My Creativity

I can remember a specific time in my life where I felt "in flow" with my creativity. The paper was on Dante's "Inferno", and we were given broad directions to where to take the paper. I decided to compare the book to baseball, and assign cetain players who have disgraced the game throughout history into different levels of hell. I also decided to write the paper in prose, something that was very new to me at the time. It remains my best paper to date, and I am proud of my ability to transform a work of literature from the domain it is in the mix in with baseball, something for which I had alot of knowledge about. After this course, I now realize that creativity can occur everyday, not just when I have a moment of "flow". Any time that I work on something, as long as I put in hard work and explore new possiblities, I am being creative. At work for example, I recently had to film a baseball game. Usually, I am in the stands filming. However, it was raining this day, and I had to find a way to film without getting the expensive camera wet. I went under the bleachers and stuck the camera out of the opening in the bleachers to film. People thought I was crazy, however, I was able to film and stay dry at the same time. My creativity turned into usefullness, and I will now remember what I learned from this course so I can improvise and innovate in the future.

Creativity a Revolutionary Trait?

From what I have learned about creativity, It seems that the creativity we talked about in class as "big-C" can be attributed to many of the revolutionary movements that have shaped our nations, as well as others. The Boston Tea party, for example, was an historic event where the colonsist decided to break away from British law on the Tea Tax and boycott the industry. There group collaboration contributed to them all getting together on that historic night and dumping thousands of tea barrles into the Atlantic Ocean in protest. Furthermore, the group creativity that took place during the American Civil Rights Movement took form as the "Million Man March". Collaboration and the desire to break away from tradition are characterists of both these events, and I believe that India's "Salt March" is also an example of this. Thus, Creativity over time and within groups, in my opinion, has changed nations and been a prominant trait of revolutionary movements.

The Onion

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/media_having_trouble_finding_right?utm_source=a-section



The link that I attached is a story titled, "Media having trouble finding right angle on Obama double-homicide". To some, this mock-story may be offensive, however, the Onion removes itself from all conventional boundaries and gives a new meaning to free speech. The domain that is changed is the domain of News reporting, or Journalism. The stories that are produced contain pertinant information and show that the reporters do in fact have a high degree of knowledge on the subject that they are humorizing. I believe that this fake news source will give us all a change to lighten on on serious matters and enjoy a good transformation of the regular, dismal news reports.

Positive Psychology

Recently, I attended a lecture here at Millsaps about the emergence of Positive Psychology. Positive Psychology is new and exciting to many because it offers a new outlook on the science of well-being and happiness, things that are in dire need during these turbulant economic times. The study of Positive Psychology is new and ongoing, and it marks a change in the existing domain of Psychology. The fundamental idea is that psychology lost it's way during the 20th century, and focused its attention on what wrong with someone rather than what's good. This turned the domain of psychology into a "disease-based model", and the reasons for this change are the following: 1. 20th Century philosophy/existentialism; 2. Freud; 3. US Government funding of the profession to treat soldiers returning from WWII; 4. Genocidal horrors of fascism and communism. Thus, the domain is changing to get back at whats "positive" or good about a person rather than the opposite approach. The so-called founder of the Positive Psychology movement, Marty Seligman, said this about the new and innovative field; "Psychology is not just the study of weakness and damage, it is also the study of strenth and virtue. Treatment is not just fixing what is broken; it is nururing what is best within ourselves." Therefore, I believe that creativity is being put into use with his new and exciting field, and I am curious to find out how the domain of psychology will change over time.

Facebook

With the invention of the internet comes a wide open domain of communication networking and creative possibilities. While I believe that twitter.com, YouTube, Ebay, and craigslist.com are creative, I think that the website that has had to most influence on my life is the notorious college phenomenon of Facebook. The social networking site was created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2001 It was created to connect college students from the different Ivy League schools, and eventually spread to thousands of networks: campuses, high schools, regions, etc. Facebook is easy to use, and all you need is a picture and valid email address to join. The site gives users the opportunity to develop their own creativity with the web space that the site gives them. If one scrolls through the profiles of his/her friends, then one will surely find creative "interests, favorite quotations, even live status updates". The site also gives one the change to find someone who they have just met, and to communicate with them even if they do not have their cell phone number (by writing on their facebook wall). The site has surely allowed users to become more creative with what they put on their own profile, and the invention itself falls into the category to creativity in the domain of the internet.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...

