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.