Will the Digital Age Destroy Creativity?

Will the Digital Age Destroy Creativity?

Solitude makes it possible for us to gain access to our most inner reality. Through solitude we find the ability to sort out the structure of our thoughts, to gain access to the meaning of our ideas and attitudes. Solitude provides access to our imagination.

Imagination and reason are the aspects of the embodied mind, which, in levels of sophistication, sets our species off from our nearest non-human species. It is imagination that provides man with the flexibility to adjust to a changing environment but it is imagination that also robs man of contentment.

Our non-human ancestors are guided by instinct alone. Instinct is the impulse that determines the behavior in a pre-programmed response. But our species has added to this survival response system a high level of imagination, which allows us to fit into a changing environment for survival. Reason and imagination determines the destiny of the species. Discontentment, bred by imagination, motivates man to seek a different way; reason facilitates the change by offering the options for change. The discontent of imagination is the catalyst for adaptation.

The product of imagination can become either reality and fantasy. Fantasy can provide an escape from reality or, as is evident in our accomplishments of science and the arts, it provides the ingredients for new ideas, which like the theories of Newton and Einstein establish the paradigms for technology.

Freud wrote, in his paper Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming, “We may lay it down that a happy person never phantasies, only an unsatisfied one. The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of an unsatisfied reality.” Critical Thinking, i.e. evaluative thinking not negative thinking, makes a correction of an unsatisfactory reality possible.

Freud considered fantasy was an escapist practice, a turning away from reality rather than a confrontation with reality in attempted change. He considered fantasy as a derivative of play; the child, in growing older, turned from fantasy focused upon an object to castles in the air. Freud theorized that the pleasure principle was replaced by the reality principle.

Present day psychology considers that fantasy is part of our biological endowment and that the discrepancy between our inner world and our outer world compels man to become inventive thereby leading to an active imagination. Imagination is the attempt to bridge the inner world and the outer world of man. Imagination is the engine of play.

Goya wrote “Phantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels.”

Do you often seek solitude?

In our Digital Age is solitude possible for young people?

Will the Digital Age destroy solitude and thus inhibit imagination and thus creativity?

 

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No, not in the least. It will actually take us to a higher level. It's yet another facet of the adaptability of humankind - we will use it and keep moving forward.

 

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No , because it unto itself has been made from the use of creativity. It grows minute by minute allowing more and more people to use it to become even more creative with their thoughts and artistic ways.

Yes, and I find it whenever I need o. Turning off my PC and just sitting on my back porch without any thing happening but watching nature is very easy for me to become detached from everyday stuff.

If they want to find solitude they can very easily. Just by turning all electronic equipment is the easisest way to start the process. That of course is if they really want to get away from what they enjoy doing the most.

Why would you even think that?:shrug:

Look at all the things that the digital age has done to increase creativity. It, itself was a product of creativity wasn't it?

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In the bizarre book by Adoux Huxley, Brave New World, most all the "civilized" people were all the time, stoned on some supposedly "safe" drug, Soma. Today, we have electronic mainstream misleadia Soma. The electronic buzz in people's ears. Everywhere you look, iPods, cellphones, and other assorted gadgets.

I have to wonder, when do people these days, hear themselves think, or have enough quiet for God to speak to them?

All people would have to do, is take the headphones or Bluetooth out of their heads for a while, and discover a whole another world that they have been missing. Or would the world of inner peace and creative thought, be the world they were trying to flee from to begin with?

 

The hand held electronic gadgets and the Internet have created the means for constant interaction between one another thereby diminishing any time for adult contact or interaction with the world via newspapers and books.

“Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, compiled his frustration at young Netizens in his recent book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.”

“Bauerlein, 49, says younger generations don’t spend enough time learning about the world at large, writing: “They are latter-day Rip Van Winkles, sleeping through the movements of culture and events of history, preferring the company of peers to great books and powerful ideas and momentous happenings.”

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/257487

 

Certainly there are those who would view it in that negative sense - just as there always has been with practically every major innovation of every kind.

 

1. So contact by phone, text, email etc, is not adult contact!!
And contact with people, remotely, is inferior to reading newspapers and books!!!!

You never fail to amaze me Coberst with your ability to completely miss the point, while simultaneously ranting on about the importance of critical thinking. Here's the headline news: you do not and cannot think critically. You are locked in a self indulgent cycle that involves repetition of ideas you don't understand and routinely misapply.

Wake up! Smell the cabbages.

 

No it wont. It will increase creativity.

 

It is tough to say or rate at the present time. The biggest harm can be from illegal downloading, due to not being compensated. I said...can be.

 

More information = more ideas = more creativity!

Those that are unable to adapt to these changes will not see it.

 

And those that don't see it will always have other ways to create whatever they want. But the downfall is that the more we create, the more we will destroy!

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I make nice pictures on my computer that I could not without.

 

And I make nice sand drawings on the beach which I couldn't with a computer.

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Careful of falling into the trap of modern social degradation. People always have and always will do good and bad things... but on the whole.. society has and is progressing.

 

I'd say the benefits of the "digital age" are obvious. We're enjoying some of them right now. But nothing is all good. With instant worldwide communication there is some risk of the development of a "monoculture", with everyone thinkinga about things in the same way. The French are very touchy about this and view it as Americanization. Even the Canadians have Canadian content laws.

 

Progress from what point of view ? Society has become a monster.

 

The diversity of views I see in the internet forums, does suggest that even a globally-connected increasing "monoculture," may yet be diverse enough to properly accomodate everybody?

But some of the evil political ruling elite, may see such communication as a "threat" to their power base, as they see common people showing themselves to be smarter than the political elite, and the stupidity of those liberals who would make them to be at the top by stepping on everybody else, would more quickly come to light.