September 11, 2006
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Why Do Humans Create?
Why do Humans Create? I’ll talk about creating Visual Art in this post. The visual arts are a universal, well understood example of the nature of human creativity.
Humans are not the only tool-using animal but we are far and away the most proficient at tool making.
For perhaps a million years, the main tool in the human kit was the fist-axe - at least that’s about the only obvious tool that’s survived. These flat oval chunks of (mostly) flint had a sort of point at one end (for easy grasping) and a flaked-off sharp edge on the big end and seemed to do the job as far as dismembering dead prey and splitting their bones for marrow. Anthropologists have demonstrated how useful and efficient the fist axe was, dismembering and cutting up quite large animals.
Several thousand years ago other tools and objects began to be developed and these often seem to have primitive decorations - at first just scratches and inscribed dots in patterns but eventually evolving into rather clever carvings and molds of human and animal figures. eventually, twenty or so millennia ago these developed into the spectacular cave paintings and carvings associated with early Homo Sapiens.
This early art had two purposes, if the analogs of modern primitive tribal people is correct.
The first is Decoration. Humans seem to like to make their artifacts and living spaces “prettyâ€. This seems to satisfy some kind of psychological need in humans, we probably can not help decorating any more that a Bower bird can.
The second is Inspirational and Sacred. Humans derive much psychological satisfaction from creating something which inspires them to awe perhaps worship or at least acts as a reminder of the sacred.
Our Art has from time to time been fairly rigidly representational- at least as representational as we could make it, and at other times (and places) almost completely symbolic or stylized. Currently in our culture we have many different types of representational art ranging from completely realistic and photographic to almost completely symbolic - computer icons are examples of the latter.
Could humans thrive in an environment completely devoid of Art?
Comments (7)
"Could humans thrive in an environment completely devoid of Art?"
I'd have to say no. Survive, probably; Thrive, no. An article I read once comes to mind-- It was about an initiative to paint the halls in an inner city school that had been performing badly. After the halls were painted, students reported better satisfaction with their education, more interest, and standardized test scores went up dramatically. Clearly, something about our aesthetic environment has a huge effect on us. What is that thing? Is it the act of creation or the result of it that has this effect? If our world were always "beautiful," would art be redundant?
I use art as an example of "pure" creativity inasmuch as even a poorly done copy does have some original element. The "Creativity Question" is often cited as an example of the "Free Will vs Determinism" debate. Almost everything man has ever created has elements of some previous thought or development. The question is how much do you create if you simply copy or adapt something already created?
Do people sometimes have children for the same reasons...is that why its called procreation?
"I use art as an example of "pure" creativity inasmuch as even a poorly done copy does have some original element."
Does art have more of the 'original element' than other constructions? How do we base our measure of originality? Even when I have a bowl of cereal in the morning, there is something original about it: No one has ever had that particular bowl of cereal, in that particular way, at that particular time and place, before. For the most part, the act of eating a bowl of cereal would not be considered an innately a 'creative' act (I say for the most part because there is a postmodernist tendency to think of life itself, especially the mundane, as a work of art-- and to go through one's life both as artist, observer, and figure in the tableau simultaneously.) Why is the act of recreating a certain number of actions in a certain sequence more creative when those actions produce the effect of a painting than when they produce the effect of a full stomach?
Pouring cereal in a bowl and adding just the right amount of milk is, i think, stretching the concept of creativity just a bit. On the other hand my wife is a VERY creative cook. She seldom cooks anything without tinkering with it. Several of her recipes have been published but i just went back and checked one, she doesn't cook that particular dish that way any more -her current version is much more elegant
I suppose that proves your point, Blacksox, but I think people are more aware of the "Creating" concept when they consider a construction that was apparently done just for the sake of creating. I too think creation is an inherent human trait and may be that which most distinguishes us from other animals.
Is the only method of creation for artistic purposes?
I used artistic creation as a clearly perceived example of human psychological creation. You could say that each time a couple has a baby, they have engaged in absolute creation; but when we use the term "creation", I think we generally are thinking of some kind of unique idea or development, not a biological creation. I would guess the most ancient and widespread type of "psychological" creation is story telling. Creation is definitely linked to human imagination - probably just "Imagination made public".