Низовцев Юрий Михайлович : другие произведения.

About the similarity and difference between smart people and creative people

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  • Аннотация:
    Smart people are often confused with creative persons, whereas these creative persons may be smart or not, but they remain creative for a significant part of their lives, but people who are smart, educated, versatile, who have their own opinions on everything around them, do very often not have creativity, and are only capable of, at best, develop or support the endeavors of the creators of the new. Therefore, it would be nice to find the true foundation on which both of them rest
  
  Keywords: consciousness, self-consciousness, dissatisfaction, mind, creativity, logic, thinking, giftedness, insight.
  
  As you know, the most scientists believes that the mind of a person lies in his thinking abilities, which, unlike the mind of animals, are focused on understanding the world around him, allowing a person to think rationally.
  This definition, which at first glance seems quite adequate, in fact, applies only to the smart people who think only rationally, that is, they are not capable of thinking not rationally. Therefore, despite their often outstanding mental abilities, which are reflected in a wide scope and understanding of a mass of various objects or, conversely, in the deepest understanding of a separate subject, a significant amount of memory, and the speed of decisions made, they work as if within the framework of the specific programs, embedded by them in themselves that exclude the search for completely new solutions, inventions, discoveries, limiting themselves solely to combinatorics, that is, a different combination of the known.
  In itself, this is not bad, since it gives outstanding results in everyday life and in technology, significantly improving and making life easier by introducing coffee grinders, washing machines, bread harvesters, fountain pens, and all sorts of entertaining games, of which the most advanced and popular is chess, the mass of the interesting literary works, etc.
  Millions of outstanding, smartest, most energetic, highly educated, hardworking workers in technology, science, arts, in the service and production sectors are engaged in similar rational activities, often achieving excellent results. However, combinatorics does not allow reaching qualitatively different levels of cognition and development.
  In addition, the advent of computers and the Internet has clearly shown that so-called artificial intelligence can do the same thing faster and, often, better. Moreover, this intelligence also turned out to be able to manage many complex processes more effectively than staff consisting of relevant specialists.
  In other words, the activities of these smart, educated people turned out to be similar to the work of computer systems, which are also not configured to discover non-obvious knowledge.
  Thus, original solutions, inventions and discoveries are provided not by the sum of accumulated knowledge, not by academic excellence, in particular, of scientists, but by the ability to attract to the search for the desired solution in the appropriate period of time some other human resources in addition to noted. Otherwise, every educated person, if desired, could become the discoverer of non-obvious new knowledge, and, on the contrary, the mass of ordinary people without special education would not be able to make outstanding inventions, which is not consistent with receipt by them of tens of millions of patents in the leading countries of the world, thereby achieving the unobvious technical knowledge.
  Therefore, the mysterious process of obtaining new non-obvious knowledge in the form of inventions and discoveries not only in the technical field, but also in the field of science and culture by relatively few people was called creative.
  In order to understand the difference between smart people and creative people and from numerous ordinary people (philistines), in our opinion, it is necessary to turn to the assessment of their consciousness, since the effectiveness of the manifestation of the mind depends on the level of consciousness, which is largely determined by the selection and transformation in the right way of precisely the data that lead to an adequate solution of the assigned tasks.
  However, we know that the human consciousness is not unified. It contains a kind of the animal component that a person inherited from primates, and the self-consciousness that manifested itself in the hominids from which a person was formed several million years later.
  True, in addition to these components of consciousness, which are responsible for the human behavior, it also has a kind of the internal computer, or the intelligence, which is responsible for the preserving and functioning the organism as a whole and each cell separately, organizing, in particular, metabolism and coordinated work as individual parts of the body, and in general. This process allows the body to be prepared for a variety of interactions with the environment, but this form of consciousness does not take part in usual human behavior, that is, in solving by him various problems and setting goals.
  So, we are all in terms of behavior owners of both the animal (the lowest) consciousness and self- consciousness. It was self-consciousness that separated man from the animal world mainly by the fact that it gave him, in addition to the adaptability characteristic of all living things, which has only an instinctive-reflex form of consciousness, that helps to adapt to one"s own environment by trial and error, a speech form of communication, abstract and logical thinking and the ability to express creativity.
