Creativity is the ability to imagine–the ability to “see” (but not necessarily with your eyes, or even visually) something before it exists.

A big problem with defining and assessing creativity is that “existence” is not a well-defined word. Existence can be interpreted very narrowly or broadly, and depending on how you interpret it, something is either creative or just an imitation.

The ability to mimic others (i.e. the ability to learn) is one of the reasons why we have been so successful as a species. We are all great imitators–so great, perhaps, that there is no creativity at all?

Or perhaps creativity is the ability to construct dreams. Our brains construct dreams all the time–they are the authentic creators. But not all of us have the ability to do this consciously.

Or maybe we’re all creative because we all interpret things slightly differently. Most of us simply choose not to speak up.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 14:56 and is filed under for reflection, reductions, whatis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.