Humans are creative creatures

Cave paintings are fascinating. The one above is from Chad and the other from Altamira (Spain).

What made these men who were dealing with surviving 24/24 to indulge for hours painting ceilings and walls? Was it about religion? The effects of alucinogenic drugs? You may want to read the book by Davd Whitley "Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit: The Origin of Creativity and Belief".

Who painted? Men? Women? Children? Who made those wonderful inks and pigments that lasted for centuries? I like to think that everybody could paint. Not only priests of some kind but anybody.

And why did they paint? I believe for two reasons: because they were human and because it was therapeutic. I mean, art is an intrinsic part of our mental set. Many of us just forget it and think that art is for kids or artists. We're all artists, we're all creative human beings.

Only sometimes we just don't know. Depressive people have often a tendency for not even trying. They give absurd reasons, like: "I was told when a child I was not artistic".

Who says so? Some long forgotten teacher in elementary school?

We're to blame. Nobody has the right to deprive you of this most basic human right: to express yourself. To create.

There are so many forms of artistic expression today. Painting, composing, writing, acting, sculpting, dancing, crafs, singing, playing. And also those allowed by the new technologies, which are countless: video, photo, music, etc. Try for yourself, pick up something that gives you pleasure, don't let anyone tell you what you should do or not. It's therapeutic, makes you better, improves communication, fights isolation. As the cave people had already found out.

If in doubt, look in the net for what Martha Beck has to say about art, therapy and depression. She wrote some good piece of advice.

The bottom line is: We're human, therefore we create.

 

 

Communication can be a powerful tool

In this small video Dr. Dan Seigel, psychiatryst, suggests we can use our hand to explain how the mot primitive brain, the lymbic system, evolves to our thinking brains.

Simple and effective from the communicational point of view!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD-lfP1FBFk

 

Children's creativity is decreasing in the US and in Europe?

(Photo: Psychology Today)

 

Americans prize themselves, and rightly so, for being great innovators, capable of figuring out new ways of doing things and new things to do.

Quoting from Peter Gray of Psychology Today:

"Perhaps this derives from our frontier beginnings, or from our unique form of democracy with its emphasis on individual freedom and respect for nonconformity. In the business world as well as in academia and the arts and elsewhere, creativity is our number one asset".

It seems things are changing for the worse. According to new reasearch, "the scores on these tests [Torrance tests of creative thinking apllied to schoolchildren] at all grade levels began to decline somewhere between 1984 and 1990 and have continued to decline ever since".

The explanation? Maybe the following, according to Peter Gray: "more and more we are subjecting children to an educational system that assumes one right answer to every question and one correct solution to every problem, a system that punishes children (and their teachers too) for daring to try different routes. We are also (...) increasingly depriving children of free time outside of school to play, explore, be bored, overcome boredom, fail, overcome failure—that is, to do all that they must do in order to develop their full creative potential".

Are we over-protecting our children and getting the results of this? I'm quite sure this is not a problem exclusive to Americans. Although I don't know of any research in Europe, I believe conclusions would point in the same direction.

If the subject interests you, you may want to have a look at the following link in Psychology Today:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201209/children-s-freedom-has-declined-so-has-their-creativity?utm_source=swissmiss&utm_campaign=cd24a79f4c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2660ad4d17-cd24a79f4c-393315113