  As a result, a person, who, unlike animals, realized his existence in the current time, gradually realized that he can not only take into account the environment, but also change it for his own needs, solving current problems and setting goals for the future, thereby significantly accelerating the passage of time of own generations, ultimately arriving at a relatively comfortable social form - civilization, having contrasted oneself with the wild world of nature.
  But at the same time, a person also remained a natural being.
  Thus, his consciousness began to contain both components indicated above, on the one hand, merged together in one subject, but, on the other hand, due to the different bases of these components - adaptive and logically-creative - they often do not demonstrate in the unity in own intentions, and thereby they are causing an internal struggle in the human consciousness, as a result of which one or another form of consciousness constantly or for some time comes to the fore, that is, their priorities and level may be different.
  The result of such interaction, and often the counteraction to each other, is a more productive correlation by a person in his communities with the environment, since each form of consciousness knows better how a person should act to obtain the desired result in own sphere, but with disagreements that are inevitable due to different genesis of these forms of consciousness, the human behavior begins to be controlled to a greater extent by one of these forms.
  Thus, similar interaction of these forms of consciousness of a person manifests itself as a new driving force for himself and his communities, more effective in comparison with the instinctive-reflex interaction with the environment of other living beings by trial and error, in which randomness rather than meaning is more manifested.
  And a person gradually acquired this meaning due to the development of his governing organ - the brain, in which, in addition to the limbic basis of the natural consciousness, many other sections appeared, thanks to which a person gained the ability to think logically on the basis of associations and direct exchange of the verbal information with fellow tribesmen, and then with the help of certain media, which is currently concentrated on the Internet.
  But, if the logical and abstract thinking appeared in a person due to the emergence of self- consciousness, then he could not help but stay an instinctive-intuitive attitude towards reality, which contributes to the survival of any organism that needs to act immediately, in order to, for example, it is not eaten.
  Therefore, a person has not completely lost this opportunity to interact with the environment. Moreover, the help of self-consciousness to this instinctive-intuitive manifestation of the lowest consciousness made it possible for a person to penetrate into the very depths of the surrounding world through a kind of the animal insight, but on the basis of logical conclusions obtained from experimental data. But this new property, which manifested itself out of all living beings only in a person, and designated as the creativity, is distributed unevenly in people, manifesting itself with particular force in a few people, and in the rest only at the level of the combinatorics.
  However, the force that drives any active being, that is, a living being, cannot exist without a source, which is an indispensable property of the active, not inherent in inanimate matter, and this source of the driving force of all living things is its dissatisfaction with others, and then with itself, demanding not only safety for life and one"s own reproduction, but also improving one"s position in the existing niche. The loss of this property or neglect of it in a constantly changing environment in living nature leads to degradation and further death of the being.
  In a person, this property of the dissatisfaction also operates in the sphere of self-consciousness, forcing a person to try to use his environment for his own purposes, and the instrument of this property cannot but be his thinking abilities, which differ quite greatly among people. Therefore, the stability of society in the shell of civilization is ensured by equalizing people with uniform upbringing and education.
  Nevertheless, the economic structure dictates to a society based on property relations the need to separate out various layers, the dominant of which is the managing layer, associated with ideological, judicial and security-military units, at this, the labor element in various fields of activity is divided into mental workers and others, the number of whom technological progress has gradually reduced many times as a result of the move away from purely physical efforts in the fields and factories to the management of various mechanisms and apparatus.
  However, the uneven development of individual regions and the inequality of people in mental development led to the following situation.
  The majority of the population, the so-called, the philistines, for various reasons, which may include a lack of education, underdeveloped social relations, a low level of living conditions, leading only to strive for survival, or a banal lack of prospects, since there are not so many "places in the sun" too much, has a low level of self-consciousness, which causes a person to focus mostly on the problems of nutrition, reproduction and improving existence in his own environment, than a person is being satisfied, without striving for more, which really turns out to be unattainable for him in these conditions.
  If these conditions persist for a long time, then entire generations of such people, despite possible giftedness, are actually excluded from the process of developing self-consciousness, with rare exceptions.
