How have we lost creativity?

Question

I am writing a paper on the importance of creativity and need to show how we have lost creativity and why that is bad. I already have tv shows (like reality tv), movies (same plot lines), and fashion (recycling clothes from 60s 70s and 80s).

Answer 1

I think we lost creativity because of technology.  Instead of looking up facts in books, we look on the computer.  Instead of having to read books, we play video games.  You see, our society is growing more and more impatient.  Go through the drive through, it is quick!  Use a cell phone so you don't have to waste your time using a pay phone.  Yes life may be easier, but we are losing our creativity.  Being creative involves lots of patience and time.  And if we don't want to waste our time on being creative, how are we suppose to be?

Answer 2

Watch this video!     I would add that many grade schools don't have Art classes anymore.    Also that video games and internet has affected our creativity, I think a new generation of imbalanced are being created from no influence on creativity..

Answer 3

Too many people are letting others do their thinking for them!

And (I think) a lot of things have been "dumbed down".

Much television appeals to the lowest common denominator (when is the last time you saw a really funny, witty comedy show or a really good, informative, balanced documentary?) The news is offered in 30-second sensationalized sound bites (FoxNews is an oxymoron, with the emphasis on MORON!). Unsourced stories on the internet -- rumors even! -- are treated as fact and repeated until the rumors become "real".

People are accepting too much at "face value" from the media especially -- whether it's who's hot/ who's not, what are the fashion/art/literary, etc. trends...and so on.

Recycling CAN be creative. Making something "new" out of old stuff requires some imagination!

Creativity takes a certain amount work and I think a lot of people have gotten unusually lazy. You have to use your imagination. You may need to get some training to express yourself (ie painting classes, a creative writing course). And you have to do the work to get the results.

However, that said, the rewards are incredible!

Answer 4

What a great question!

First off, know that I'm replying to your post because I do believe we (society ... America in particular) have lost our sense of creativity -but we also can easily and readily get it back.

Here are the assumptions I use for my position:

(1) All humans are hard-wired for creativity

(2) Most of us enjoy our greatest freedom for expressing our creativity from birth until we enter the educational system

(3) Systems -be they educational, governmental, political, or religious are against creativity.  In fact, history is full of evidence that shows how convention (status quo) is rewarded while creativity (thinking outside the so-called box) is punished.

(4) Behaviors that are rewarded get repeated.

Now, based on those four underlying assumptions, I believe that in the beginning of our human species existence there was an absolute need for creativity -simply to survive.  And, regardless of whether one believes in a supreme deity or evolution, the fact of the matter is that the most creative essentially became the strongest and, together, created a species of survivors.

As the world's population increased from the beginning of [human] time, the need for creativity to be unequivocally attached to survival lessened as each new civilization and each new era become more adapt at the elemental prerequisites of survival.  Therefore (in my view), more time was slowly being allotted to creativity outside the restrictive arena os survival ... all the human senses were coming into play ... all that most likely was suppressed before was now being afforded the light of day.

It certainly is arguable just when the "most creative" era and/or civilization existed -or even if it's yet to happen.  However, it seems reasonable to assert that the 17th through 20th centuries (worldwide) witnessed some pretty amazing creative outcomes -and across multiple dimensions, from arts and music, to medical science and extended lifetimes, to computer systems that track buying patterns as billions of dollars of money transfers around the world each day.

However, with the world's population at 6.7 billion and America's at 304 million (2008), the need for generalized creativity seems to have been severely curtained and, sadly so, in favor of a much more structured, lockstep model of thinking and behaving where governments and social institutions prefer uniformity over discontinuity, order over edgy propositions, and allegiance to the status quo over the "road less traveled" (think of the Olympics as the most recent -and pervasive- example of "status quo" ... it is more political than ever and voices of protest were swept under the carpet -if not banished from the countryside).

The prevailing model -be it business, governmental, intellectual, etc.- tends to honor and reinforce "one voice" not many and, in doing so, supports and rewards those who heed the restrictive conditions of the one voice model and thereby exclude -indeed punish- the multi-voice (creative) model.

And finally, as you aptly pointed out in your post, clear evidence of this one-voice, no-need-for-creativity-here perspective is seen in our media, our fashion, our politics and, sadly so, our rigidity in honoring political correctness across all avenues of life.