“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.”
– Maya Angelou
Creativity is one of the defining characteristics of mankind. Humans seem to possess an inherent need to create and that sense of artistry, coupled with imagination and ambition, has led to the world that we know today.
From the first breath humanity ever took, we have been creating.
Early man used stones to create tools to enhance their chances of survival. The people living in the Sumerian city-state of Uruk utilized stone tablets and cuneiform to create the first story ever written entitled The Epic of Gilgamesh. Michelangelo spearheaded the Italian renaissance with his creation of his sculpture David. Johannes Gutenberg changed the world by inventing the Printing Press. The Wright brothers made flight possible by inventing the first airplane. Steve Jobs revolutionized technology by helping create Apple and proceeded to create technology that no one had ever before seen.
This is just a small collection of individuals whose creativity and determination have affected the world and that does not even begin to cover the extent of humanity’s creative capabilities.
It is the year 2017, and with all that we have created behind us, it is important to look forward and see what humanity is planning on creating next.
Aside from Nasa’s many efforts to land a man on Mars by the year 2030, the creation of the highly addictive Fidget Spinner and the worldwide anticipation for Taylor Swift’s next album, the one thing that we are exploring that is more interesting than all of that is the science behind creativity itself.
We’ve all heard the theories that our brain is divided into two sections, or hemispheres, and that the left side of the brain handles our creative thinking and the right side oversees critical thinking. Thanks to a new brain scan that has been developed called an fMRI, scientist can see that “creative thinking is not a left-brain function […] it is an all-brain function” (Field).
Scott Kaufman writes in his article that it is an exciting time for the neuroscience of creativity if people are capable of embracing “the messiness of the creative process and the dynamic brain activations and collaborations among many different brains that make it all possible” (Kaufman).
According to the latest research, the creative process takes place across multiple areas of the brain and it does not discriminate between one hemisphere or the other. In fact, humans utilize three brain networks to think creatively: “the Imagination Network lights up when we think divergently, explore and engage with new ideas, the Executive Attention Network brings us back down to earth with practicalities and critical thinking and our Salient Network allows us to toggle between imaginative and critical thinking, and to take in outside information, connect with memories, and play with meaning making” (Field).
Because we are developing this new information on how creativity works inside the brain, it has also been possible to penpoint the reasoning behind creativity slumps as well. There is an area inside of the brain that is called the amygdala and it is “responsible for detecting potential threats and prompting fear responses, such as fight-or-flight” (Field). This is good when we are in positions that pose a threat to our wellbeing; however, this area of the brain can also be triggered when we feel “even a remote threat of failure or embarrassment”(Field).
When creating, people frequently feel vulnerable because anytime someone presents an idea to the world there is always a chance of rejection. This fear activates our stress response that then hijacks the area of the brain that contains “our idea-generating, problem-solving brilliance” (Field).
It is a wonder how anyone can gather up the courage to create anything with our minds seemingly natural abhorrence of failure and rejection. Well, the one “force [that] can override our fear of failure [is] our fear of regret” (Field). Those who push against their natural tendency to fear the unknown of creation do this not because they possess something special that pushes them apart from the rest of us, but because they are determined to not allow anything to get in between them and the ideas burning inside of them.
Do not allow fear to stand in the way of creativity. Humanity is meant for something greater and no one, not even our own minds, should stand in the way of that.
Works Cited
Field, Jena. “The Science behind Creativity – What Happens in the Brain and Why.” Open for
Ideas. N.p., 11 Oct. 2016. Web. 19 June 2017.
Kaufman, Scott Barry. “The Real Neuroscience of Creativity.” Scientific American Blog
Network. N.p., 19 Aug. 2013. Web. 19 June 2017.