  Similar living conditions also significantly weaken the degree of dissatisfaction of their animal component of consciousness, which does not find mortal opponents within the framework of a developed civilization.
  It is quite difficult to escape from this swamp even if you have good mental abilities, which are actually not given any use.
  Nevertheless, a society in its development in the context of competition between different communities and states requires more and more teachers, doctors, engineers, scientists, managers, entrepreneurs, various service personnel, and life itself cannot do without culture and relevant specialists in it.
  All such knowledge workers, of course, cannot be called intellectuals, but they still have a certain education, and therefore opinions both about themselves and about relationships, at least in their own community, albeit limited to their own specialization.
  Of course, almost all of them serve the ruling class, which pays them for their work, or makes them subordinate to itself. Therefore, their freedom of expression is limited. Those of these knowledge workers who have fewer restrictions classify themselves as free-thinking intelligentsia.
  Almost all rest knowledge workers, especially those whose work is monotonous and unpromising, join the ranks of the philistines, and they, as you know, are mostly interested in their own well-being, but not problems of cognition.
  In principle, the mind of the knowledge workers in those fields of activity in which creativity is not required and who are not interested by the discovery of new things in itself, can be developed up to a very high degree as applied to their own field of activity.
  However, their lack of interest in creativity is due precisely to the low degree of dissatisfaction with surrounding. As a consequence of this, for a significant part of mental workers, the level of both the animal components of consciousness and self- consciousness does not reach the values that require updating the environment. That is, such people, no matter what they think about themselves, belong to the conservative-conformist stratum of society, paying the attention only to themselves, and trying not to notice all the troubles and misfortunes around them, and also, not expressing displeasure in front of their superiors, despite all his antics.
  In other words, this behavior of these persons is due to the fact. that their self-consciousness of relatively low level in terms of altruism is quite balanced by their animal component of consciousness, which is also a rather quite prosperous existence.
  Therefore, despite often having a good education and a high IQ coefficient, these people do not differ much from the philistines in their behavior and lifestyle.
  The more energetic and power-hungry part of the educated public from different sectors of the population, but mainly from the highest layers of society, is trying to break into the power elite, and really represents it to a large extent.
  This attraction is most facilitated not by their deep mind, which may or may not be present, but compared with the philistines, the high degree of dissatisfaction of their animal component of consciousness, as well as the extremely low level of their altruistic component of self-consciousness.
  Along with that, some of the people from different strata of society, but mostly from the cohort of people with mental work, have a high level of self-awareness, which arises as a result of the high degree of altruistic component of their self-awareness, and which they further develop in the process of obtaining knowledge and its application.
  Naturally, they are not able to look without indignation at all the injustices of the existing social system, in which the bulk of the population lives in poverty and the arrogant nouveau riche bathe in luxury, humiliate everyone else not only with their own actual impunity, but simply by own presence, concentrating fantastic riches that cannot be spent to themselves during thousand lives.
  Of course, these persons always think about eliminating this injustice in favor of a harmonious society, where for everyone will be equally well and pleased. Thus, the informal-intellectual opposition arises, opposing to the power elite, and not inclined to compromise with it, since this opposition considers those in power by hypocrites, scoundrels and robbers.
  In addition to these persons, the people from different walks of life always appear in society, but, most of all, from the persons engaged in mental work, whose interest, in spite of everything, is focused on the pursuit of the new and unusual. It is precisely this kind of creators who ensure the technological and cultural progress of society.
  These creative people, unlike philistines, those in power and intellectuals from the opposition to the power elite, are much less dependent on living conditions, showing themselves in the harshest conditions with their ingenuity, even without any education, but using their resourcefulness. At this, they may not have any special talent or extensive memory. There are many examples of such people, since it is they who take it upon themselves to come up with a way out of difficult life situations, having invented a wheel, a lever, painting the walls of caves with images of their own further actions, for example, hunting, in a realistic form, and taming dogs for the same hunting and protection.
  Thus, in its pure form, the caste of intellectuals does not exist. The smart people appear everywhere from all walks of life, but, for the most part, from an educated stratum, whose representatives are not engaged in hard and tedious work.
