Creativity and the Whole of Life

In the previous blog, I wondered if F David Peat had read LaoTzu , Krishnamurti and Buddhism. Today I checked on another book written by him, but jointly with another scientist philosopher David Bohm called Science, Order and Creativity: A Dynamic New Look at the Creative Roots of Science and Life (1987). I got an answer.

I turned to the final chapter of that book, Creativity and the Whole of Life. This chapter examines how socio-cultural conditioning leads to rigidities of the individual and of society as a whole and how the East and the West deal with such problems and how three basic attitudes of mind affect our lives: the scientific, the artistic and the religious and finally suggests how the dilemma might be solved.

Desmond Morris in The Biology of Art (1962) describes how, when chimpanzees were given canvas and paints, they immediately applied themselves to making balanced patterns of colors rather like certain forms of modern art like abstract expressionism and became so interested in doing so that they had comparatively little interest left for food, sex or other forms of activities that normally hold them strongly and similar results were obtained with other primates and young children. Yet curiously, when they grow older, their urge to create fades or is restricted to certain limited areas like science, music or painting. Why? Further experiments show that once rewards and punishments are introduced like praise and approval and the children become "self-conscious" about the kind of paintings they are "supposed" to do or once they observe what the other children around them are doing, they start to produce the bare minimum that would satisfy the experimenter. The reason? To obtain the reward, the whole order of the activity and the energy required for it are determined by arbitrary requirements external to the creative activity itself: it turns mechanical and repetitious. It is no longer spontaneous. As a result, even greater rewards or punishment are required to keep the activity going!  The setting of goals and patterns of behavior imposed externally and mechanically produces a rigid structure in our consciousness that blocks the free play of thought and the free movement of awareness and attention required for true creativity. But this does not mean that rules and external orders are always or necessarily incompatible with creativity. "To live in a creative way requires extreme and sensitive perception of the orders and structures of relationship to individuals, society and nature..only when creativity is made subservient to external goals, ..implied by the seeking of rewards, that the whole activity begins to wither and degnerate." say the authors.Only if we begin to do what is required just for the reward e.g pleasing words of praise from the others, even if they are not true and we begin to collude with the others in exchanging flattering remarks that lead to mutual satisfaction will what we say or do become lies and self-deception. We no longer create for the spontaneous joy of creation of, in and for itself. Is that not what happens in so many types of economic activities, in social relationships, in commerical "art" and even in that otherwise most natural and spontaneous creative act to express human love, ie love making, when so many people are obsessed with their  "sexual performance" and "satisfaction". Everything seems to be done for the "makret", the "target consumer". Worse, the denial of opportunity for spontaneous creation may lead not only to lack of spontaneous joy, it may even lead to pervasive dissatisfaction and  boredom which will find an outlet in destructive behavior, like all kinds of violence, not just physical violence but also emotional violence. If prolonged, they may eventually result in the deadening of our sensitivity and the loss of our ability for the free movement of our awareness, attention and thought.

Our education, based on a mechanical systems of the carrot and the stick, of rewards and punishment, has thus become "a tremendous barrier to creativity.". In addition, our education system places far too much emphasis on "fixed knowledge and techniques" and in consequence on "authority" as determining the generative order of our psyche: not only the unquestionable authority of the teacher but the general authority of knowledge itself, as a source of truth that should never be doubted. To the authors, this leads to "a fundamental loss of self-confidence, to a blockage of free movement and a corresponding dissipation of energy, deep in the generative order of the whole of consciousness." This degenerates into a disposition to be afraid of inquiring into fundamental questions, a tendency to look to "geniuses" and "experts" whenever any difficulty or basic problem is encountered. There is a great need for standardization, to conformity to arbitrary norms, that come not only from the teacher, but even more from the peer group and from society at large. What is true in the classroom is true also in the family, in the work palce and in society in general. Society in general is based on a mechanical fear of punishment and promise of rewards. They fear that unless this system is adopted, society may risk chaos and constant and total disruption. They forget that creativity is a basic need of the individual and that its blockage may ultimately threaten civilization with final destruction.

We need to be more creative and have more opportunities for the expression of our inherent creativity. Creavity should not be a matter of a flash in the pan. Creativity has to be sustained. Thus the artist has to constantly renew his creative source in the generative order: he should not have a creative vision and then apply it mechanically, in a sequential process by means of rules, techniques and formulae. On the contrary the rules, techniques must flow naturally out of his sustained fresh creative vision in a novel ways! Although to a certain extent, mechanical application is necessary, the basic impetus must come from the creative germ or idea, not from an external, mechanical, explicate or sequential order of succession.

