others or for both? Why do they do it when oftentimes creativity is something that may only be beautiful to the creator or not necessarily needed for one’s survival? Why do some humans choose not to be creative? Did your parent’s aspirations for you include painting, pottery, sewing and sculpting tools or were they hoping your endeavors would lead to something more utilitarian?
Do you have a passion that keeps you up at night or have you witnessed someone else cast aside everything else so that they could focus on a project of some kind? Their need to create takes over and becomes more important than some basic needs like sleep, like food, like coffee? Okay, I made the last point up about coffee, the constant companion. I imagine many human beings in our modern time have experienced this phenomenon where their basic needs become less important because they are met and their need to be creative becomes paramount. I believe that the need to be creative is accelerating though not always for the good. This makes me wonder if we are at the precipice of modernity and starting to fall into a global age of self-actualization.
My earliest childhood memory of the need to share something I created goes all the way back to around the age of four years old. My parents had bought a restaurant and we, my parents and six siblings, were living in the basement. One of my brothers and I had discovered the old men sitting at the bar loved the distraction of us kids coming upstairs so we started to become quite the hit. At some point, my sister was the one who started it all, would send us back downstairs to do kid things like drawing. When we would bring the drawings back upstairs to show them off to the patrons, they started giving us a nickel for each drawing we would bring to them. Back and forth, we would run down, draw something quick then run back up the stairs. When we got dimes for them that was even more exciting. So it began, getting something of value other than praise, nickels, and dimes, for our creative toil. From a early age we learned that creativity was a way of filling time, a distraction, a way to entertain others, getting attention and of getting something in return.
–challenge–
Every day we are bombarded with words and images that people are creatively combining to make into Internet social media posts. People are creating messages to make us laugh, to make us think or to support a cause. They are making posts to rally others who share similar views or to sew hatred for those they disagree with. At its best, the creative information sharing is about every topic under the sun like health, the economy or about connections with family and friends. At its worst, the Internet has become a virtual schoolyard playground on steroids for the world of bullies. The creativity is impressive, good, and bad, and coming from people who would not normally be seen as creative. Most everyone now has a cell phone; we now have a world of photographers. Most everyone has an Inbox or Compose space at their fingertips to share thoughts; we now have a world of writers. Instead of collecting nickels and dimes for childhood drawings; we now have a world collecting likes and emojis for creativity.
I remember my mother took me out for lunch one day while I was a young adult still trying to figure out my future. At that time, I was exploring whether to continue pursuing a technical college associate degree that I had taken a hiatus from. She told me, I remember this like it was yesterday, that pursuing higher education was important if I wanted more financial comfort from life and that it was okay with her if I did not want that. I was perplexed, my father’s expectation was always higher education, and he would never have said that to me. She said if I wanted to work in a small-town canning factory that would be just as noble as going back to school, especially knowing that the education I had been pursuing was not going to lead me into a career that I wanted anyway. I know my father would never have told me that and it is why it was just me and her at lunch that day.
Full disclosure, my mom’s first job was at that canning factory that she was talking about and later in life one of her former bosses from there ended up helping her and my father by investing in their first business. Her first job at a factory led her to become a successful businessperson with the means to raise seven children and help most all of them with their educational expenses, so her impression of factory work might have been a little skewed. The irony that my father left his educational work for self-employment is not lost on me either.
I was not one hundred percentage sure her idea of factory work was noble for me, and I figured that out quickly. I ended up applying and working a total two days there. A quality control green bean counter was not in my future. I agree, noble for some, not for me. Her real point for me on that day was just to be happy with whatever I choose to do and that she would support and love me just the same. Higher education or factory work that does not require an education, those were the options. Creative work was not something that could even be considered, it was aspirational and only for a few talented enough folks to be worthwhile. Nowadays, it seems as if it is everywhere we look, and everyone is jumping in.
–expand–
Are we at a tipping point of modernity and moving into an era of self-actualization where our collective creativity is just getting started? Have we hit the pinnacle of self-actualization and are now teetering at the tip of Maslow’s, “hierarchy of needs?” Abraham Maslow, American Psychologist, “Toward a Psychology of Being” (1962)
If we are on the top of it, where do we go from here, fall back to the bottom where basic needs become the driver of our lives again? Are we witnessing the falling off from our better selves, our best human instincts and beginning to see the abyss of division, hatred toward others, in-fighting for control of what resources will be left on the planet with little to no compromise or concern for our fellow humans?
What I see today is so many people tapping into the creative process, again, both good and bad. I do not have to go any farther than my own family to see the good. There is contemporary music, dance studio lessons, the creating of essential oils or embellished clothing to better our lives. Some of them have marketed their software expertise, some of us have sold books on Amazon or other items on eBay and some market their Airbnb online. You name it, people, my family included, are harnessing all the technology at our fingertips to pursue creative interests.
I also see the bad creativity from people I grew up with. The bigotry, the racism, the misogyny, the intolerance for difference, it is present. They are finding creative ways to make fun of and bully those that do not look, or act like them. Little do they know that all those people they make fun of are still their family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Often, they just do not know the people they hate are hiding in plain sight amongst themselves. We are all different, we all came from somewhere else and while you think you are better than someone, there will always be someone better than you. Comparing self to others is as old as humanity.
While not everyone is being creative to sell something, creating for good or for bad, they just do it for the need itself to create. It is undeniable though that we are all engaging in a new way of being. I highly doubt that Maslow could have predicted that we would globally arrive at the tier of self-actualization all at the same time because of the technology at our disposal. This is the beginning of a move away from modernity and into the age of self-actualization, not the end. That what we are experiencing today is an evolutionary shift and I am looking forward to witnessing and participating in the creativity yet to come.
Harvesting Thought 