Studies of creativity often focus primarily on writers, artists, composers, and scientists. Political leaders are not usually considered to be very creative. Indeed, it is sometimes said that it is a good thing that leaders in general are not very creative, since an excess of creativity, especially in leaders who have to enforce rules, would only lead to trouble. Yet surely some degree of creativity is desirable in all walks of life.
Prompt: Do all people need to be creative?
The premise of creativity is not one to be instilled or desired in all walks of life. The adverse effects of a "creative person" where creativity is not specifically warranted far outweighs whatever potential benefits it may harbor. This theory reigns in numerous works of literature as well as moments in history and society.
In the novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain, it is perhaps creativity which fumbles the protagonist's, Huck, entire plan to free the escaped slave Jim. Huck's companion Tom Sawyer devises a complex plot derived from Tom's own fickle imagination. The result is a near disaster, for Tom is shot in the leg, Huck is led astray by the overly complicated plot, and the slave Jim himself suffers from this folly. Surely, this seemingly "creative" plan by Tom was an unwise and untimely choice albeit dastardly entertaining. This goes to show how creativity can capture and freeze a person's thoughts in pursuit of an unlikely, or even at times fabricated result.
Creativity can also find itself a twisted component of an evil mind. The extreme killing and torture rituals presented in the novel "1984" by George Orwell exhibits how creative insight can hand the tools to the wrong person. In the book, O'Connor tortures Winston Smith through breakdowns of his mind, body, and soul until Winston is brainwashed. O'Connor deceives Winston, shaves his body, and gnaws away at his soul in order to force Winston to obey the oppressive government. Suffice to say, the creativity employed in O'Connor's tactics are instances of cruelty and depravation meeting creativity and free power.
Undesirable creativity can also cross into the real world. The "creative" experiments on humans by Nazi scientists in Jewish concentration camps involved rape, starvation, and torture among other atrocities. Nazi scientists often experimented on Jewish inmates with practices that involved dying eyes blue, gas chambers, mutations, and altering people's anatomies. These methods which involved creative use of scientific knowledge and tools has left a horrific imprint in the history of the world and is regarded as an instance of extreme cruelty hiding its face in the covers of scientific reasons. How truly terrible the corner of the mind which creativity inhabits can be was truly exemplified in those experiments, coupled with the dark reality of them.
The absent of creativity is not always a bad thing. Indeed, the imagination can cause trouble when not employed in the arts and are generally discouraged concerning mundane tasks that do not require the use of imagination or creativity. As books and history has shown us, the dark possibility of an evil form of creativity can lead to horrific or unfortunate turnouts.
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