As an instinctively creative person, raised by an artist, it's taken me awhile to figure out what’s wrong with people. Here’s why they’re not creative:
- They constantly impose interpretations upon their experience, AND YOURS, and seek the first interpretation which will give them permission not to think any further, which could get them into trouble:
- They live in constant fear of being punished for having a creative thought or stepping out of line
- They resent you for your freedom to think, be, and act creatively, independently and/or in oppositional defiance of any fear of reprisal
- They have no idea how to be creative so their only hope is to subvert, sabotage, and prevent any fecund line of thought -- tell them what you're thinking and they'll freeze the liquid in terror of multiplicity of interpretation and start inhibiting lines of thought that lead from there, setting up roadblocks and objections, not gestations and reflections, or additional interpretations, because even two interpretations is too many for them!
- They seek any opportunity to punish disinhibition, because their inhibitions control them
- They cannot breathe
- The feeling of cognitive dissonance sickens them and they run from it like the smell of manure, instead of savoring the discomfort that leads to growth: socratic aporia
- They have no healthy outlet for their creative, or possibly sexual, impulses, so they create drama in theirs and in other people's lives rather than cultivating healthy communal environments in which the hive mind can create: see 'the hydraulic model of the mind’
- They’re hostile to anything that threatens the black-and-white dichotomies by which they access the world, which do not threaten to demand of them this skill they do not possess: creativity
- They do not test, or appreciate their ideas, but check them against a tribe for ingroup approval, like zombies: this is true of all academics who thrive on grades, and then citations, and every influencer with their likes, and even lawyers who have to be considered 'respectable' by other members of the profession
- People think the true test of an idea is the material priviledges that come with this ingroup approval, not whether true believers cling to it when every priviledge associated with it is taken away--this is why some people with this twisted epistemology don't take seriously the beliefs of poor people: they have some dreaded 'Darwinian' theory of truth akin to Jordan Peterson's (which I attacked at a conference years before Sam Harris attacked it using all the same arguments, but he only listened when Sam Harris made them--how creative!)
- if they've never heard that idea before, you're the enemy: you're making them think!
- Humans are apex predators in hunter mode and constantly ask what prey a thought is 'for' -- this is not creative
- Humans are visual creatures and forget to close their eyes