Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The creative twig

Why is creative?

Of course it's existance isnt just willy nilly.  maybe it started when we started to move.  Come on this adventure with me and let's find out.

at some point on the evolutionary timeline, selection pressures deemed it more effective to our survival to be able to move. so we evolved into an organism with a simple brain and nervous system that could manage rudementary motor functions.  walk, run etc.  the basics of survival in that particular environment.  we then became masters at all those motor functions.  we could jump higher then a redwood, run faster then a cheetah, lift a tree out by its roots, bite the head off an elephant, etc.  (disclaimer - none of the above mentioned animals/foliage actually existed at this time, they are just being used for mentally aesthetic purposes)

The catch is everything sporting a brain reached this level.  there was no variation, and therefore nothing with which natural selection could work.  All the while our fuel for survival, whether it be the prey we were hunting, or the plants we were eating; were also adapting to our amazingness so well that their light equaled our brilliance. A wholly one-sided load on the ESS scale. balance was needed.

And balance was inevitable.  It came in the form of a brainial adaptation. selection pressures favored a new branch from the Brain tree.  A branch that extended to what we recognize as Creativity.  Or the creative side of our brain.

We discovered, through following the path that was opened up to us through creative thought, that we could manipulate the very environment that was indirectly shaping our evolutionary path, to directly pave our own path.

But alas, soon this venue became saturated.  everything was becoming master environment manipulators, so the process was repeated and another creative branch sprouted forth from selection pressurization and it too pursued another unorthodox way of survival.

repeat all this branching off of the creative brain branch for millions of years and the result is millions of species varying in creative complexity.  Just look at nature for evidence.  A beavers dam, A birds nest, a jaguar climbing a tree, a fish hiding in a coral reef - these are all oraganisms manipulating the creative side of their brains.  But us homo sapians take the cake.  We create just for pleasure.  We create just to pass the time.  We create to make survival easier.  We even create our own deaths.  We have developed our creative brains so well that we can actually survive without the laborious process of "work".  An acheivement exclusively homo sapian.  Laziness must be a cross species characteristic, but no species can match the exploitation of it like mankind.  And it is simply the product of our ingenious implimitation of our creative brains.

So Creativity is just a small twig from the brain branch of the tree of natural selection.  We understand the Why it sprouted.  but now I put forth another question.  not the Where.  not the What.  not the Who.  not the When.  the black sheep of questions.  The odd ball,  lexically challenged question.  The ludicrus lesion on the 'W' strain.  the How...........I mean How?

How did the twig sprout in the first place?  If this was a real tree, then the answer would be simple chemistry.  But this isn't.  We are talking about an organism.  A living breathing genetically organized entity with a brain used to manipulate a nervous system used to move limbs used to survive.  How could a physical creative brain evolve from it.  Did it wish so?  of course not.  this organism couldn't desire.  It had no means of subjective comparisons.  It was as aware as our modern day robots.  It moved, ate, acted under the strings that were predetermined by natural selection.  How could a part of the brain that we attribute all our hopes, desires, emotions, dreams to come from something completely void of such things?

Once again, like the tree, the answer lies in chemistry.  Which (HA!!!  another 'W'!!!) I will discuss in another article.

4 comments:

  1. Could it be that homo sapiens are creative because we have the power of choice? I'm suggesting that no other organism on the planet has the ability to make choices. Even the smart monkeys. They only have a very complicated chemical balance that involuntarily reacts to stimulation. It seems like the creature is making choices because the complexity of the brain is so that he homo sapiens can't follow it.

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  2. Before I make any comments, I wanna make sure i understand your last sentence. You are saying that WE homo sapiens can't follow the complexity of the brain?

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  3. Yes, the brain is still quite mysterious.

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  4. I have been spending all my mental capacity to solve the choice riddle. I have been able to find reason with a lot of choices most organisms make, but many still elude me, and they all pertain to humans. I use counter-intuition as my guide to keep me on the right path.

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