Can creativity be used for any purposes?

[Nicodemus]

Let's try this exercise:


Can you imagine a place totally devoid of imagination and creativity where goodness also exists?

 

[Beorn]

Uh, what exactly are you trying to get across here?

 

[Beorn]

When I think of a lack of creativity and imagination I think of Douglas Adams' Vogon race.

"Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders - signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. On no account should you allow a Vogon to read poetry at you."

Adams may be right in that they aren't evil to the extent that evil is often an active perversion of good which to my mind cannot exist in this type of environment.

 

[EJCC]

Let's try this exercise:


Can you imagine a place totally devoid of imagination and creativity where goodness also exists?

Yes. I know good-hearted people without a creative bone in their body.

Edit: Missed Nico's post, but Forrest Gump is a perfect example.

 

[Beorn]

Sadly some of you may only need to look around you.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about then maybe you should watch this Ted Talk:

I might not be able to convince some of you that Piss Christ isn't art, but if Kunstler can't convince you of the evils of suburban sprawl and shitty modern urban design then you're beyond hope of recognizing the connection between humanity, imagination, and goodness.

 

[Beorn]

Yes. I know good-hearted people without a creative bone in their body.

Edit: Missed Nico's post, but Forrest Gump is a perfect example.

Thank you for clarifying Nico's post.

First, all humans are imaginative creations in and of themselves so pointing to any human as an example sort of misses the question and is why I gave an alien race as an example above. Secondly, while Forest may not be very creative in your mind he still respects and preserves that which is imaginative and good. He treats other humans well and he treats his posessions well including his mother's beautiful southern home. A moral imagination must be able to recognize good when it's present and make every effort to preserve it. Gump had that down.

 

[Nicodemus]

Thank you for clarifying Nico's post.

First, all humans are imaginative creations in and of themselves so pointing to any human as an example sort of misses the question and is why I gave an alien race as an example above. Secondly, while Forest may not be very creative in your mind he still respects and preserves that which is imaginative and good. He treats other humans well and he treats his posessions well including his mother's beautiful southern home. A moral imagination must be able to recognize good when it's present and make every effort to preserve it. Gump had that down.

Then, by your definition, 'a place totally devoid of imagination and creativity' is also devoid of people. Of course, there is neither goodness nor badness without people or other sentient beings.

But we both know that we will not be able to agree because we have very different ideas of morality.

 

[prplchknz]

If you have no idea what I'm talking about then maybe you should watch this Ted Talk:

I might not be able to convince some of you that Piss Christ isn't art, but if Kunstler can't convince you of the evils of suburban sprawl and shitty modern urban design then you're beyond hope of recognizing the connection between humanity, imagination, and goodness.

my hypothesis of anything involving multiple people rarely ends up "good" in the moral sense. often times it ends up harmful to society. goodness should be judged on an indivudual level if you try to find a society 100% good without faults or fuck ups or evil you will fall short every time. And the main problem isn't because people generally want a terrible society but some get clouded by greed, others revenge, some it's just simple bias, and others it's their the inability to see the world from a different perspective. I do believe that utopia doesn't exist someone is not gonna be happy, and it's not yours mine or anyone elses responsibility to make them happy. I don't mean be a dick to them, be nice and respectful. I'm all for improving society but it's arrogant to think it will ever be perfect

but creativity can be used for evil or good. imagination is actually neutral it's how one applies that creativity that determines evil or good.

 

[EJCC]

[MENTION=5789]Beorn[/MENTION] you may need to clarify your definition of "imaginative" and where you're getting it from. For example, I would never have said that recognizing creativity in others was a sign of being creative.

 

[Thalassa]

Yes of course creativity can be evil or amoral. Though destruction is considered the opposite of creation, stagnation is more likely its true opposite. Like the opposite of love is not actually hate but indifference.

 

[Beorn]

Then, by your definition, 'a place totally devoid of imagination and creativity' is also devoid of people.

Watch the Kunstler video and it becomes plainly so. Of course Kunstler, and I, would also say that humans that are subjected to a place devoid of creativity and imagination will suffer a dehumanizing effect.

 

[Bush]

Creativity is, at its core, all about conceiving ideas. The question is about 'using' those ideas--implementing them in some way. Since we're discussing use, morality can be thought of as a lens through which we evaluate some implementation of an idea.

Creativity can be used for malicious purposes. Look at Scaphism. I would've never thought to execute someone by putting a canoe on top of them and feeding them milk and honey until they crap themselves so badly that maggots eat them alive.

But I wouldn't do that anyway. Because it's malicious. Perhaps I wouldn't have thought of it because I don't personally hone my creativity toward torture devices.

Lance Morrow, one of my favorites:
"The story of evil in the world is so often a matter of hardware performing conscience: Can outruns Should."

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Let's try this exercise:


Can you imagine a place totally devoid of imagination and creativity where goodness also exists?

Yes.

I'd also say the worst kinds of evil are creative, in a way. You don't think the 9/11 hijackers were creative?

Creativity is really a morally neutral thing. To deny this, you have to alter the definition of creativity so as to be unrecognizable.

Not to mention all the times when someone might want to creatively rob a bank, or start a family unbeknownst to their current family, or create complex tableaus out of dead bodies (see: True Detective, Dexter), or anything else morally wrong that would take creativity to come up with.

