Transcendence and creativity

We are #CreativeHumans

This is in continuation of yesterday’s post “Maslow and the biased pyramid” - there is no ambiguity that there is no pyramid. The basis of the pyramid is that people are creative, have a sense of accomplishment only when psychological and basic needs are met. That is obviously far from the truth.

Let me start with a story that might clarify this complex thinking about achieving’s one’s human potential and creativity. Read or watch the short story on the links below:

The fisherman and the businessman (1-minute read) or watch the YouTube video (2 minutes)

So the question is: Who has transcendence and creativity? The fisherman or the businessman?

My take on it as follows: Humans are extraordinarily creative. We need to be seen, heard, and acknowledged for our creativity. Expect a few outliers, we expect this acknowledgment from our social network - depending on the context the network might vary from a few people around us, our family, at work, or in today’s context - a few million Instagram followers.

The only difference is what we are applying our creativity for. When we lack basic needs, we apply our creativity as survival to fight and get these basic needs. When we are unsafe or insecure, we apply our creativity against addressing these. And when we have biological needs, we apply our creativity to these biological needs. Even when basic needs are not met, we continue to go after our other needs. Life does not stop or wait to catch up.

Even going further, hope, fear, and anxiety are all creations of the emergent behavior that are meant for humans to survive and thrive. Even in the worse of the situation, the body puts the humans into anxiety and depression to protect them from the real world so that they can survive in a situation that they are not able to process and/or handle at that point in time. Even in the depths of despair, anxiety is paired with hope so one does exist around in some form so that hope can take over the creative process of survival at some point in the future. How’s that for creativity from an evolutionary viewpoint?

Potential and prestige driving creativity and accomplishment are in the context of what is relevant to one in that situation. Often the science looks at the categorization of these from the #FirstWorldProblem perspective - the ones who have made it and are potentially part of the overall 10% or 5% of the global population. But, the have-not’s are creative too and many-a-times live more fulfilled lives with close to nothing at all.

I would picture these parameters as a network of interrelated things, each varying in size in different contexts. It assumes these are indeed the parameters that drive us, and there might be countless others.

Though we love to put humans in a box or some types of boxes all the time, I believe that there are no “boxes”, just boxed illusionary beliefs that we try to live with and assume to be true. And these models only help perpetuate such beliefs.

Extrapolating George Box - All models are wrong, some might be useful some of the time if they are used with extraordinary caution along with other relevant models while continously validating their collective utility.

I did find that Scott Barry Kaufman has written a book “Transcend” on this subject - this goes on my reading list which has now grown to over 700 pending books (over 300 on my Audible wish list and over 400 on the Scribd Saved list), so I will probably get to that set of perspectives some time, as I continue to model on.