"Does society really value creativity? "
"People say they want more creative people,
more creative ideas and solutions, but do they really?"
http://www.creativitypost.com/business/fear_of_creativity
"Once people establish a hypothesis about the way things are, they develop a deeply-rooted bias against anything that causes them to feel uncertain, anxious or confused about their pre-established hypothesis. This bias against uncertainty is activated when people are asked to evaluate new, novel ideas and interferes with the participants’ ability to recognize a creative idea. The insidious nature of this bias is that there is strong societal pressure to endorse creativity and its products and a strong social desirability bias against expressing any view of creativity as negative. The resulting state is similar to that identified in research on racial bias; a conflict between an explicit preference towards creativity and unacknowledged negative associations with creativity.
So we say we strongly support creativity while routinely rejecting creative ideas and never admitting it. This is because creative ideas are novel and different which makes us feel uncertain and afraid."
When I was an art student, people
often said that my work was scary.
Self-portrait, hollow, 1980
I could never make any sense out of this.
Were they afraid that one of my sculptures would fall on them, maybe break their bones?
Were they concerned that I might have used toxic materials in the manufacture of my work?
I honestly could not understand how anyone could possibly fear my art.
This puzzled me. Violence, torture, blood, and death have always been
acceptable subjects for books and movies. I simply could not comprehend
why my ideas, even when highly abstracted, were considered frightening
when they were explored through the medium of sculpture.
I was often asked why I didn't make nice, "pretty" Art.
'Why not make Art that looks like "everyone knows" Art is supposed to look?'
Sedona, digitally-painted photograph, 2000
The people who feared my work weren't illiterate bumpkins.
They were intelligent, sophisticated, educated people,
urbane, well-read people, people with college degrees.
I eventually came to realize that what people really feared
weren't the images, but the ideas I attempted to convey.
I came up with my own term for the fear of ideas.
I call it being born with "brakes on the brain".
I was born with no brakes on my brain.
Floating; digital painting of my sculpture "Aphrodite 55"
I was born pretty much without brakes altogether,
which allowed to get myself into a heap of trouble,
which led me to seek help for my self-inflicted pain,
which brings me back around to the subject of AA.
Alcoholics Anonymous is scared shitless of ideas.
New ideas and information are a threat to the AA fellowship.
Members believe that if they embrace or tolerate new ideas
the entire structure will weaken and eventually collapse.
If the thoughts of cult members aren't strictly controlled,
they might begin to question everything the cult has been
telling them they must believe, under the threat of death.
Concensus is of the utmost importance to the group.
Paradoxically, it's fear of new ideas that will ultimately bring about AA's demise.
With each passing year, outdated concepts become more and more apparent,
laughable, and difficult for prospective members and the public to swallow.
blamethenile
Ideas are not scary, they're just ideas.
Take the brakes off your brain.
