by Vickie Hu Poirier
Lately, I’ve been exploring the insights of two great thinkers, David Bohm and Arnold Toynbee. These two offer an argument that in order for civilization t advance there is a need for creativity among individuals and groups in society. Toynbee in Study of History demonstrates through a series of examples how throughout history it has been “creative minorities” who have been the source of life to a civilization. When faced with challenges the creative minority has looked at the problem in a new unique way that leads to a new stage of growth in the civilization and helps it to overcome the challenge and come to the next one. In his conception there is a never-ending series of challenges and creative responses which in turn lead to further challenges needing to be addressed. By creatively addressing the challenge they win the respect, admiration, and desire to be imitated by the vast majority of the masses composing their society. This process of challenge and creative response is a hallmark of a living growing civilization. Using the examples of the Greeks and Romans (what he terms “Hellenic Civilization”) he shows how Athens provided the critical creative response to an over population problem in the Hellenic world by creating institutions both economic and political where new classes of society could have a voice and feel a sense of participation in society. The Athenian response served to draw individuals and societies to it and made others wish to be more like Athens. Unfortunately, what Toynbee observes in his Study of History is that more often than not, once a creative response has been taken that same minority easily becomes complacent and rests on their laurels and usually will not be the same source of creativity for the coming challenge. Rather that creative minority can end up become a dominant minority who later begins to impose its will upon the masses through force as the Romans did and lead to a general decline in civilization which can end in its destruction.
To go into a full analysis of Toynbee’s Study of History is much too large a challenge to undertake in a small blog post, but I encourage anyone interested in a fresh perspective on History and the present condition of Western Civilization to take a look at the abridged version of his twelve volume study. What I’d like to point out here, is the way in which creativity is a moving thing. There is not a point in time where we can say “Ah! now I’m creative!” rather creativity is a constant organic process. It is living, breathing, moving. A society ceases to be creative when it rests upon its laurels, and a similar “death” can be seen in the work of countless artists, scientists, and great thinkers where a beautiful insight leads to amazing discoveries, but that individual holds so tightly to that precious insight that they are unable to continue to move and derive fresh insight later.
David Bohm explores this theme in a series of essays collected together in a book entitled On Creativity. A physicists by profession, Bohm looks at the challenge of creativity first from a scientific perspective and later extends it to the arts, and religion. His main insight is that the challenge of creativity lies in the mind and thought. He sees that most of us make the dubious assumption that our thoughts are reflective of reality as it is, when in fact, they are too limited to actually encompass reality in its totality. What we need to do then is to recognize this and open ourselves up to fresh insight not derived by a mechanical formula for obtaining knowledge or new thoughts, but upon an art of perceiving and creating conditions through which fresh ideas flash before us. Much of our education in the west is based upon this mechanical acquisition of knowledge; the information dump, the cramming for tests, and the memorization of rules and laws which tend to make us believe its all been figured out once and for all. What we need to come to understand, Bohm suggests, is that all our conceptions of reality which have been highly developed through modern science and art are forms of insight, or in other words a way of “seeing” reality, but not reality “as it is”. These insights at once beautiful, harmonious, and elegant provide us with a way of seeing our reality that allows us a certain degree of success in moving and working in it and overcoming the challenges that it presents us. Yet, at a certain point every theory or insight will come to a point where it will no longer apply and will result in confusing, contradictory and disharmonious experience. Rather than fear such a moment, in which our thoughts no longer seem to be capable of handling our perception of reality, these moments of confusion are exactly the needed impetus to lead us to new original and creative thought; if we resist the tendency to try to push such experiences back into the mechanical reflexive thought based upon previous insights. What this means, is that we have to open to a reality in flux; something that was integral to the belief system of primitive people almost universally around the globe.
Speaking with some friends the other night, we realized it was this same fallacy of perception that leads to so many difficulties in our relationships with friends, family, and society. Too often we want our relationships to remain the same, forever, to give us something that we can hold on to and feel safe, knowing that no matter what, we can rely on that being there. Yet, when we begin to think about it, this is a total fantasy. Our parents, for instance, will not always be there for us and as they grow old most children begin to take care of them as they were once taken care of. If a parent and a child are unable to respond adequately to the changing nature of their relationships this leads to much unneeded hurt, misunderstanding, and a lack of real intimate connection and sharing.
The same can happen and is happening at a macro scale where society continues to respond in the same way to new challenges as it once responded to previous ones even when in fact the situation has changed so much as to make such a response like pouring oil on a fire rather than the water it is supposed to be.
Thus, what we need is an ability to allow our thought to be nimble, changing, evolving, and open to new and fresh insights. One of my friends shared something interesting in regards to our changing world. When we recognize that the one thing we can rely on is that the world is going to change we can look at it in one of two ways. We can be depressed and say well what’s the point its only going to change and nothing I do is really lasting. Or we can wake up in the morning and ask ourselves what is in store today? what new experience will I have? how will my relationships change? and what contribution will I make today to my own and societies continued advancement?
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