Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Imagination: "The power to recombine the materials furnished by experience or memory, for the accomplishment of an elevated purpose; the power of conceiving and expressing the ideal."
Webster, 1913

Recent research into human evolution suggests that one of the greatest differences between modern man and the proto-humans who preceded us is imagination. In the long evolution of humanoid brains, the part involved in imagination was the last to develop. We are the first species to develop a brain capable of imagining things that have never before existed, think abstract thoughts, and see beyond our immediate reality.

No other species has been so successful in modifying its environment to suit its needs and desires. We have largely eliminated those species that preyed on us, and removed most of the uncertainties of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our predecessors by domesticating our sources of food. While the weather remains outside of our control, we have greatly limited its influence over us by building structures within which we can artificially maintain a temperate environment regardless of the external conditions. Having largely conquered our basic needs for food and shelter, we've proceeded to create ever more artificial environments for ourselves.

Neanderthals were capable of basic problem solving. They made tools, converted animal skins into clothing, and developed ways to hunt large animals. But that was as far as they were inspired to progress. They existed on Earth for nearly twice as long as modern man, and yet there is little difference between their first and last artifacts. Groups occupying territories at the far extremes of their range practiced essentially the same way of life. They didn't refine their solutions beyond their immediate need. They were tied to the here and now, and lacked the imagination to see what could be.

Inspiration + Imagination = Creativity

Creativity has arguably been a key factor in the creation of our modern world. Imagination is an innate capability of our species which suggests that the wide variations in the results of creativity are a function of the inspiration introduced into the equation.

If inspiration were a simple predictable reaction to a triggering condition, creativity would in turn tend to be a predictable linear progression. Obviously this is not the case. Creativity is a rare and unpredictable occurrence that has had highly irregular effects on the human condition. Only a minority of individuals have achieved creativity, and often only during relatively brief periods of their lives. Those rare creative individuals have used their epiphanies for both good and evil, to both advance and degrade human civilization.

Much of human creativity has arguably been wasted on foolishness, absurdities, and irrationality. Some might think this is on whole a good thing, considering the potential alternatives.

The basic equation would seem to indicate that the validity of the inspiration should influence the validity of the resulting creativity. By manipulating the source of inspiration, it would seem to be possible to manipulate the resulting creativity. This has undoubtedly been the intention at many points in human history. However, while such manipulation has at times delivered the desired results, it has more often resulted in unexpected outcomes.

One of the fortunate ironies of human nature is that man has managed to extract useful inspirations from entirely false sources.

The powerful wild card in the equation is that an external stimulus must be processed through often flawed biological and psychological functions and filters before it becomes a perception in the mind of the creative individual. Turns out that it's far easier to manipulate an external stimulus than to ensure that the individual will perceive that stimulus as intended. Some of the most powerful sources of inspiration have been deceptions, delusions, or misinterpretations. This has been particularly true of history. The inherent truth of a potential source of inspiration is less important than the effect it has on the inspired individual.

Consider the influence of the ancient world on Renaissance art and architecture. The Italian renaissance is today seen as a critical turning point in human history, and in many ways created the foundations of our modern world. One of the widely accepted aspects of the Renaissance has been that it was heavily influenced by the classical art and architecture of ancient Rome. However, the heritage we today assign to the ancient Romans is not the heritage the Romans intended to leave. If fact, the popular conception of the Roman world would be alien to those who actually lived in that world.

Filippo Brunelleschi is credited with leading the rejection of the distorted clutter of Gothic art and architecture, and a return to the clean elegant simplicity and realism of classical forms. However, what inspired him were actually the ruins of classical structures stripped of the gaudy superficial overlays that offered a very different appearance and experience to the ancient Romans.

People in the classical world favored garish colors because they were the exception in a world where achieving bright colors was difficult. They had not yet achieved dominance of the natural world, and it remained more an object of fear than wonder. Bright colors provided a pleasing contrast to the earth tones of their surrounding natural world, and suited their desire to see buildings and sculptures as artificial works of man not of nature.

These superficial surfaces have proven too fragile to withstand the ravages of time, leaving only the underlying spare aesthetic beauty that had been intentionally hidden from the classical world. What we consider the brilliant artistic genius of ancient artists is actually an accidental contribution to modern culture. Having lost the intended artificial appearance of their skins, we marvel at the sparse aesthetic genius of their skeletons.

Today we live in a world where bright colors are trivial to achieve. We now find the subdued elegance of unpainted marble pleasingly different from the relentlessly colorful world in which we live. Having come to associate bare white marble with classical art, restoring the brightly colored paint that the classical artists intended would now be considered sacrilege. Those who actually created these works of art would be offended that we insist on reducing their works to an unfinished state.

