JJ Ledewitz, Arts and Culture Editor
Creativity is dying.
It’s increasingly obvious to me, and it makes me doubt the true identity of humanity. Do we want to be viewed as a soulless clump of copy-paste monkeys refusing their true gifts and sticking to their laziest and most mundane attributes? If not, why does it seem like that’s what we’re striving for?
Apparently, I was a creative kid. That’s what people tell me. I think all kids are creative in some way, but the years of my childhood were the beginning of a new era of childhoods, ones filled with technology, laziness and neglect, therefore my creativity could not possibly have been expected. Creativity and childlike wonder slowly withered away the longer this era of children spent staring at screens or being told that “creativity is not as important as everything else.”
As a kid, I wrote and drew on every blank piece of paper I could get my hands on. I even wrote and drew on things I probably shouldn’t have. I have a whole row of books at home, most by Shel Silverstien, that I covered with doodles at the age of five, thinking I was “enhancing” the pictures. Was I reprimanded? Yes. But only because of what I was drawing on. Creativity needs to thrive, not be pushed down. Because even in a case like mine, I didn’t have bad intentions. It’s just that the world is becoming less and less appreciative of creativity.
I’m glad that I grew up in a house that appreciated creativity. But while I love the Jewish community I grew up in, I can’t say it appreciated creativity at all. It was almost like a glimpse into the future, where creativity was ignored because “it wasn’t needed.” Why imagine? Why craft? Why do anything creative if we have what we need, right here right now?
It’s sad to see that the world is headed that way.
By the time I was in middle school, I accepted that my community would never view creativity for what it is or what it could be. But I was glad that the rest of the world still appreciated creativity. I was naive at the time and didn’t know about the radical changes happening all around me, changes I only learned when I talked with friends from around the country in public schools and institutions. There was more reliance on technology, shorter attention spans, more laziness, and, of course, less creativity. This hurt me a lot. They were lucky enough to be around people appreciative of creativity, and they have the gall to push it away?
My final year of high school was the last straw for me. Suddenly, everyone was using this new thing called ChatGPT, especially in my community. For projects, for speeches, for essays and even for ideas for essays. Where did creativity go? Why is everyone so lazy and sad? What is happening? Where did we go wrong?
AI. tool that could probably cure cancer and help countless people across the world that is currently being used to help plagiarize creative work, force creatives out of jobs, and is becoming one of the most talked about “tools” in every creative industry.
It can’t replicate creativity, it’s a lot worse than that: it generates things that trick people into thinking they’re as good as human creativity. It lacks human experience, feelings, emotions, personal history and analysis skills, yet it can generate words that people think were written by human hands.
It all makes sense, now that we’re this far into the technological takeover. The reliance on technology and the shortening of attention spans has distracted us from the creativity of the world. As technology has become better – like it has with AI – we have begun to think that what it generates is as good as true creativity.
I go back every once in a while to look at those Shel Silverstein books. His poems were hilarious to me as a kid and still hold up fifteen years later. And his own little pictures placed in the books are so incredibly intricate and stylized in the most unique way. Each word and picture has a story behind it. Which makes my stupid doodles covering every page that much more important to me. Obviously, I wasn’t enhancing anything. His drawings were perfect the way they were.
But if they were perfect, why did I draw on them?
That’s the nature of creativity. Human creativity.
Creative works can affect people in so many special ways. They can make us laugh, cry and understand stories completely different from our own. Creativity is the desire to make people feel and understand those things. Words, shapes, lights on a screen, these things can somehow impact emotions and mend relationships. To me, that’s crazy. But it’s true. And we need to take advantage of it.
It seems that five-year-old me felt what Silverstein intended. And five year-old-me wanted to elevate that by trying to make the emotional response more powerful.
I believe every person is creative. Everyone, deep down, has the desire to make others feel emotions using something they’ve made up. This is something we all have when we are younger that tends to shrink as we get older. But everything around us in our modern technological age affects this creativity at the time that is supposed to be the strongest, causing creativity to be pushed aside.
Every new story you read, every new painting you see, every new song you hear, these may become remnants of the past. At the rate we’re going, our kids might not grow up to understand what “original” even means. “Unique” won’t exist as a concept.
Explore the creativity of the world. Explore your own creativity, and find ways to help foster a creative environment in the world. Let the creative side of you run free.
The future of creativity lies in the hands of our generation. We need to fight for it to survive.