  The only question is how they show themselves and why some of them manages to come up with a phone, an automatic machine, a nuclear reactor and a computer, portray Mona Lisa ("Gioconda" by Leonardo da Vinci) and compose "Anna Karenina" (Leo Tolstoy), while others willy-nilly limit themselves to just organizational events, explaining or interpreting what others have invented, and playing chess?
  The answer to this question is as follows.
  Since consciousness leads a person, then his level, depending on the degree and orientation of dissatisfaction with both the animal component of consciousness and self-consciousness on the environment and oneself, is the true basis of his aspirations, regardless of external influences, in particular, education, upbringing, as well as natural giftedness.
  As a result, the personalities appear in society, always overwhelmed by a deep sense of dissatisfaction in relation to their environment, which comes to them from the lowest consciousness in its aspiration to creation of big conveniences to existence. However, this individualist feeling is combined with their highest consciousness, the dissatisfaction of which by insufficient public comfort, development of science and art, reaching high degree, altruistically demands to extend achievements of a civilization and culture to all.
  But, at this, the lowest consciousness dominates, because the activity of these individuals is manifested mostly instinctively, without much reflections, with a minimum of reasonableness, while giving, nevertheless, the most creative persons from all living.
  This category of any community prefers non-standard life situations owing to rejection of only formal-logical approaches to life - such a life for them is boring and meaningless, like working on a conveyor for tightening nuts.
  They do not love reasoning, logical constructions, try to avoid analytical and synthetic work, hate the actions according to pragmatic calculations; at the same time, they, as a rule, - at all not workaholics.
  Therefore, the target programs of self-consciousness in combination with programs of the lowest consciousness can be applied by these beings with great success, if, of course, they are capable to combine so contradictory forms of consciousness, for fast and resolute change of a situation in favor of the conceived.
  In other words, they prefer not the long-term reflections, not systematization of the facts and phenomena, i.e. not rational actions, but actions spontaneous, or actions at which the goal can be achieved for one-stage as if instinctively, though, of course, they should work beforehand in acquisition of craft skills and gain experience.
  Exactly such people make discoveries, create masterpieces of poetry, painting, inventions, they become by the outstanding commanders. That is their activity is manifested generally in the creative scope, which attracts them at all not with a position of consumption of some benefits and goods - they are interested in the process.
  Alas, en masse the results of their activities are very mediocre both in terms of the quality of everything they produce, and due to lack of experience and frequent laziness, and sometimes stupidity and ignorance; but defeats especially do not disturb them. It is pleasant to them to use own abilities, often - very mediocre (graphomaniacs) for receiving result without special effort of own mind.
  And they fall back into the old ways, like the card player who cannot move away from the card-table.
  Nevertheless, creators of the unobvious new is situated always among them as in the field of technologies, and culture.
  Thus, for this kind of the creative figures one of the main developmental incentives emerges - the aspiration to get out of a routine due to search the interesting, meeting the available expectations of this creative person.
  In other words, any creator person is sickened by what is, and the cause of this state is permanent dissatisfaction with himself and those around him in the current circumstances.
  Naturally, in this case, a person seeks to begin to search for what lack yet, what has not yet been passed, that is, to get into those changes, which will bring, perhaps, something pleasant or maybe not, but - certainly new: will reveal some secret, will distract him from the abominations of life, that is, will attract a person exactly their differences from an everyday routine, and, perhaps, will bring to the essence of things and phenomena.
  It turns out that behind the interest there is always dissatisfaction with the present, and the interesting is the product of the interest.
  A satisfaction is sought in any interesting, but it is never definitively because, having stopped on one, you can lose the rest, which cannot be allowed, otherwise it is not possible to get new satisfaction in another interesting, and even itself discovered interesting is not able to bring full satisfaction due to its discrepancy with an initial image attracting to itself.
  The emerging proportionality of the human interests and abilities under favorable conditions can produce personalities capable of revolutionizing both science, economics, and culture.
  Thus, if to the core of such creative personality education and talent are added that resonate with her interests, then active talents are obtained, of which, of course, there are relatively few, since such coincidences do not happen so often.
