Are we Squandersing our Creativity.

[Deleted67195711User]

 

 

 

It is interesting watching people blame everyone and everything for a problem that was documented and explained half a century ago.

 

The "digital age" didn't exist in 1959, but the tests indicated that Little Johnny couldn't read as early as 1959. America's literacy rate was in decline LONG before the "digital age". Then, the pundits blamed television for the decline. That decline has continued into this, the next millennium. Only now, people blame electronic devices and the digital age. Pffft.

 

What's that old saw? "The act of creation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". So if creation and creativity are dying, look to the larger portion that makes creation and creativity possible. What is dying and affecting creativity is the work ethic. I can hear the screams from here. NO!!! Laziness can't be the problem, it has to be some external mechanism that is to blame.

 

Let me give you some perspective. Who here under the age of 30 has had to work for an allowance? (And I mean hard sweaty manual labor, not just clean your room.) Who here under the age of 30 was required to read eight books a semester in your English Lit classes? How many here under the age or 30 even know what a paper route is? How many here under the age of 30 have looked at the table and wondered where their next meal is coming from?

 

Prior to the 1900's, America was predominately an agrarian society. We worked on farms and cities were for the rich and indolent. But the industrial revolution changed that. By the 1920's the balance was shifting. Following WWI, the shift was permanent. America was an industrial nation. Machine did most of the work and people operated the machines. People no longer needed to be slaves to the land to survive, and the work ethic began a steady decline. We don't need to work so hard, so why bother. The impact of "If you don't work, you don't eat" became lessened.

 

That decline in the "gotta work to survive" attitude is what is effectively killing creativity. It isn't some gadget, it is the people using the gadgets that are to blame. And that means YOU are to blame, and we can't have that, now can we.

Several studies want to blame it on immigration (mostly on illegals), an expanding workforce, poverty, the 'education gap', and prison populations.......

 

 

And I can probably find a study that blames it on solar flares, one that blames too much seafood in the diet, and another that blames it on the slaughter of African elephants. But none of these were political motivators back in 1959. Neither were "immigration (mostly on illegals), an expanding workforce, poverty, the 'education gap', and prison populations".

 

These "studies" that support political minorities but lack truly viable facts are all just so many horse apples. They attribute causality to coincidence and serendipity. You could print them all and have an unlimited supply of paper which is useful only in the head to wipe your ...

 

In all reality, you are correct. I tried to point that out in another thread, (that studies were exactly that, studies, and the bias of the folks doing the study plays a LARGE role in the 'results'.....) and got raked over the coals for it. :smile:

 

From what I am seeing though, literacy rates are right around 99%.... which is darn good for a country of 350 some odd millions..... Now, are our scores in the various disciplines on par with the rest of the world? Nope. We lag behind in math and science, fairly significantly. Why is that the case? I blame it on our government meddling in the education system, attempting to 'improve' it, but, what they actually end up doing is simply adding more layers of administration, that does absolutely nothing for education.

 

 

That 99% is misleading. https://brandongaille.com/us-literacy-rate-and-illiteracy-statistics/

[Deleted54170User]

Ah! Materials I might well best learned about when I was about 12 or somewhere between that and 18.

 

Thanks for providing links to papers on topics me thinks would have opened my eyes and saved me a lot of wasted time. I sense all the chicanery of the older siblings and their wisdom to keep my baby self from spoiling their relations aways from the room I lay in the crib, out of my sight, far from my abilities to hear, and never to learn and share until now.

 

I survived. As the old saying goes, "So far, so good." And then there is an album cover with words that shocked me a little, because it had words added to that which suggested, "So what?!

 

I'm old enough to know better, and I am sad that all the grades I earned were not used to learn such profound wisdom, until I was so lonesome I found myself as I am. Loving learning, and yearning to use what I've have.

 

 

Thanks again; to all of you.

[Mudran]

I think you have to ask what is creativity? Is it work with materials, or people, what can develop creativity? I think it has nothing to do with materials or surrounding.

 

Maybe it is capability to take whatever you see and reorder it differently with different meaning. Connect things nobody else would think of connecting.

Then you can use whatever you see, it doesn't matter - then the digital generation will be simply digitally creative.

