Dear Charles
I don't mind ego - after all, the project, for Freud, was finding the ego (I) where the id (it) used to be. The egos that cause me irritation are the ones that have not expanded to include others and the larger world. De-centering is the ground of creativity as a form of consciousness and de-centering requires an ego.
Childhood is something else - it is the invention of adults - we might introduce a general therapeutics of creativity in to the eduction of children but I would rather that we struggled with a hygenics - that is, we need to know quite a lot about any individual child before we are able to promote one form of exploration over another. The simplest solution is conformity to a body of knowledge that is granted an objective status. Thus all kids get instruction in this that and the other. Language does this job rather well while also allowing for access to the infinite machinery of the imagination. And, anyway, creativity isn't all that precious or special - it has mostly brought me public ridicule and personal penury if also deep satisfaction.
cheers
keith russell
OZ newcastle
>>> Charles Burnette <[log in to unmask]> 07/22/09 10:13 AM >>>
Perhaps this discussion should be called Contextualizing Creativity.
Issues of the context for creativity have been raised by everyone who
has participated in this thread.
Ken noted that: "In science or mathematics, progress often takes place
when someone finds a way to think around what has been done, and to
think in new ways. In some cases, those new thinkers build very
clearly on the work of their predecessors, listening to their elders
as it were. In other cases, only by ignoring or neglecting elders and
conventional wisdom does progress occur." While agreeing with the need
to escape from conventional wisdom in order to be creative I submit
that science and mathematics actually require and promote acts of
creativity-in-context for progress to occur. (Validations don't
usually qualify as creative.) Amanda rightly pointed out that
creativity is always situated in some context and Cameron seemed to
think that it had perverse effects on how people ought to work
together. My view is that people are being educated to conform to the
norm rather than to develop their creativity for the purposes of
improving whatever they confront. Because the information before us
is complex, disjointed, and subject to misinterpretation I believe
that the education, particularly of children, should reinforce the
correlates that Mackinnon so carefully uncovered, egomania be damned.
Creatively seems to frighten or confuse people when it should
challenge them to be so. Where did we go wrong?
Chuck
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