(Pacific Coast by WM House at Archean Art (©2025 Archean Enterprises, LLC)
The quandary of human creativity rests in part on whether we are speaking of the species or the individual. The mere fact that humanity has been able to dominate the planet and interfere with its natural evolution in the short span of 150 years provides vindication of the statement that “Homo sapiens are a creative species.” Yet practical experience and day-to-day observations tend to support the notion that humans, as individuals, are rarely capable of generating original thought.
Creativity: The ability to bring into existence something new
Creativity: The use of imagination to generate original, unique ideas
What humans do extremely well is latching on to the occasional original idea that crosses their path and adopting it as their own. Fortunately, our propensity for recording the past in enduring oral, written, and electronic records increases the chance that an odd stroke of creative insight may pass on to future generations. This preservation of thought is, of course, the true creative genius of our species. The wheel does not have to be reinvented by each generation, and creative breakthroughs can accumulate, building one upon the other. Some people credit Bill Gates with inventing the personal computer. But had he been born 100 years earlier, he would have lacked the necessary foundations for his particular creative endeavors. Bill Gates was at the right place at the right time to build on a broad technology base and bring personal computers to the forefront of our modern society.
All of this begs the question of whether most humans lack an innate ability for original thought or if we all have the neural capacity, but most of us let it lay fallow. There is a strong argument that society itself works to blunt individual creativity. The Catholic Church rallied its wealth and power to crush Galileo’s astronomical genius. Indeed, religion, in its many guises over the years, has worked tirelessly to suppress individual creativity. Original thoughts provide alternatives to traditional teachings and challenge existing power structures.
Another factor weighing against individual creativity is laziness. Original thinking requires sustained mental effort. The lure of having someone else tell you what to think is strong, offering an easy way to avoid the hard work. Cults are popular and conspiracy theories alluring because someone else does the thinking and tells you the answer. Lucrative careers made on AM talk radio and cult TV like Fox attest to the widespread failure of human creativity to overcome laziness. Individuals’ willingness to relinquish their creativity is the mainstay of organized religious institutions worldwide.
Sorry, I must have gotten ahead of myself. My intent was to ramble on a bit about the Pacific beaches of the American West Coast . Having grown up on the East Coast, I was blown away when I first encountered these rocky wonderlands. The tidewater regions of the eastern USA are flat, low-lying terrains, and beaches form where the land slowly and uneventfully slips into the ocean. No big surprises there, but the West Coast is a different story. Rugged mountains plunge into the ocean, carving the coastline into small cove beaches that all but disappear when the tide rolls in. Mist from cold Pacific Ocean water often rolls off the sea, covering the coastline in a cool mystical fog.
Many of these beaches are isolated enough that visitors are sparse, and contemplative solitude is the flavor of the day; in short, a good place for creative thinking. When you stand at the intersection of mountains, sea, and sky, breathing the salty, organic Pacific air, with no one to tell you what to think, the opportunity for creativity spontaneously arises. Your smallness in the grand scheme of this planet lets the mind wander into the nooks and crannies of existence and ask questions that beg answers—answers that only you can conjure out of the mist.
Returning to the question of why so many individuals often seem unable to generate a single original idea, perhaps the noise of society stops them from listening to themselves, or maybe it is just laziness.
(The fusion art used as graphics for this article mingles photography with digital art and digital painting using Adobe Fresco. The scene encompasses photos and sketches along the northern California coast.)