Even at the level of society and culture, there are a large number of general assumptions, principles and values underlying them. These may be necesary for it to function smoothly over a limited period of time. However, there is a tendency to regard such temporary and provisional assumptions, principles and values as absolutely necessary, as universally and as permanently applicable. They are thus unyiedlingly, rigidly applied and defended when challenged but many of these assumptions, like different kinds of idealogies which encourage attitudes of aggression, hatred, and prejudice against other races, sex, age, religions and other minorities and sub-groups in society, may"pollute" the generative order of society and which, like a virus, constantly reproduce themselves within the body of society itself. One particularly pervasive misinformed principle widely held by our society is the assumption that creativity is needed only in specialized fields. To some extent, writers, dramatists, film makers sometimes make us aware of such prejudices and rigidly held attitudes and psychotherapy and group therapy may also help to clear up some of such individual misinformaion which go back to early childhood or at a later phase of life but in general these have very little effect on society as a whole.Traditionallly, the aim of psychiatry is to free creativity from the rigid blocks within the individual and to help the individual to "adjust" to society even though  it may be society itself which is sick. Some psychologists, like R. D. Laing, feel that what is called "insanity" in an individual can actually be a "sane" response to a "mad" society. We have already discovered that individual psychological problems may often be the result of the peculiar psycho-dynamics within particular problem families. Healthy changes in one individual in that family may often cause problems for another member of that family accustomed to the precarious balance or equilibrium achieved by their habitual pathological ways of interacting with one another. The same may happen at the social and cultural level.

For the above reasons, the psychologist De Maré calls for a creative transformation of culture through dialogue, something which will deeply affect both the individual and society together. There is a similarity between free dialogue, with no fixed tasks or goals and Freud's method of free association in psycho-analysis, which helps to bring repressed mental contents into awareness. To the authors, the way forward is genuinely free "dialogue", which in Greek, means "through (dia) the word (logo)" so that that information or meaning may flow between people in communication, in more or less the way that water in a stream may flow between its banks. This is a bit like Habermas's theory of communicative action, except that in the case of Habermas, such communication may be confined to rational discourse. We must however distinguish between dialogue and debates. In a debate, people hold relatively fixed positions and their main aim is not the discovery and joint exploration of what the truth may be. They seek merely to convince and convert others to their own views. Thus such debates may often degenerate into a confrontation or a polite avoidance of the genuine issues. In a dialogue, by contrast, people are genuinely interested to listen to others, with sympathy, in a spirit of friendliness, of understanding, not of hostility and they keep an open mind and are ready to change their own views if there is good reason to do so. In such a spirit, we will  give proper emphasis now to the interest of the group and now to that of the individual, as the situation demands. Our mind is no longer rigidly committed to the individual or to the group and as a result, the "emotional charge" inevitably associated with the assumption of one or more members of the group can be reduced to more manageable proportions and the hidden assumptions held by different people or groups will emerge. In the spirit of dialogue, there will be less pressure to  conform or to bow to authority. The emphasis will be on what the truth may be. The fixed and rigid frames and hidden assumptions will thus surface and may dissolve in the creative flow of genuine dialogue. People may then reach a new kind of microculture and consensus. We shall be able to move freely together towards certain commonly shared meanings. Only thus will the social and cultural "misinformation" and "pollution" cleared and creatively removed. 

Rightly or wrongly, religion, which is supposed to reconcile man with Nature, with other people and with themselves, has in the West been strongly influenced by the concept of a Supreme Being who is supposed to be the creator of the universe and everything within it and which gives human life meaning. In the East, the emphasis has been placed on discovering "the ultimate ground of all being" e.g Brahman is supposed to be the fundamental source of everything and the ultimate self or Atman is thought to be identical with that ultimate being or Brahman. The individual can thus enter directly into that absolute reality. But only a few have been able to reach that state of bliss and perfecton. In the West, mystics have a somewhat similar notion of union with God or the Godhead . But in general, the emphasis is on God's grace rather than on individual perception and understanding. For most people, religion is not primarily a question of mysticism but of belief in a set of principles and practices used in daily living. To the authors, the attempt to claim an absolute truth about the totality implies an absolute necessity and risks disposing our mind never to yield, no matter what evidence to the contrary may be. If so, a genuine dialogue is clearly impossible. Thus historically, true dialogue has seldom taken place between religions because they have different doctrinal notions of absolute truths. At best they may tolerate each other. But in the East, the major emphasis is placed on self-awareness, through inward observation and meditation. Thus Taoists emphasize on the Tao which if allowed to operate without human interference, will always tend towards harmony with nature and with the totality of the Tao, with a minumum of directed purposeful action. Laotzu emphasized detached inaction which paradoxically is itself a form of action or the highest form of action. This notion is also present in Hatha yoga which emphasizes the bringing about of harmony of the body by adopting certain fixed postures which help to expose the rigidities of the body in places where the karmic energy is blocked to the ultimate end of aiding inward perception. To Krisnamurti, it is precisely non-action or inaction which is needed for bringing about that very state of mind which transends time, space and anything which can be grasped in thought. The Buddha similarly advocates mere contemplation of the flow of reality to achieve awareness of the illusory nature of the various concepts, ideas, and emotions which cause us suffering. The suspension of explicate activity is thus common to the Tao, Yoga and Buddhism.

