Creativity and depression
So near the bottom of this article: www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html you find this line:
It’s this inability to conceive of alternative approaches that leads to despair.
Interesting idea, really... but it's broken in a way. The article describes the creative process in terms of neuroactivity as a combination of divergent and convergent thinking. But it ignores the situation where a person who is used to relying on the ability to find novel solutions, to solve problems and think around obstacles is placed in a situation with no solution. Generate as many ideas as you can, none of them will fit the bill. What then?
Such a person is well and truly fucked. To develop that kind of mental agility implies work, that it becomes something of an object of pride. Your favorite tool, the one that helped you so long... the one thing they are good at and they fail again and again. That heaps disappointment and self loathing on top of despair. Things could be worse too... make every solution dependent on some uncontrollable external event and you can add frustration into this and construct a feedback circuit where the poor sod thrashes themself to death. Funfun.
Desperation and insanity make people do bad things. Anything that reduces these scourges can only be a win.
It’s this inability to conceive of alternative approaches that leads to despair.
Interesting idea, really... but it's broken in a way. The article describes the creative process in terms of neuroactivity as a combination of divergent and convergent thinking. But it ignores the situation where a person who is used to relying on the ability to find novel solutions, to solve problems and think around obstacles is placed in a situation with no solution. Generate as many ideas as you can, none of them will fit the bill. What then?
Such a person is well and truly fucked. To develop that kind of mental agility implies work, that it becomes something of an object of pride. Your favorite tool, the one that helped you so long... the one thing they are good at and they fail again and again. That heaps disappointment and self loathing on top of despair. Things could be worse too... make every solution dependent on some uncontrollable external event and you can add frustration into this and construct a feedback circuit where the poor sod thrashes themself to death. Funfun.
Desperation and insanity make people do bad things. Anything that reduces these scourges can only be a win.