As humanity enters the 21st century, many people believe creativity is becoming an issue that needs to be addressed. Richard Florida claims creativity exists in everyone as soon as they are born, but it is suppressed by schools and organizations that are regimented, standardized, and stultifying. In order to have creative breakthroughs occur Florida believes humans need to learn from, compete with, and collaborate with other humans. He points out that cities are the ideal places for creative thought because cities have diverse populations, dense social networks, and public spaces allowing people to meet and catalyze new ideas.
Schools and other organizations like the workplace have standards they want the students and workers to meet, so nobody has the chance to create something out of the standards. For example in school, a math teacher would have students find the distance between two points by using the distance formula, but there may be another inventive way to find distance that is undiscovered because state standards require students to understand the distance formula. Teachers also do not want students venturing off from the objective of class time which stops students from thinking inventively too. In the workplace, workers are overwhelmed with quotas leaving no time to think of a different way to do their work.
Interacting with other people can help accelerate creativity. Historically, innovation, often, took another step when two different societies combined ideas. For instance, the Assyrians would have not created the chariot if they had not interacted with the Sumerians who had came up with the wheel. A modern example could be displayed in a high school science class where one person in a lab group would share with their partner their ideas and beliefs about the lab which would in turn inspire the partner to formulate an unique hypothesis based off his or her partner's thoughts. Clearly, cities would be good facilitators for creativity because it is evident that we create new things quicker by listening to other people's ideas.
-Mark Young
I am not sure i totally agree with you when you say "interacting with other people can help accelerate creativity" because when you bring people together to come up with an idea, the idea must please everyone. If the idea must please everyone than the idea is most likely going to be common and not really thinking differently. It actually depletes creativity and make the idea very common rather than interesting and new. Not everyone would agree on having something different because it would be seen as "strange" or they may not like trying new things which makes it hard for a group to come together and think creatively.
ReplyDeleteI agree that workplaces and school atmospheres are suppressed with "regimented, standardized, and stultifying" tones. Creativity should be incouraged and nourtured at an early age in order to develop and thrive from postive criticism. Working with others and exchanging ideas can be beneficial both ways. It can help with critical thinking and becoming better in voicing perspectives. Schools and workplaces that set the foundation of rigid thinking patterns and problem solving skills, do not help in the end.
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