5 of 17

Write now Article Tools

The so-called "Human Condition" brings us mortals to the stark realization that everything we know and everyone we love will someday pass. That sadness and inevitable suffering may be the main impetus to our creativity. As we face reality, we can visualize an alternative to or improvement in the "Human Condition" through the creative process of imagination and the empowerment of experience and ability. When we create something, we somehow validate our uniqueness.

Humans are unique in the respect that our creativity does not arise from instinct. For example, the beaver manipulates its environment through creating beaver ponds and dams - a significant alteration in its environment, but nonetheless a totally instinctive behavior. Contrast the beaver dam with the Hoover Dam, with its millions of tons of concrete and astonishing size and engineering. From the standpoint of the imagination and skills of the human engineers, our Hoover Dam is to a beaver dam as an atomic bomb is to a mosquito bite. The massive structure was inspired by imagination and creativity and it improves the lives of millions.

Creativity, then, seems to be the actual obverse of the two-sided coin of our "Human Condition." What we create can outlive and outlast that which dies and is forgotten. At the risk of citing a far-too-obvious example, let's look at the Egyptian pyramids. Aside from the fact that no one has fully figured out how the behemoth tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs could have been constructed given the technology of the time, the pyramids also represent a unique form of human creativity that has to do with our self-concept, the eternal and the afterlife.

The Egyptians buried their god-kings with what they figured was the wherewithal for navigation and entry into the higher plane of eternal life. The Egyptians, like many civilizations, created a pantheon of gods and a hierarchy of temporal rulers (priests, nobles and the pharaoh) that provided a structured society based simply on nature worship. The creative application of this state religion spilled over into every aspect of Egyptian life, from crafts to art and pictographic literature and brought Egypt to its domination of its part of the world, until other, more creative cultures conquered and overran the land of the pyramids.

In a relatively more contemporary vein, to get the full flavor of the impact of creativity on the universe of human culture, one only has to visit St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. In Rome, the legacy of

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Reflections: Creativity?
We want to hear your view. Write now!