The Source and Seat of Creativity in Human Beings: A Position Paper

Abstract

All cultures and nations have long recognized that creativity is the ultimate cause of the quantum leaps in virtually every discipline of knowledge and the quiet and invisible force behind all progress of human civilization. Leading thinkers across all disciplines have advocated the importance of creativity and consistently ranked it well beyond intelligence. In the recent literature, creativity has been clarified as a phenomenon that categorically differs from intelligence in that the ideas that result from it may not be deduced by applying current reasoning techniques on the state-of-the-art knowledge. Thus, creativity transcends intelligence. Throughout history, close examination reveals that deep sadness and profound grief have always been associated with every creative activity and every individual engaged in a creative invention or discovery. This paper pioneers the analytical examination of a key question, namely, is the apparent association between creativity and sadness mere coincidence or does there exist a scientific reasoning, arising from a deep and fundamental connection between the two concepts? The potential benefits of this exercise, if successful, are two-fold. First, it encapsulates a systematic attempt to resolve a deep intellectual curiosity that has intrigued society for millennia. Second, as a practical benefit, a careful understanding of the theory of the underlying processes may help us analyze how best to nurture the course of any given creative activity and limit the grief or sadness so it does not spin out of control and consume the individual, denying civilization, today and for the future, the enormous benefits that may follow from the inventions and discoveries. It is an undeniable fact that sadness may affect every individual, at one time or another and this paper does not focus on assessing whether sadness is a prelude to a creative invention or discovery. Instead, its objective is to examine whether creativity, by nature, triggers a counter-posing force that leads to profound grief; or whether creativity and sadness are so intimately intertwined in their seat in human beings that evoking creativity automatically triggers intense grief