Last updated: 4/14/02
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Agenda for Creativity Class Meeting on April 11
Updated on 4/14 to show
what actually happened during the class

Black shows material on original agenda and covered during class
Red shows material listed but not covered during class - watch for next agenda
Blue shows additional material not on agenda but covered during class

1. Announcements:
   1. Clock over the door is on time - it's daylight savings time.
   2. Note the new computers and furniture.
   3. Do an online signin tonight
   4. Weekly course reports: one per week, rain or shine (but see assignments, below). If you make a comment that might possibly get a reply, I would appreciate your including your email address. Thanks.
      1. What happened with that one telephone weekly report?
2. Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET)
3. What do we know about creativity?
   1. What's in the textbooks?
      1. "Something new that meets a need or solves a problem." Creativity does not have a nice, polished definition. We are still understanding what creativity is. Our knowledge about creativity is growing. (Does this mean that studying creativity is not worthwhile?)
      2. What creativity is not
         1. Not a stand-in for "good" or "worthy" - beware of creativity "mission creep"
         2. Also does not mean great, intelligent or genius
         3. Activities that are / are not classified as creative
            1. Not creative: athletes, cooking except in a restaurant, interpreters such as actors, performing musicians, movie producers
            2. Creative: authors, screenwriters, composers, song-writers, restaurant chefs
            3. Borderline: jazz improvisation
      3. Creativity has both a range (less creative to more creative) and a yes/no or Big C/little c quality
   2. Objective characteristics of creative people. See the web page on this topic. Example is "fluency," ability to come up with many possibilities on open-ended questions. These properties can be measured and seem to be real. Creative people do have these properties. Training can raise ratings for these properties but the increased scores do not result in increased creativity. Therefore, while these properties may be important for creativity, something else must be even more important. (This something else is motivation, based on love for the domain, or at least that seems to be the case.)
   3. Personal characteristics of creative people
      1. Tolerance for ambiguity - delaying decisions if there is not enough information
      2. Motivation - hypothesis about the place of flow
      3. Life course
   4. Effect of the field and domain
      
      The same amount of innovation in a non-aligned and an aligned field. In an aligned field it is much easier to know whether or not you are being creative.
      
   5. Special characteristics suited for a particular situation?
   6. Types
      1. Big C has the clearest definition - a change in the culture. But the culture is transmitted and learned, so other people - the field - must accept the change and help to preserve it.
         1. Are other types of creativity less worthy?
         2. What is culture?
         3. Significance
      2. Personal creativity
         1. Not all of the characteristics for Big C?
         2. Flow
   7. What is not in the textbooks?
      1. Become active
      2. How it all fits together - the view from inside (by this I mean how the creative person sees what is happening). See IV.B.
4. Personal creativity
   1. How to be c
   2. Me as an example
      1. Goal
      2. Arrogance / ego /independence Vs need for understanding
      3. Ambition to be creative Vs intrinsic interest - suggestions to charge
      4. Supporting others
      5. Long-term Vs short-term payoff - starting over
      6. 'I want to give an idea about "creativity from the inside." I want to be creative - is it just me that finds that is hard to say, to admit? What is it like for me? I have found a great deal of support in reading Creativity and Creating Minds, not because I think I am at the level of those people, but because I have wondered why I behave the way I do sometimes. Why do I insist on having things my way sometimes, whereas at others I want to know how users feel, how they like what I am doing? Why do I look for people to talk about my ideas with? What I have gotten from these books is that those opposite kinds of behavior are the norm for creative people, and do not mean that I am crazy, but might just be a sign that I really am being creative instead of wasting my time.'
5. Will Big C creativity be possible in the future? The alignment of a field encourages Big C creativity. In a field that is diffuse, such as contemporary music (in which there are so many types and sub-types) or psychology (according to Csikszentmihalyi), it is much more difficult to get an overview so that the creative person can see where the faults are. Current communication technologies encourage this. For example, it is now very inexpensive to manufacture and distribute a CD. Formerly, the distribution channels forced alignment. With the new freedom to create and distribute, alignment in many fields may decrease, and consequently the amount of Big C creativity may decreases. Little c creativity, however, may increase. This may be A Good Thing (see X and its A and B subtopics). 
6. Update on Gandhi
7. Updates on Freud.
   1. After a decline in the popularity and prestige of Freudian psychoanalysis, in favor of faster therapies such as transactional and medical therapies that are directed at symptoms, psychoanalysis is enjoying a resurgence and the best method for certain cases.
   2. The current attention for sexual abuse of children by a small number of priests, has a Freudian basis; a traumatic childhood experience initiated by a trusted adult. The child suppresses the trauma, but as the child becomes an adult, keeping the trauma suppressed becomes more and more costly. Recalling the trauma into the conscious mind is therapeutic (healing).
8. Comment on Einstein and scientific revolutions
9. Significance of Creativity - more (Addition to C. E and F are new)
   1. Made us what we are - take a look around you, take a look inside you
   2. Keeps economy and society rolling
   3. Major world problems of 21st century threaten human species, will only be solved creatively. Did not specifically mention Global Warming last week.
   4. Personal Creativity - quality of life. Creativity pg 344. 
   5. When humans evolved, Creativity was a factor and a driver.
   6. Creativity is not:
      1. Doing something well. A performer or interpreter is generally not counted as creative. Musician, conductor, actor/actress, movie producer (movie directors are often counted as the creative people).
      2. Being a genius - IQ does matter up to about 120 (high normal) but not above that (genius is usually felt to be around 150 and higher)
      3. A starving artist working alone in a garret. Creative people move towards the center of their domain. This is the only way to find out what the problems in the domain are, and to get good.
10. Why study highly creative people? If we are not sure about what Creativity is or how it works, a very good approach is to study people which are widely agreed to be creative, and in whom Creativity is a dominant factor. The average level of Creativity in the people studied increases as we go from Corporate Creativity to Creativity to Creating Minds. Gardner, in Creating Minds, will be much more specific in his findings than Csikszentmihalyi is in Creativity. On the other hand, the people in Creativity are happier and more satisfied than the people in Corporate Creativity, but the people studied in Creating Minds do not seem to be the happiest of all. Can the highest levels of Creativity happen when the person loves the domain too much? Can this distort our views about lower levels of Creativity?
    
    During class, I speculated that:
    1. The troubled lives of Gardner's extremely creative subjects may indicate that they loved their domains too much and did not pay enough attention to friends and family. Gardner presents Einstein as relatively untroubled, but within the last two and three years, new biographical details suggest his life may have been more troubled.
    2. The flow state may be what drives the love of domain, and may be addictive. Gardner's subjects may have been "flow junkies."
11. Discussion of reading in Creating Minds
    1. Manqué. Pg 194. Pronounced (more or less) man-KAY. Means "could have been but is not." 
    2. Diaghilev. Throughout chapter on Stravinsky. Pronounced dee-AH-geh-lef.
12. Assignments
    1. Reading
    2. Conference postings - thirteenth week of posting, should have 30 or 31.
    3. Weekly course report
    4. Finishing up - schedule. April 25 is the last day to turn in work for the normal grade, without clearing it with me first.