on the stifling of creativity

An experiment was conducted by Desmond Morris in 1962 comparing the artistic creativity of young children and chimpanzees.  Remarkably, both chimp and human child became so engrossed in their painting that they showed very little interest in food, sex or other activities that would be expected to divert their interest.  The major revelation of this study was that creativity was, perhaps, a natural potential; yet, for many of us, the urge to create diminishes significantly as we grow older, revealing itself only in the sciences, music, art... and on a more modern note, advertising [trash].

A follow-up study to Morris' added a reward system to the chimps' sessions of abstract expressionism.  The results was that with each reward, the creativity and depth of the painints degenerated until producing only the minimal product necessary to obtain reward from the experimenter (The Biology of Art, Methuen London, 1962).

David Bohm has described this phenomenon as follows:

"In order to do something for a reward, the whole order of the activity, and the energy required for it, are determined by arbitrary requirements that are extraneous to the creative activity itself.  This activity then turns into soemthing mechanical and repititious, or else it mechanically seeks change for its own sake.  The state of intense passion and vibrant tension that goes with creative perception... then dies away.  The whole thing becomes boring and uninteresting so that the kind of energy needed for creative perception and action is lacking.  As a result, even greater rewards or punishments are needed to keep the activity going" (Science, order and creativity; 2000).

I've written about ADHD before, but was inspired to revisit the topic by a seminar forwarded to me:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

So my question is this: to what extent is the reward system of education -- any kind of education -- destructive to the development of the self?  Is not the self-consciousness, dissatisfaction and boredom resulting from intervention by directed creativity dangerous to development? Some of what were considered the greatest creative minds of history thwarted standardized education.  From the science realm alone (with which I am most familiar), Copernicus meandered through universities for seven years without bothering to fulfill a degree.  Da Vinci was educated by the royal Medici family, but education in the Italian Renaissance was its own matter entirely.  Tesla boycotted academia at the age of ten.  Thomas Edison never went. 

On the other hand, in more recent history it has become nearly impossible to achieve recognizable creativity without eons of academic vigor.  How is that demand defining the way we structure the reward system of education?  We pump in the sedatives to get this "most troubled" generation through the hoops.  In so doing, we are pummeling creativity from both ends: reward and sedation.  What will become of our next generation of scientists and artists?

meat machines

"we are automata entirely controlled by the forces of the medium, being tossed about like corks on the surface of the water, but mistaking the resultant of the impulses from the outside for free will" - Nikola Tesla

i'm about to disagree with my hero - my high school english teacher would shit himself in exaltation right now.

i agree that we are - because we are meat machines built of subatomic wave-particles - automata in the mechanical sense, our medium being the zero point field, i will also agree that we are tossed around on it like corks. however. i will firmly stand that this does not eradicate free will.

so here's why this works. and it only works under the pretenses of a monist world - one in which there is only one substance that makes up reality, which is to say, mind substance and matter substance are really both one energy substance [and yes, in terms of being corks, monism requires Bohm's gnosis: in order to bobble on the surface of the implicate zero point field, our meat machines need be explicate... elsewise, gamush] . this eliminates the fragmented and confused amalgam of the Western worldview. which is fine with me, because on the quantum level the monist view is the only one that really makes sense anyway. matter is wavelike; it is waves of possibility which can be in two or more places at once as it emerges from the superposition of quantum possibilities.

quantum objects, then, exist as the superposition of these possibilities until our observation collapses them into an actuality, or a single localized event. this is to say that observation alone transforms existent possibility into an actual event - causation. this is how the mind exercises free will.

