This video is about this guy with the unpronounceable last name’s research into the mental states of creativity, etc., which he calls “flow.” An interesting look at the psychology of creativity in relation to the “normal” world.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives. A leading researcher in positive psychology, he has devoted his life to studying what makes people truly happy: “When we are involved in [creativity], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.” He is the architect of the notion of “flow” — the creative moment when a person is completely involved in an activity for its own sake.
Er, if you don’t see a video, click one of the gray bars and it should load the player.
…is that you get “rewarded” for it with more things to do. So, doing a good job leads to having to do more job. How in the world is this considered a good thing?! Is business completely unaware of punishment by contingent stimulation(i.e. positive punishment)? Must remember: you don’t need to be good, just good enough to not get fired.
I don’t know if most people’s conversations with friends talk about philosophy and psychology and culture and generally ignore sports, but mine do. A couple of weeks ago I was hanging out with my best friends playing Rock Band 2, and during a short interlude I put forth a theory I have about happiness (and a quick note that she is pursuing a graduate degree in counseling or something and he is a doctoral candidate in philosophy and they’re married) to my friends which spawned a bit of a conversation and resulted in the quote I had posted:
Creativity is about understanding implications. Depression is also about understanding implications, but maybe too many of them.
So, the theory which spawned the conversation (and please ignore the implicit valuation) I (now) call the shape-complexity theory:
You can reduce people to shapes. we already use the language, “people are faceted.” Some people are simpler people, and may be the triangles or rectangles of the world, and on the other end you have irregular dodecahedrons all the way to, I dunno, Mandelbrot Set people.
Happiness is the ability to connect the edges of your shape to the world through some means, art, friendship, romantic involvement, etc.*
Simpler people have a much easier time connecting.
Complex people, however, can appreciate the connections made much more. They are not necessarily happier, but much more aware of the challenge and triumph in making those connections.
The corollary to the above is that complex people are more likely to experience the extremes of both happiness and unhappiness because of the complexity of engaging seemingly or actually contradictory facets.
From there, it was determined that while creativity was not a province of the complex, it is connected. Both are about viewing the world around them and making unlikely connections between things. Both inherently approach a state of discordance and it is in that place of tension that art is found. Consider most things that are made just for being the thing: tools, crafts, sandwiches- these are not art. Art is a statement, art is an action. For something to be an action there has to be a better/worse dichotomy. Tension. Unlikely connections. While these have the capacity to be wonderful connections (Neruda’s incredibly lush Cien Sonetos de Amor as one example) they also have the capacity to be troubling in much the same way that depression is awareness of the troubling connections possible.
The research of Verhaeghen and colleagues shows when people are in a reflective mode, they may become more creative, depressed, or both. Previous research shows that when people are in a ruminating mode, they are more likely to be depressed, he said.
“If you think about stuff in your life and you start thinking about it again, and again, and again, and you kind of spiral away in this continuous rumination about what’s happening to you and to the world — people who do that are at risk for depression,” he said.
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Sensitivity to one’s surroundings is also associated with both creativity and depression, according to some experts.
Creative people in the arts must develop a deep sensitivity to their surroundings — colors, sounds, and emotions, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Such hypersensitivity can lead people to worry about things that other people don’t worry about as much, he said, and can lead to depression.
I’ve never suggested that I’m original, but if I’m thinking about these things and scientists are off studying them and I’m not aware of it, that means, to some extent, these are obvious things. But sometimes we neglect the obvious as intent as we become on some far-off or abstract goal. Then Dana tells us:
That is precisely the trick: to create poetry in the midst of the mess. To create poetry, you must enter the mess. Poets enter the mess of the world in ways most can’t or won’t.
As for sound mental health advice, that may be contrary to reality. If rumination and awareness are part of the problem, it may be better to avoid those things!
But is it worth it? Is it worth it to shut off that part of yourself, to voluntarily amputate some portion of your mind, reduce the facets of you? For some people, I’m sure, the answer is yes. But as artists,isn’t it pretty fundamental to who we are that we live in that world of mess and we make what sense of it we can. Some of us may only treading water, some of us may be leaping like dolphins and flying fish willfully going deep into the water to soar into the sky? And as for the sharks, well, they need to eat too, I suppose.
I’ll end this with two thoughts- Be aware that there is a line between creativity and madness and cross it if you want, but be aware of it.
Make it worth it! If you are going to be in the mess, if you are going to be making the connections to the world that no one else can make, make it worth it.
*Though I removed it, I also included genocide in this list originally, but I felt it changed the tone too much. Some people have sources of happiness that are harmful to others and civilization and pretending otherwise is false. To some extent everyone has those views, I think. But for most people they are incredibly minute and satisfied by reality television and celebrity tabloids.
**I had someone read this before I posted it to see if it made sense in the world outside my head, and the response I got was that it did make sense, but it was swimmy-feeling at the beginning. this is apropos of nothing.
For centuries, the rich and the powerful documented their existence and their status through painted portraits. A marker of wealth and a bid for immortality, portraits offer intriguing hints about the daily life of their subjects—professions, ambitions, attitudes, and, most importantly, social standing.
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Today, our self-portraits are democratic and digital; they are crafted from pixels rather than paints. On social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook, our modern self-portraits feature background music, carefully manipulated photographs, stream-of-consciousness musings, and lists of our hobbies and friends. They are interactive, inviting viewers not merely to look at, but also to respond to, the life portrayed online. We create them to find friendship, love, and that ambiguous modern thing called connection. Like painters constantly retouching their work, we alter, update, and tweak our online self-portraits; but as digital objects they are far more ephemeral than oil on canvas. Vital statistics, glimpses of bare flesh, lists of favorite bands and favorite poems all clamor for our attention—and it is the timeless human desire for attention that emerges as the dominant theme of these vast virtual galleries.
Although social networking sites are in their infancy, we are seeing their impact culturally: in language (where tofriend is now a verb), in politics (where it is de rigueur for presidential aspirants to catalogue their virtues on MySpace), and on college campuses (where not using Facebook can be a social handicap). But we are only beginning to come to grips with the consequences of our use of these sites: for friendship, and for our notions of privacy, authenticity, community, and identity. As with any new technological advance, we must consider what type of behavior online social networking encourages. Does this technology, with its constant demands to collect (friends and status), and perform (by marketing ourselves), in some ways undermine our ability to attain what it promises—a surer sense of who we are and where we belong? The Delphic oracle’s guidance was know thyself. Today, in the world of online social networks, the oracle’s advice might be show thyself.