A while back, I recieved a birthday gift from my brother. It was the bestselling book, "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...". The book offers a new and unique way to understand philosophy, and the way is though jokes. Yes, the book offers a long list of jokes that help the reader understand certain philosophical theories and ideas. Here is an example of a joke from the book that illustrates the utilitarian line of reasoning:
Mrs. O'Callahan instructed the artist painting her portrait to add to it a gold bracelet on each of her wrists, a strand of pearls around her neck, ruby earrings, and a diamond tiara.
The artist pointed out that would be tantamount to lying.
Said Mrs. O'Callahan, "Look, my husband's running around with a young blonde. After I die, I want her to go crazy looking for the jewelry" (81).

According to the book this joke is told by a utilitarian protagonist, which reasons that the "moral rightness of an act is determined soley by its consequences". The consequence in this joke is the mistress wasting time searching for jewlery that doesnt exist. Overall, the book offers a new and novel way to look at the domain of philosophy, and the field of editors and publishers have agreed this book to be novel and therefore is has been a best selling creative work. If other domains would use jokes to relay knowlege to readers than more people might be able to understand seemingly difficult subjects more easily.

Sports and Creativity

Sports has an enormous impact on global society and brings about so much enthusiasm and passion for both athletes and fans. Sports teams allow people from a certain region to group together to support their team, and allows a city, state, or country to feel a sense of pride in the accomplishments of their home-town athletes. This begs the question; "Does creativity exist in Sports"?

Since different sports and athletic competitions have certain rules and regulations that must be followed, it can be considered a domain. Sports is a domain because it provides jobs, involves knowledge of the game, and is constantly being evaluated and changed. The field for professional sports is the scouts, coaches, and sports writers, for they examine the athletic talent and accomplishments and filter out the less talented. Since athletics involves primarily physical activity, the "flow" state where an athlete reaches his/her peak can easily be predicted by the age when the body is in the best physical shape. Like other creative endeavours, success in sports requires knowledge of the domain (the particular sport), motivation, hard work and practice, group collaboration, and finally improvisation. Therefore, I believe that Dr. C would agree with me on the argument that sports can be a domain for creative achievement.

A Floating CIty

I came across an interesting creative experiment while surfing the web the other day. On CNN.com, there was a story about the construction of a "floating city" that would be constructed off the San Franscisco Bay. The "big-C" innovation is the creation of members of the Seasteading Institute, and the establishment of such a place would allow a place where new forms of government can be tested on a trial and error basis. Similar to an island utopia, the city would be isolated in terms of law and governement but also monitored by the engineers whom are responsible for the city. Some of the new political ideas the group is tossing around include legalizing marijuana and making intellectual property communal -- so that everyone would take ownership in art produced on the city at sea.

This innovation will surely test the strength of community responsibily and trust, and will also give us a look to what a society in this day in age values the most, and what a civilization needs to survive. This project makes me think of the artificial dome of a city in the movie "The Truman Show", both can be studied in order to get a better understanding of government and also to the domain of social migration and behavior. Time will tell us whether this "floating city" will be the next great creation, or whether it will just be an idea that doesnt get put into action.

ADHD and Creativity

Earler in the discussion board postings, I mentioned that society tended to attribute creative qualities to the mentally ill because they wanted to shed some light on their unfortunate condition, and explain that there may be some good to come out of their madness.

I believe that people with less severe mental disorders have a greater capacity to imagine far-reaching creative possibliliites than people who strictly rationalize all the time. Take ADHD for example. There is faction of people whom wish to see the end of prescription drugs that treat ADHD because they believe that they interfere with the god-given greative genious that comes with the disorder. This is an interesting notion, but we must be careful not to generalize. I have ADHD, and I take Adderall to treat it. Some days I forget to take my adderall, and my friends can tell the difference. Does this mean that I am more creative when I do not take the drug? I certainly do not think so, but it is something interesting to study further, possibly for my inquiry project.

Creativity in my job, Kayne West's creativity

For the last two weeks at work, my internship in the Athletics Office has consisted of me gathering data for a new Millsaps Athletics Web Site. The website is new and more creative than the only website because the browser can access live game feeds from the new website. While this has been a minor "little-c" creative experiance, it still has excited me because we plan to make additions to the web site later on in the semester to make it even better/more original.

Today in class we talked about Csikszentmihalyi's "sociocultural model" of creativity, and were asked to bring in a Person-Field-Domain model. Mine was Kayne West, drawing on the awe I had experianced while watching him perform in Atlanta just months past. I identified the Field as the talent agents, managers, record company producers, Hip-Hop Magazines (Rolling Stone and Vibe) and the overall listening public. These serve as the "gatekeepers" to the Hip-Hop Domain. The "gatekeepers", as we discussed in class, are seemingly becoming extinct in the music industry because of MySpace.com, Facebook, and YouTube. The ways that one can optain music is endless, and just about anyone can get people to listen to their music though the internet.

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