When I think of the word (noun) creativity I think of the verb it comes from, i.e. to create.
My first memory of the word create comes from religion. (God created the world). We were told that he created it out of nothing. It was quite difficult for my childish mind to get up to speed as to how something could be made out of nothing, and it certainly raised the status of creating to a fairly high level – not to mention God!
In later years, when I was thinking what the word meant to me personally, and in the context of my work with people in distress, I stumbled on something that I felt was worth thinking a little bit more about.
The opposite of ‘to create’ is ‘to destroy’. I asked myself what I thought of using the word creativity in the context of destruction, or even doing harm. For example:
~ There are many creative people working in the arms industry that are inventing devices to inflict pain, terror and death on other humans.
~ A lot of creativity went into inventing the naval vessel that is called a Destroyer, and indeed a captain of a Destroyer could be very creative in winning a naval battle.
~ Sometimes Western World enthusiasts for air-brushing our past sins from history have borrowed (from the world of economics) the term creative destruction to describe colonisation that annihilated aboriginal nations and cultures and replaced them with more (supposedly) productive modern Western culture.
~ There are people working in, say, financial services that are creative in how profits are made for very rich people at the expense of the poorest of the poor – possibly causing poverty, austerity etc. in their own and other countries or even famine in distant lands.
Are such examples (and others like them) depicting creativity? Are such people being creative?
I suppose in some ways they are but when I say that creativity is essential in our work I will also say that creativity, like science itself, cannot be value-free.
That is, the creativity that is needed to engage with and build relationships with people in distress has to be done in the context of an ethical awareness of the consequences of being creative.
I say all the above in full awareness of my own reluctance to put a boundary around something like creativity, a human quality that I hold in very high esteem.
But what I am saying, in effect, is that I am interpreting the word creativity in a certain way, and if someone uses the word in the context of doing harm I find it difficult to consider it to be creativity at all.
Perhaps there is another word that describes creativity that enhances humanity rather than just creativity – but I don’t know it.