Our distorted view of the ancient world hasn't been entirely accidental.

All too often revisionists have actively destroyed those remains of the ancient world that didn't conform to the mythical histories they'd fabricated to support their agendas. Where the well preserved evidence of the true nature of the ancient world couldn't be eliminated outright, they conspired to conceal and deny those aspects that didn't fit their officially sanctioned perspective.

The story of Pompeii's destruction during an eruption of Vesuvius is well known, as is the fact that much of the buried city was preserved intact. However, much of what was actually found when the city was excavated was concealed from public awareness because the historical reality conflicted with the agendas of religious and cultural authorities.

The sexually explicit sculptures and colorful erotic murals with which the residents of Pompeii decorated their world didn't fit the officially sanctioned perspective of a prudish Victorian society obsessed with denying its own sexuality. The "perverted" sculptures were secreted away in the basement vaults of dusty museums, and the "pornographic" murals were plastered over to impose the illusion of a bland empty colorless past that was far less threatening to the revisionists. Better to fabricate a manipulative lie than admit to a historical reality that might encourage commoners to question a repressive social order that demanded their masochistic rejection of physical pleasure and pious denial of human nature.

Didn't work out quite as they'd intended.

Today the museum vaults have been opened and the Victorian plaster stripped from Pompeii's erotic murals. Paradoxically the Victorians' attempted cultural manipulations have substantially increased public interest in what they tried to hide. Transforming something into a forbidden fruit tends to be a far more effective means of promotion than benign neglect.

The Victorians' self-righteous attempts to sanitize the past have become the popular definition of their times, largely displacing those positive aspects that might deserve continued admiration. The erotic arts they tried to suppress became instead a thriving industry that pioneered the use of many of the communications and entertainment technologies used by non-erotic media today. The Victorians became a historical curiosity and example of applied perversity.

The failure of the misguided attempt to protect public morality by suppressing the reality of Pompeii, is in itself a useful example of how difficult it is to manipulate and control the human imagination by restricting information. In retrospect, the evidence that their effort would fail was already available to them if they'd been able/willing to recognize it. The Catholic church had previously attempted to suppress the scientific and technological innovations that were transforming the Victorian world. The Victorians had embraced the once prohibited wonders of the dawning Industrial Revolution, but then tried to do to Pompeii what the Church had tried and failed to do to the scientific revelations of Galileo.

Even when the validity of a potential source of inspiration is consistent and undeniable, perceptions can vary substantially between individuals. The same individual may perceive the same information or event in different ways at different times and/or in different mental states. It could be said that the essence of creativity is the ability to perceive something that others don't see. There is a saying that opportunity knocks on everyone's door, but only a few are curious enough to open the door and welcome it in.

According to the legend, the inspiration for Newton's theory of gravity was seeing an apple fall from a tree. The inspiring apple could hardly have been the first one to ever fall, and it can be reasonably assumed that at least some of the previous falling apples had been observed by humans during the hundreds of thousands of years our species has existed on Earth. Since Newton was already an adult when he experienced his great epiphany, it's reasonable to assume that he'd previously observed apples falling without realizing the profound significance of what he was seeing. The potential inspiration had always been there, waiting for someone to notice. It required a special frame of mind to suddenly see what he, and everyone else who ever witnessed an apple fall, had overlooked before.

Our uniquely structured brains are our most defining feature, the part of us that makes us unlike any other species. Imagination allowed us to create our own means of escape from the primitive world of our predecessors. It allowed us to create a rich mental landscape of arts and literature, and was largely responsible for creating the wealth and prosperity of human societies.

An unfortunate paradox of successful societies is that they tend to attract ruling elites intent on exploiting them. Those elites tend to find the imaginations and creativity of their subjects a threat to their power. A regressive residue of the proto-human primitive world, authoritarian rulers have typically sought to restrict and control - if not suppress outright - these uniquely human aspects in their subjects. The Chinese Emperors, for example, were so effective at suppressing the imaginations and creativity of their subjects that they managed to stall further progress in China for thousands of years.

Many totalitarian regimes have attempted to manipulate the creativity of their subjects by aggressively controlling potential sources of inspiration. However, the nature of creativity makes external control problematic. It's far easier to suppress than to guide as the chronic failures of innovation in totalitarian societies have repeatedly demonstrated.

Human history is in many ways an account of the competition between inherently anarchic creativity and authoritarian attempts to control it. This conflict has been ongoing since the first modern human started imagining a different way to see his world.

Paradoxically, it has been creativity that has created ever more effective means for authoritarians to impose their arbitrary will on the products of creativity. The question we face today is whether we're willing learn from the mistakes of the past, or whether we will allow the primitive residue of authoritarianism to restrict and suppress the imagination and creativity that defines us as modern man.