Creativity

At a class I took recently, the instructors had laid out stacks of pipe cleaners at each table, and told us that if at any point, we were in a position of not knowing what to do with our hands, we could make things out of them, and the best creation would win a t-shirt.

While class was actually in session, I was way too busy taking notes to mess with the pipe cleaners, but during lunch and breaks, I put this little guy together. Everyone commented on how creative I had been. But to me, it was a simple wyvern, cobbled together a piece or two at a time, and nothing (outside of the fact that wyverns are mythological) out of the ordinary. So it certainly didn't feel creative, or even that interesting.

Which leads me to a question - what fuels our understanding of ourselves as creative or not? Do the people who come to mind when we say the word "creative" think of themselves that way? For myself, I don't really know what it would mean for me to be "creative." I don't ever really ever see myself that way. Which is a large reason why I always could never manage to "be creative" on command. But I understand that there are people who are capable of doing just that, and who have an image of themselves as being creative. I'd like to look inside their heads one day, and see how that works.

That Was There...

McDonald's Canada released a video showing how Chicken McNuggets are made. And a spokesperson said that it's also pretty much the way they're made in the United States. Critics are skeptical, and some have gone so far as to allege outright deceit, on the basis that Canada is not the United States, and the rules are different there. But the fact that McDonald's could theoretically make McNuggets under a different process in the United States than they use in Canada is not, in and of itself, proof that there are actually process differences (namely, process differences detrimental to Americans).

There seems to be an assumption that in the United States corporations are so evil, government is so corrupt, regulation is so hobbled and the public so dim that businesses can, and will, virtually pick trash out a landfill, toss it in a blender with some colors and flavorings, profitably sell it as food and then claim that they use "only the highest quality ingredients." McDonald's unsurprisingly, has run afoul of this. Not to say that they've never done anything to give people reason to be suspicious of their processes, but there is a difference between the understanding that if someone had lied to you in the past and/or has a reason to lie to you now that one shouldn't simply take them at face value and understanding that anything less than abject confession to the wrongdoing you suspect is automatically false.

No matter what evidence someone comes up as to how a particular food is produced, McDonald's is going to remain the poster child for "Evil Corporations That Are Pushing Trash And/Or Poisons As Food In The Name Of Unfair Profits." As long as people see corporate boardrooms as the cradles of Hateful Conspiracies Against The Masses, and the government as a bought-and-paid-for enabler of same, the idea that McDonald's food is the product of people being up to no good will remain. Which is something of a shame, because if giving people a look behind the curtain is an exercise in futility, the curtain isn't likely to be raised.

In the Beginning

As someone who's not religious, the only people in my social circles who come close to qualifying as "Creatonists" are some of my very much older relatives. (But even when I was an active churchgoer, Roman Catholicism doesn't teach creationism...) So I've been hearing a lot of crowing recently about how Bill Nye laid a smackdown on Ken Ham in their recent "Science vs. Creationism" debate. And a fair amount of irritation at Mark Joseph Stern's contention, over in Slate, that Mr. Nye lost just by showing up.

I'm don't buy into the idea that a couple of people had floated that there is a constituency of people out there who don't have an opinion either way, or don't know where they stand that, and that Mr. Nye could reach and convince them that they need to be advocating for secular science (I think that was the argument being made). And Mr. Nye is especially unlikely to convince anyone who is an active creationist that what they've been taught is bunk, because it's not really about the science, it's about the greater worldview. The video that Slate linked to is instructive because it points to the thing that has motivated every creationist that I've ever met - the idea that there is no workable moral or ethical framework that doesn't rely on divine will.

The issue isn't whether or not the Earth is actually billions of years old, or if there's a tree that's older than Ken Ham. The issue is that people have been taught that if the Genesis account is not a word-for-word literal history of the events that it purports to chronicle, then there is no God, and if there is no God, then I can walk up and stab them, and if no people choose to punish me for it, then I get away scot-free. THAT'S the issue. No amount of carbon-dating is going to assuage the fear that when they grow old that someone will decide to snuff them to save a buck or two and there will be no objective force in the universe that will guarantee punishment for the killer and solace in the afterlife for them.

Mr. Nye wasted his time because it's not about the evidence. It's about not wanting to live in a Universe that isn't fundamentally Just and understanding that the proof that the Universe is fundamentally just is found in a literal reading of Christian scriptures. Science can never make that go away, because it can't provide an objective sense of unerring Right and Wrong to replace it. Assuming you cared to excise creationism from the world, it wouldn't be about proving the biblical account incorrect - it would be about proving it unnecessary.

Taboos

An actor dies of an overdose, and a Washington Post style writer admits to anger at the violation of "artistic responsibility."

A mixed-race Asian-American man confesses to feeling undesirable, and some commentators seem to go out of their way to put him down.

And I wondered - when did we decide that letting slip the fact that not everything is perfect become reason to see people as having transgressed against us? Why be angry or bitter at Messrs. Hoffman or Cho? What harm have they done to us? What injury is salved by excoriating them? How does deciding that they are culpable in their imperfections make the world a better place?

Part of me wants to analyze - to create a narrative that would explain why people see being unlike themselves as somehow sinful. There is an answer. There is always an answer. And I want to find it. But what good would it serve? If I determine that the anger and bitterness are the result of people being damaged and unhappy, would that bring Mr. Hoffman back from the dead? Or lead Mr. Cho to self-acceptance?

I understand that to express anger at Hoffman's death from drugs violates my personal taboo against speaking ill of the dead. And that to put down Cho for suffering from a form of self-loathing is to kick a man when he is down. And so I realize that part of me is stirred to the defense. And so - do I simply want to purchase my own self-esteem with the idea that I resisted, this time at least, the world's penchant for meanness? Am I seeking to understand other people's vices to show myself my virtues? If I cannot mount a defense of those who are attacked, must I at least show that I am better than their attackers?

One stop on the road to self-acceptance is learning to accept others - even when they are less accommodating. Sometimes, the faults we see in others are the reflections of the faults we wish to excise in ourselves. To the degree that the analytic impulse is about proving to myself that I am accepting, it does, of course, prove the opposite. And so I must let it go. The paradox is maddening. But in that madness, lies peace of mind.

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