Is creativity a “gift” or is it something that is inherent in us all…
Information Creation
Despite what most people might think, evolution is not solely a theory about the emergence of life, but a more “Generalized Meta-Theory” (of which biological evolution is merely a special case). Evolution is spontaneous and complex creativity in action. In the broadest possible terms, “Evolution is Information Creation”.
[Note: Everything in the universe is fundamentally an “information structure”. And a pure information structure is something that is fundamentally incompressible — the concept of which forms the basis of information theory.]
Information is created from information. Evolution is simply “The Constant Integration of Information”. Evolution’s progressive complexity is simply Mother Nature creating evermore complex information by “integrating stuff” as she goes along. This constant integration, this natural creativity, means that “Nature’s complex whole is forever becoming greater than its less complex parts”…
Emergent Mind
It would not be unreasonable to say that “The Brain” is the ultimate example (that we know of) of Nature’s spontaneous creativity. The “Brain” is a “Biological Tool” that has been designed by millions of years of evolution to navigate an external world full of nonlinear feedback and complex incompressible dynamics.
The Brain mirrors Nature in that it is also a complex adaptive system, and it is constantly adapting its own internal “neural” network to the available data and feedback from the external world. This neural network is, in effect, an “abstract model” – effectively, “a map of what is connected to what”…
So the “Brain” is basically a complex connectivity map, and the “Emergent Mind” simply a reflection of how the brain is wired up.
Consciousness and Intuition
“Consciousness” bubbles up from this emergent mind. And at its most fundamental, “Emergent Consciousness” is nothing more than the “surface representation” of a subconscious “library of Instincts” and “laboratory of Intuitions”.
Essentially we can think of instincts as simply hard-corded intuitions, but intuitions themselves are better thought of as soft-coded works in process.
Intuition is the result of a conscious process of compression and subconscious process of integration; a conscious process of figuring out (from feedback) what data is redundant, and a subconscious process of figuring out (from trial and error) how what remains fit together.
Below is a graphical representation[Note: I address this issue in more detail in my post “What Drives Consciousness and Deep Intuition?”]
Imagination
Intuition is a subconscious process of figuring out what is connected to what. But the side-effect of trying to figure out how things actually fit together, are thoughts and ideas about “how things could fit together”.
So the mental process of subconscious integration not only drives intuition, it also drives “Imagination”; and so deep intuition offers not only the potential to see complex patterns of information, but also the potential to “Imagine The Unseen”…
Thinking + Feeling
In the simplest of terms, anything that a conscious entity can discern from the external world has the potential to become data for its our own internal model.
It is in the compression and integration of information that “thoughts” begin to emerge — “thinking” is simply the process of focusing on these thoughts. When we focus on our own internal thoughts they effectively become our own “internal data”. But the question arises, “how does one go about evaluating this internal data without any external feedback?”.
Over millions of years, evolution has developed an internal feedback mechanism to evaluate random associations in the brain’s neural network. “Feelings” are the feedback mechanism for the brain’s “random thoughts”. Feelings are like “emotional intuition”. Feelings are the means of determining the “value” of random thoughts.
Deep Creativity
We know that with enough study and practice we can make ourselves into an “expert” in virtually any academic or business domain — but being an expert however is not what it means to be human.
To be human is to be creative. Our modern society places great store in the value of human reasoning, and has reserved merely a degree of curiosity in the value of human intuition. Artists however have long employed emotional intuition in “the creative process”. Emotional intuition is effectively the driver of all human creativity. Emotional intuition acts as the internal feedback mechanism for identifying the value of “creative integration”, the value of imagination — and true artists have always used this “emotional intelligence” in their creative process.
And so the natural and spontaneous process of subconscious neural integration not only offers the potential for deep cognitive understanding of complexity, but also the potential for “Deep Creativity in Imagining the Complex Unseen”…
CONCLUSION
So what drives deep creativity?
“What drives Deep Creativity is the Subconscious Integration of a Chaotic Diversity of Ideas”.
And so it is likely that natural creativity is indeed inherent in us all. By simply allowing our conscious linear minds to explore a wide diversity of thoughts and ideas,
Our Subconscious Nonlinear Minds will gift us
“Deep Creativity for Free!”…