  But also quite often, although not comparable to the number of the philistines, there are people endowed with extraordinary intelligence, speed of reaction, excellent memory and the ability to make adequate logical conclusions. It was this kind of the mind, and not another, called intelligence, that became possible to measure using the appropriate test for intelligence, which was understood as the level of mental development. For this, it was used was used the so-called the intelligence quotient (IQ) was used, which was first introduced into use by the German researcher Wilhelm Stern in 1912.
  This coefficient IQ (intelligence quotient), according to a number of scientists, quantitatively shows the level of the mind, in comparison with the level of the mind of the statistically average person. A statistically average person is one who has the same age and development as the person, whose coefficient is measured, that is, IQ shows the correspondence or deviation of the level of the mind from the average.
  In fact, this test is not able to show the level of the mind in terms of the giftedness of a given person, which does not lend itself to any technical measurements, but it quite adequately reflects the amount of memory and operating speed in terms of the quick-wittedness. In this regard, this test is really applicable to the characteristics of the mind of the sufficiently educated people who do not have creativity like artificial intelligence, but who, like artificial intelligence, have good short-term memory, the ability to logical conclusions and an adequate presentation of certain judgments.
  The basis of this kind of mind lies, just as for the mind of any person, the degree of manifestation and direction of dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness and self- consciousness on the environment and the person himself.
  It is quite curious that the degree of dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness for such "intellectuals" is not much higher than the degree of dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness of philistines - rather weak, and, moreover, oriented, like theirs, as a rule, towards their own well-being.
  As for the degree of dissatisfaction of their self-consciousness, it is higher than that of philistines, but, nevertheless, it is significantly lower than the degree of dissatisfaction of the self-consciousness of the creative people, supporting the orientation of the dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness towards the same personal well-being, while the dissatisfaction of the self-consciousness of the creative persons is directed towards the public good.
  For this reason, these "intellectuals" lack a passionate desire to learn new things and persistence in discovering it, although many of them work in the field of science and may have certain abilities.
  The absence of this kind of desire cannot but lead them, in particular in science, at best, to test, substantiate and further develop new ideas and phenomena discovered by the creative people, but often in order to strengthen their own status and well-being they try under various pretexts or using connections, or a superior position to cling to the discoverers or simply to imitate the creative activity.
  This kind of "intellectuals" can indeed be very smart, possessing developed logical thinking, good memory, the ability to instantly navigate and coherently express certain judgments. Therefore, they feel great teaching children, youth and students. There are many of them among cultural figures, whom they try to lead or at least mentor artists and writers, not understanding their own limitations, but making up a fairly large army of the so-called intelligentsia in developed countries, although they prefer to call themselves by the intellectuals.
  All these persons may be interested in a particular activity, have good mental abilities in terms of logic, have a strong will, abstract thinking, excellent memory, great and varied experience and even some giftedness. But a lack of creativity, but creativity by itself is based on a correlation of a high degree of dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness and almost the same degree of dissatisfaction of the altruistic component of dissatisfaction of self-consciousness, can raise these "intellectuals" in terms of cognition only to the level of combinatorics, as well as a sensible explanation of what has already been discovered or invented by others.
  Since the brain is the most effective instrument of the human consciousness, in its structure one can find something, that will confirm that a particular person belongs to the smartest, but not creative people.
  Relatively recent studies of the human brain have shown that multiple (up to 40 times) differences in the morphofunctional centers of the brain may well create the inability of a significant number of people to think quickly and creatively, especially since the combination of brain characteristics that provide, in particular, a high degree of creativity or even quick wits, doesn't happen that often.
  Thus, the structural features of the brain allow to link them to separate types of consciousness, which not only indicate the inequality of people in their mental, creative and emotional abilities, but also make it possible to demonstrate their belonging to various social groups, one way or another influencing the course of development of civilization.
  In particular, from the side of the genomic features, insufficient development of DNA loci can have a certain impact on the desire for creativity, which turns out to be also insufficient, although this genomic feature does not affect the ability of logical thinking, memory, quick-wittedness and speed in making adequate decisions, which and shows the IQ coefficient, which can be high specifically for people who do not have a desire for creativity.