[Freyadiin]

In all reality, you are correct. I tried to point that out in another thread, (that studies were exactly that, studies, and the bias of the folks doing the study plays a LARGE role in the 'results'.....) and got raked over the coals for it. :smile:

You were raked over the coals for outright denying studies as a whole, then proceeding to push your own biased narratives without providing any research or statistics to back yourself up. You went much further than simply acknowledging that there are flaws in the peer review process that could be worked on. You essentially tried to equate your own personal opinion (that conflicts with evidence) to years of research produced via the scientific method.

[Deleted54170User]

The topic is close.

[MrJoseCuervo]

It is interesting watching people blame everyone and everything for a problem that was documented and explained half a century ago.

 

The "digital age" didn't exist in 1959, but the tests indicated that Little Johnny couldn't read as early as 1959. America's literacy rate was in decline LONG before the "digital age". Then, the pundits blamed television for the decline. That decline has continued into this, the next millennium. Only now, people blame electronic devices and the digital age. Pffft.

 

What's that old saw? "The act of creation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". So if creation and creativity are dying, look to the larger portion that makes creation and creativity possible. What is dying and affecting creativity is the work ethic. I can hear the screams from here. NO!!! Laziness can't be the problem, it has to be some external mechanism that is to blame.

 

Let me give you some perspective. Who here under the age of 30 has had to work for an allowance? (And I mean hard sweaty manual labor, not just clean your room.) Who here under the age of 30 was required to read eight books a semester in your English Lit classes? How many here under the age or 30 even know what a paper route is? How many here under the age of 30 have looked at the table and wondered where their next meal is coming from?

 

Prior to the 1900's, America was predominately an agrarian society. We worked on farms and cities were for the rich and indolent. But the industrial revolution changed that. By the 1920's the balance was shifting. Following WWI, the shift was permanent. America was an industrial nation. Machine did most of the work and people operated the machines. People no longer needed to be slaves to the land to survive, and the work ethic began a steady decline. We don't need to work so hard, so why bother. The impact of "If you don't work, you don't eat" became lessened.

 

That decline in the "gotta work to survive" attitude is what is effectively killing creativity. It isn't some gadget, it is the people using the gadgets that are to blame. And that means YOU are to blame, and we can't have that, now can we.

 

 

You might be correct. I believe the biggest difference is that in the past Creativity usually involved something tangible. Instead of great works of Art we have memes. I know there is creativity and even beauty in code, but few among us can really appreciate it.

 

No, creativity isn't gone...but the more time our youth spend being simply consumers of content instead of producers of it, we do head towards such a fate.

[Mudran]

I think what the new generation will not have is a different experience and that is something to feel sorry about. On the other hand it may really happen like so many times in the past that everything comes in waves, what is popular today will be different tomorrow, so today it is technology, tomorrow will people turn back to something more natural.

But if not maybe people could be changed somehow according to that. I was making fun of that image - how would people change physically according to Darwin theory - will they have bigger heads, longer fingers, bigger eyes, but less perception from using phones? :smile:

Edited May 2, 2019 by Mudran

[Glhadiator]

I don't believe Creativity is being destroyed by anyone or anything.

 

I do believe that the Creative genius that is being created by todays society/technology is mostly unrecognizable by someone in my age group.

 

Evolution is designed so that the old is replaced by the new. My experiences enhanced my creative genius, just as the now generations creativity is enhanced and developed by their experiences.

 

Just because none of it resembles my experiences means it is good or bad. Remember when the previous generations said that Rock and Roll would rot our brains? TV was gonna stifle our creativity?

 

Never underestimate the power of the human mind nor the ability of the next generation to build what you once perceived as impossible.

[HeyYou]

Wait, what? Rock and Roll DIDN'T rot our brains???? I'll have to find another excuse then. :D

[RGMage2]

Sometimes I wonder if we are living in the post-creative era. Specifically when it comes to traditional forms of entertainment, movies, TV, and music. A lot of rehash, not much new. All the franchise movies that keep repeating. Resurrected TV shows. Even music, they call it different names but it's fundamentally the same as what I was listening to 30 years ago, and some of it is outright plagiarized.

 

There are reasons for it though. It's not necessarily because people are less creative today. I think it has more to do with corporate control over everything and their need for profit. In pursuing profit they play it safe and try to give us things they know we already like rather than risking production costs on new ideas.