Where Does Creativity Come From?

Disclosure: The following post contains my own thoughts, personal views, and opinions about creativity and in no way reflects the ideas and opinions of others mentioned in the post. These are some ideas I have currently been learning about the subject matter.

I take from a few ideas of a lesson I learned in Sociology of Creativity taught by Professor Eric Dahlin at BYU combined with thoughts from the Steven Johnson video, and a lecture by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Where has creativity come from throughout history?

• Daemons- historically Daemons (demons) were seen as good "spirits" if you will that would accompany mortals. If someone was seen as being a genius or a creative person, it was because they had this "spirit" that accompanied them and "inspired" them to create whatever it was that they created. Socrates himself claimed to have a Daemon. Keep in mind this is someone or something that inspires the person and that the creativity does not come entirely from the person they are with. 
• Olé- The word has arabic influence most likely from the arabic word "Allah" which is the name of God among Hebrews. Think of how the word Olé is used, when something extraordinary (ex. bull fighting) happens and the person seems to be almost inhuman like a form of deity. It would be appropriate then to use "olé" in the sense of inhuman demonstration. 

Combining these two words we can understand a little about how creativity and genius was thought of historically.  A person was not a genius in and of themselves, it was because of the Daemon that accompanied the person and others would exclaim Olé or Allah as if the person had such deity around them.

Going a step further we can see with whom the blame is for the result of a persons effort. If one was thought of as a genius (ex. Socrates) the responsibility was with the Daemon that accompanied them. If a persons effort was not seen as very genius or creative, the responsibility was with the Daemon and it wasn't necessarily the persons fault.

Lets now look at today and how we think of creativity. Think of a  profession that requires creativity and doesn't rely totally on a planned outcome of results. I like to think of Artists in all media types because they don't know how their products will be received. If they produce a product that is seen as creative and genius, the credit is given to the artist and that artist will have great success, especially financially. If their work is not seen as creative or genius that blame is on the artist and therefore the artist will have little or no success in terms of selling their work.

In which environment do you think creativity would thrive most? In a society where one relies on an outside source be it deity, daemons, etc, or the society where creativity relies solely on the individual?

If Creativity comes from an environment where ideas are shared through connectivity, one would think that today it would be a better environment since we have an incredible amount of connectivity through social media. However, inspiration seems to have happened quite often in history from Devine sources and it is just as real to those in history as social media connectivity is for us today. I feel that the stress of having to rely completely on oneself for creativity in todays world would stifle creativity. We have become very dependent on ourselves to come up with the next big idea. It's as if "I must reinvent the wheel".  I think that this is not where creativity comes from. We need the idea from somewhere in order to create something novel and useful.

Whether historically or currently, creativity comes from connectivity of ideas and it works best when one does not think that it comes from ones own mind. Maybe it was easier in history to be creative because the stresses to come up with a novel art piece wasn't on the individual but was a joint effort of an outside source and that individual. It can be quite difficult to be in a "creative" field because of social pressures but that does not mean that creativity is any less prevalent now then it was in history.