  In addition, a sufficient amount of the hormone of joy (dopamine) also does not contribute to the manifestation of the creative efforts with the adequate results, although it does not interfere with the logical thinking.
  The size of the frontal lobe, which is responsible for the abstract and creative thinking, in such "intellectuals" is of the ordinary sizes, as is the lower parietal lobe of the brain, which is responsible for mathematical and spatial thinking.
  However, areas of the brain that are related to logical thinking, such as the left prefrontal cortex, left temporal lobe, and left parietal cortex, may be more developed in these smart people compared to others.
  Externally, all these properties of consciousness for the smart, but uncreative people are reflected in such properties of individuality as a high degree of quick-wittedness, excellent memory, an average level of sensitivity, impressionability, determination, the ability to pry, dominance, perseverance, as well as such personality traits as the ability to think associatively and at the same time logically, sufficient volitional qualities. But their interests are more related to finding their own well-being, and the desire for knowledge is mostly associated not with the process of cognition, but with the acquisition of a higher status position in society.
  If we compare these external features of the consciousness of such smart people with the external features of the consciousness of the creative people, then the latter, in addition to those features indicated of one level or another, have necessarily a high degree of the ability to pry on the part of individuality, reinforced on the part of self-consciousness by an equally high degree of curiosity, manifested in the formation of interests in the new and unusual, and their natural abilities, if any, are consistent with the public interests.
  The noted combination of traits of individuality and personality of specific persons with developed logical thinking, but not inclined to creativity, indicates that from the deep side of their consciousness the system-forming factor is a combination of dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness, close to the average degree, coming to them from the limbic structure of the brain, with an equally average degree of dissatisfaction of their self-consciousness.
  As a result, these "intellectuals", who are well aware of their creative impotence, do not suffer from an excess of altruism in their own self-awareness, and therefore, with rare exceptions, serve the powers that be, receiving corresponding bonuses, and in science and culture they, as a rule, play leading roles, thanks to the properties of own calculating mind, which is not scattered on energy-consuming creative fulfilments.
  For the creative people, from the deep side of their consciousness, the system-forming factor is the combination of the maximum possible degree of dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness with a high level of altruism of their self-consciousness, the dissatisfaction which by the insufficient social comfort, the development of science and culture, requires spreading the achievements of civilization and culture to everyone.
  Unfortunately, over time, these creative people quite often lose their creative potential. This is especially noticeable in culture - the creativity of writers shrinks, artists is repeating themselves. This phenomenon is explained not by any significant changes in their deep consciousness, but by the fact that with age, the number of neurons in the brain, including the departments responsible for the creative process, decreases, connections between the corresponding neurons are disrupted, and thus the capabilities of the brain decrease. There are countless examples of this. Such people, of course, want to return to creativity, but they are no longer able to do this, and as a result they fall into the category of simply smart people, since sufficiently extensive connections that ensure logical thinking are more likely to be preserved.
  In particular, Albert Einstein was unable to discover or develop anything significant over the last few decades of his life, spending most of his time engaged in politics and social activities. In his declining years, Leo Tolstoy mainly has composed religious and quasi-philosophical treatises, as well as the instructions for the common people and criticized the government.
  Of course, there are exceptions, for example, Leonardo da Vinci, whose brain structure apparently did not change significantly in old age and productive connections between neurons was preserved, was still working at the age of 64 - three years before his death - on the painting "John the Baptist", and later was engaged in architectural and construction design in the area of the Chateau de Chambord in France.
  As for the smart people with a penchant for logical thinking and a high IQ, they are not able to move into the stratum of creative persons, no matter how much they want, precisely for the reason that, from the root side of their consciousness, the system-forming factor is a combination of dissatisfaction of the animal component of consciousness, which is close to the average degree coming to them from the limbic structure of the brain, with an equally average degree of dissatisfaction of their self-consciousness. And this factor allows them, at best, to shuffle the known, that is, to engage themselves in combinatorics, which is especially typical for scientific research, in which millions of highly educated scientists take part, but only a few make discoveries as well as epoch-making inventions.
  
  
  
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