Creativity allows us to make novel connections, seek out new ways of doing things, make artistic expression happen, and build something where there was nothing before.
A lot of people struggle with becoming more creative. There are a variety of reasons this happens.
One of the foremost reasons for creative struggles is the Inner Critic. Everyone has a moderating instinct, to one degree or another, in them. When people did not moderate, people tended to die before procreating. Over time, we have emerged thanks to our self-moderation. This tendency can be over calibrated and we suffer. We had critical parents or we went through overly critical schooling. Pro-civilizational strategies were not categorized and elucidated to us. We simply learned to follow the herd and to avoid punishment. All things were grey. Nothing good comes out of this milieu. It has to be challenged! Anti-traditional radicals will challenge it, sometimes, but they challenge the norm but dragging it down even further. The Critic often permits this because there’s more to complain about later.
Dealing with the Inner Critic in a sober, accurate way means understanding that while the Critic seeks to keep us safe, we need to strike up a balance where we can build up new structures in life. A policy of contraction and isolation is only appropriate to evil doers. Simply experimenting and trying to be creative is not an evil, despite what the norm has established and despite the hysterical protestations of some powerful people. The Inner Critic, if it is over calibrated, can trigger a harsh backlash of destructive rebellion that is not even in the interests of the Inner Critic. Censorship leads to chaos. In chaos, anything can go and often does. We need balance. We need to live in a way where ethics does not get thrown out the window.
Another blockage to creativity that people experience is that they live in a state of dishonesty with themselves. An over calibrated Inner Critic is a form of dishonesty. To pepper oneself with constant anxieties, constraints, and woes is a form of slavery. Other kinds of dishonesty include nursing some illusion in an important personal relationship, engaging in unproductive conflict with others, or mistreating one’s body. Combative people aren’t always outwardly combative. Oftentimes, they beat themselves up.
One more issue people come up against with creativity is that they overattribute things to their creativity. They pin too many hopes on it, far too soon in the process. This is a form of grandiosity, certainty about things that are not certain. A rare few seem to just plow forward in this manner, not that this is useful for the world, but most people crumble under the weight of expectations. Our world is insanely cruel to people who are young, daydreaming, and tending to their hobbies. Let the small be small and the grand be grand. Let people find their way but give the people the freedom of knowing humility and hard work. This cannot happen by edict or centralization of power. It can only happen through mentorship and a voluntary adherence to form. We desperately need the guild and apprenticeship system to return to the world. The universities and the government are drowning all genuine human innovation. Everything is becoming a weapons system.
One last issue that people run into with creativity is that they get a case of the “shoulds”. They say to themselves, “My creativity should be exactly like so and so’s.” They seek to conform or to imitate, not because they are learning skills, but because they have a vain attachment to outcomes. Creativity does not work this way. Sure, we borrow from others that came before us, but what’s done has been done. We need the openness to new associations in order to stay in the “flow”.
Creativity does not mean everyone becomes a painter and wears a French beret. A miner may be creative. A plumber may be creative (although hopefully not too much!) A banker may be creative (again, hopefully not too much!) Everyone has a chance to be creative. It is not an attribute solely left up to “the creatives”. Some people, maybe because of genetics, seem to have a lot more of it. That’s simply how it goes. Everyone has their natural strengths to discover. Only freedom permits everyone the space to find these strengths. Constriction, taxation, social control, and unending debt are political manifestations of the rotten things people do to themselves in order to squelch creativity.
