The Nature of Creativity

The Nature of Creativity

Lewis Mumford examines creativity as a process running through nature, consciousness and human culture. Through art, religion and the experience of inspiration, he explores humanity's capacity to transform itself, then asks what happens when that capacity is channelled chiefly into machines, organization and consumption. Moving from the conditions of a creative life to the dangers of destructive power, he argues for a civilization directed toward human maturity, love and the renewal of life.

1. 0:00 — The nature of creativity
2. 1:25 — Why modern society struggles to create
3. 7:02 — The creative moment: preparation and spontaneity
4. 10:01 — Creativity in nature, inspiration and grace
5. 13:57 — Against the mechanistic picture of the universe
6. 20:50 — Creation, form and the forces of destruction
7. 23:53 — Human beings as creators of themselves
8. 29:07 — Transferring creativity to the machine
9. 31:15 — The automated future and the unchanged human being
10. 35:15 — The conditions of a creative life
11. 39:10 — Solitude, interruption and the inner life
12. 41:06 — Love and the creation of new life
13. 43:53 — Negative creativity, destruction and nuclear power
14. 47:53 — Self-knowledge and the possibility of human maturity
15. 53:09 — Turning our energies toward life
16. 55:07 — Why creativity cannot be forced

Lewis Mumford — 1 recording in the archive.

Related reading: Art and Technics by Lewis Mumford.

I am going to talk in a very general way about the nature of creativity, and I do it with a great deal of reluctance as well as diffidence, because in a certain sense creativity is a dirty word. Not dirty in itself, But because it has been treated the way democracy is treated by the totalitarians in the communist countries, it's been treated the way freedom has been treated by some of our own totalitarians; and it is suspicious because of the fact that it has been befouled by advertisers and industrial designers and other people with something to sell. And yet one must use it because words like love and democracy and creativity are precious because of all the human experience that stands behind them. Why should we be emphasizing creativity today? Why is it that a whole generous course of lectures is being given here on the subject? I think the reason for this is a little like the reason for emphasis on security. We talk about security day and night, security for the individual, security for nations, because we're full of anxiety about it. We know that we live in a very perilous age, that we might disappear overnight, that civilization might disappear overnight. if we approach one more brink too rapidly. We seek creativity in our time because of its very conspicuous absence, except in certain departments, which you can guess at, which I will in time name. We live in a society that has habituated itself to a grim routine; a society that has overorganized almost all of its activities, so that nothing can be done simply and directly and spontaneously, At the very least there has to be a tape recorder present, trying to immortalize and fix forever words that should have disappeared in the wind as soon as they were uttered. I just came from a two-day conference. I won't say where, among some very admirable, intelligent, able, keen people. There was a stenographer at the conference. There was a tape recorder. And believe me, in the course of two days, there were actually about 10 minutes when it was worthwhile having the thing on the record. The rest should have been left to fade out with our memories of the occasion. In fact, ours is a society that might be described as a society for the prevention of creativity. And that…