To the authors, "what is clearly needed in both the East and the West is the creative surge of a new order. Nor it it sufficient for each culture to adapt to its own needs certain features from the other that it may find convenient or attractive." The reason is that the rigidity of the basic assumptions of both the Eastern and the Western cultures remain unchallenged. To the authors, "That would only lead to false play and the blockage of creativity." There must be a genuine dialogue, free from fixed points of view, free from preconceptions, so that some truly free flow of information from truly fluid minds can arise, with rich possibilities for creative thoughts of socially shared meanings, between Western dynamism and Eastern suspension of outward activity, between the temporal and the timeless orders, between the individual and the social orders, with cosmic order on one side and the social and individual orders on the other.

From a different angle, the authors hope that nations will deal with each other not on the basis of what is thought desirable, convenient and in the national interest but like the scientist, what the truth may be according to well tested principles of what is true and what is false according to observation and the proper inferences to be drawn from observed phenomena. Likewise, we may like to reflect that the Latin root of Art is "to fit" as in the use of words like "article", "artisan" and "artifact" and that originally there is littel separation of art and the rest of life, both esthetic and practical. Today, art is fragmented and treated as separate from life. Art like music, drama, literature, poetry, dancing, the visual arts is concerned with beauty, harmony and vitality. But it should also be viewed more generally as fitting and proper to particular spheres. There can thus be an "art of living" too. Art is particularly concerned with the imagination ie. the ability to make mental images, the creation of hitherto unknown forms, not only visually, but through all sorts of feelings, tactile sensation, kinesthetic sensations and other new ways, a kind of play that include the subtle orchestration of feelings, intention and will. Intuitive perception is the act of making explicit the ratio or proportion already implicit in creative imagination such that reason unfolds from imagination. But with crytallized forms, the danger is that they too may become rigid when regarded as absolutely necessary. If so, the mind starts to "play false" and fantasies are defended as reality and the formal logical relationship of concepts are confused with the "truth". Artists constantly need to "create" new forms. So do non-artists. Harmony can only be achieved through constantly "novel" perception and conception of what is "fitting and proper". Religion normally deals with what is whole (as in the word "holy),timeless and contact with the ultimate ground of being and "worship" has the same root as "worthy" or the giving of high value but most religions think that it is not possible to give the right values to things unless there is a correct relationship with a Supreme Being. Our religions have got to learn to place more emphasis on compassion and to acknowledge that each individual shares in the general human conditioning. But over the years, religion has served to confuse and to play false, to engage in all kinds of "self-deceptions" and of the exploitation of others and to defend certain religious rigidities necessiated by their concept of the Absolute to such an extent that instead of preaching love, they engage in the spread of hatred and violence on "doctrinal religious grounds".  The word "belief" comes from the Teutonic Aryan word "lief" which means "love". Therefore to believe means to love what is believed. We should remember that belief also implies trust, confidence and faith in the essential honesty and integrity of a person, an institution, a cultural activity, and ultimately in life and creativity because without such belief, the serious and sustained commitment necessary for creativity may become impossible. We need a middle ground between complete belief to the extent of ignoring inconvenient "truths" and complete skepticism which results in a cynical attitude to everything. We must believe in something but not that something is absolute. We must adopt a kind of via negativa: whatever we say the totality is, it is not, like the Taoist concept that whatever can be spoken of or described is not the true Tao.  But orginally science, art and religion were not distinct but inseparably united. There is no intrinsic reason why the three attitudes should now remain separated IF they all strive for what is regarded as the "Truth". We clearly need a dialogue between the three attitudes, rather like what happened in the Renaissance, a radical re-examination of the basis of all three disciplines and cultural activities. We must begin to loosen up the rigid structures which we find everywhere blocking our creativity and stop concentrating merely on the "end products" of our creative activity but strive to sustain an open, flexible and  "creative" attitude to all aspects of our lives and to heal the fragmentation that envelops us everywhere we turn our eyes. But above all, we must reject the notion of god-like perfection because it should be looked upon merely as a goal towards which may work on but never as something achieved or even ultimately achievable. To do the latter will be the end of our creativity! All great changes have begun to manifest themselves in a few people at first. They will be the "seeds" from which much greater things may grow. We must strive to be one of those seeds.