Newtonianly speaking (muddled laugh...), the theory of causation is an upward theory: causal interaction moves from the micro-level quantum particles up to the macro-level brain and consciousness. this ordains causal power to none other than interaction between quantum waves. the problem here [keeping in mind the monist idea that matter and consciousness are both comprised of wavelike possibilities] is that if there were only upward causation in the world, our persons, as nothing more than material possibility, would not feasibly be able to cause the collapse of other waves of possibility into actuality.

ergo, downward causation gives consciousness the power to choose between material waves of possibility provided by quantum objects.

there is, of course, a paradox here. downward causation is discontinuous... mostly in the sense that it is circular: the observer is essential for the collapse of possibility into actuality, however, the observer in itself is merely a possibility before the collapse has taken place. so... there's something that needs to be algorithmically defined in the distinction of a monist world...

nonetheless, monism is how i've rationalized free will. sorry Tesla.

we are all of he same electromagnetic field energy (which arises from zero point). it is the fuel on which everything physical - animate and inanimate - runs. in the body, the field moves through subatomic processes, molecular reactivity, tissue function and organ cooperation. as it moves... as it interacts with the meat machine, two things occur (obviously more than two things occur, but for the sake of coherency...). first, the matter itself is altered with each interaction - this is upward causation. as in the brain, when you learn something new the biochemical feedback cascade mechanisms in the synapses at work are changed such that the next time the learned issue is encountered, the brain responds with increased sensitivity, or biochemical familiarity. second, as the field moves through the meat machine, the wavelengths produced in the zero point field interact with each other to produce interference patterns which (along with Gibbs free energy which i haven't fully reasoned yet but have insisted is involved) produce consciousness. mind is, then, a byproduct.

this is why free will still works. if mind is an emergent property, then we can all be explicately run by the same electromagnetic field, but as it interacts differently over space/time with our differently sensitive meat machines, different minds are produced. and because mind then has some control over the guiding of subsequent energy through the machine - downward causation - there develops a level of free control over the ultimate behavior.

i'm still working this out... it's entirely fractured thought at this point.

Tesla

from "Man's Greatest Achievement" - would could I have but known this man...

There manifests itself in the fully developed being - Man - a desire mysterious, inscrutable and irresistible: to imitate nature, to create, to work himself the wonders he perceives. Inspired to this task he searches, discovers and invents, designs and constructs, and covers with monuments of beauty, grandeur and awe, the star of his birth. He descends into the bowels of he globe to bring forth its hidden treasures and to unlock its immense imprisoned energies for his use. He invades the dark depths of the ocean and the azure regions of the sky. He peers into the innermost nooks and recesses of molecular structure and lays bare to his gaze worlds infinitely remote. He subdues and puts to his serves the fierce, devastating spark of Prometheus, the titanic forces of the waterfall, the wind and the tide. He tames the thundering bolt of Jove and annihilates time and space. He makes the great Sun itself his obedient toiling slave. Such is his power and might that the heavens reverberate and the whole earth trembles by the mere sound of his voice.

What has the future in store for this strange being, born of a breath, of perishable tissue, yet immortal, with his powers fearful and divine? What magic will be wrought by him in the end? What is to be his greatest deed, his crowning achievement?

Long ago he recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or a tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasa or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena. The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion creases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.

Can Man control this grandest, most awe-inspiring of all processes in nature? Can he harness her inexhaustible energies to perform all their functions at his bidding, more still cause them to operate simply by the force of his will?

If he could do this, he would have powers almost unlimited and supernatural. At his command, with but a slight effort on his part, old worlds would disappear and new ones of his planning would spring into being. he could fix, solidify and preserve the ethereal shapes of his imagining, the fleeting visions of his dreams. He could express all the creations of his mind on any scale, in forms concrete and imperishable. he could alter the size of this planet, control its seasons, guide it along any path he might choose through the depths of the Universe he could cause planets to collide and produce his suns and stars, his heat and light. He could originate and develop life in all its infinite forms.

To create and to annihilate material substance, cause it to aggregate in forms according to his desire, would be the supreme manifestation of the power of Man's mind, his most complete triumph over the physical world, his crowning achievement, which would place him beside his Creator, make him fulfill his ultimate destiny.