Yes. Pulling these things off all takes creativity.

 

[Beorn]

Creativity is really a morally neutral thing. To deny this, you have to alter the definition of creativity so as to be unrecognizable.

Well, for what it's worth, the wiki definition sides with me.

Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is created

It's easy to scribble some lines on a piece of paper in a totally new way, but it's unlikely to be seen as valuable to anyone so nobody considers that creative. Evil people might come up with a new way to bring about terror and while that may be valuable to them personally it is not something of real value outside of it's utility to them and so it is not creative.

Everybody keeps responding to my exercise in the affirmative, but I've yet to hear a description of how that would work out.

 

[Beorn]

[MENTION=5789]Beorn[/MENTION] you may need to clarify your definition of "imaginative" and where you're getting it from. For example, I would never have said that recognizing creativity in others was a sign of being creative.

This is a good start:

The Russell Kirk Center: The Moral Imagination by Russell Kirk

By this “moral imagination,” Burke signifies that power of ethical perception which strides beyond the barriers of private experience and momentary events “especially,” as the dictionary has it, “the higher form of this power exercised in poetry and art.” The moral imagination aspires to the apprehending of right order in the soul and right order in the commonwealth. This moral imagination was the gift and the obsession of Plato and Vergil and Dante. Drawn from centuries of human consciousness, these concepts of the moral imagination—so powerfully if briefly put by Burke—are expressed afresh from age to age. So it is that the men of humane letters in our century whose work seems most likely to endure have not been neoterists, but rather bearers of an old standard, tossed by our modern winds of doctrine: the names of Eliot, Frost, Faulkner, Waugh, and Yeats may suffice to suggest the variety of this moral imagination in the twentieth century.

Wendell Berry argues in his novel, Hanah Coulter, that imagination is required to grasp reality itself.

Want of imagination makes things unreal enough to be destroyed. By imagination I mean knowledge and love. I mean compassion. People of power kill children, the old send the young to die, because they have no imagination. They have power. Can you have power and imagination at the same time? Can you kill people you don’t know and have compassion for them at the same time

He expanded on this when he was recognized as the 2012 Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The term “imagination” in what I take to be its truest sense refers to a mental faculty that some people have used and thought about with the utmost seriousness. The sense of the verb “to imagine” contains the full richness of the verb “to see.” To imagine is to see most clearly, familiarly, and understandingly with the eyes, but also to see inwardly, with “the mind’s eye.” It is to see, not passively, but with a force of vision and even with visionary force. To take it seriously we must give up at once any notion that imagination is disconnected from reality or truth or knowledge. It has nothing to do either with clever imitation of appearances or with “dreaming up.” It does not depend upon one’s attitude or point of view, but grasps securely the qualities of things seen or envisioned.

I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.

Wendell E. Berry Lecture | National Endowment for the Humanities

 

[Nicodemus]

Well, for what it's worth, the wiki definition sides with me.

Nothing, it's worth nothing.

 

[Beorn]

Nothing, it's worth nothing.

“You can’t go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. To “see through” all things is the same as not to see.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

 

[EJCC]

Well, for what it's worth, the wiki definition sides with me.

It's easy to scribble some lines on a piece of paper in a totally new way, but it's unlikely to be seen as valuable to anyone so nobody considers that creative. Evil people might come up with a new way to bring about terror and while that may be valuable to them personally it is not something of real value outside of it's utility to them and so it is not creative.

I don't think the wiki article sides with you, because the caveat you just made was not made by the Wikipedia article. It only said "of value", and didn't specify who it would be valuable to.

Everybody keeps responding to my exercise in the affirmative, but I've yet to hear a description of how that would work out.

I don't think that can be provided, because of the reasons Nico listed. (See below.) And Vogons behave the way they behave for MANY reasons besides lack of creativity, so IMO too many factors at play in order for them to be convincing examples.

Then, by your definition, 'a place totally devoid of imagination and creativity' is also devoid of people. Of course, there is neither goodness nor badness without people or other sentient beings.

But we both know that we will not be able to agree because we have very different ideas of morality.

 

[Beorn]

I don't think the wiki article sides with you, because the caveat you just made was not made by the Wikipedia article. It only said "of value", and didn't specify who it would be valuable to.

*sigh*
I was being tongue-in-cheek. Why would I care about what wiki says when I'm pretty sure almost every great creative mind from the past couple of millinia up until the last hundred years or so would agree with me?

In actuality the wiki provided a good generic description to show where two worldviews divide on the issue. It's your own worldview that causes you to presume that value exists only through individual determination and preference. You presume "of value" only exists with "to." Likewise it's my own worldview that sees "of value" as meaning that something is connected to the higher realm.

 

[EJCC]

*sigh*
I was being tongue-in-cheek. Why would I care about what wiki says when I'm pretty sure almost every great creative mind from the past couple of millinia up until the last hundred years or so would agree with me?

In actuality the wiki provided a good generic description to show where two worldviews divide on the issue. It's your own worldview that causes you to presume that value exists only through individual determination and preference. You presume "of value" only exists with "to." Likewise it's my own worldview that sees "of value" as meaning that something is connected to the higher realm.

Ok then. Agree to disagree.