Creativity and Fear of Isolation

I have been reading a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.  In it he presents the results of his study of creativity via interviewing a number of people who he says have been “involved in the kind of creativity that leaves a trace in the cultural matrix” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). Madeleine L’Engle, Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Ravi Shankar, Benjamin Spock, and Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann are some familiar names among dozens of “creative” people who aided him in his work.  He cites a time in Elizabeth Neumann's life when her well-being threatened by an early death, but was healed through a homeopathic cure that “so improved her health that thirty years later she works harder than any four persons half her age. It seems that the energy of these people is internally generated and is due more to their focused minds than to the superiority of their genes” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 58).  I mention this because Mihaly is one of my favorite authors and I believe that there is a connection between creativity and willingness of a person (people) to resist conformity for fear of isolation. Fear flat lines creativity. I also am helped by his distinctive definition of  “creative”(above) that marks her work whether or not one agrees with the content of the work.

I would like to share an illustration from my religious setting: non-denominational charismatic flavor with distinct and rigid views on politics, social justice, and morality. These views are generally shared by a loosely joined larger national if not global group.

My young daughter wore a t-shirt to services one Sunday promoting the movie, “Amazing Grace,” and it looked very much like a t-shirt supporting Obama. The several women who approached her overtly ridiculed the politics they thought she was promoting. She said nothing in defense, but shared it with me. She was thought to be “out of sync with public opinion” on a micro scale in our church.  Am I correct in thinking this dynamic Neumann discusses also functions in this context?  Is this not the issue Bonhoeffer had with the state churches in Nazi Germany (Bonhoeffer, 1995)?  I believe she was experiencing the “pressure people feel to conceal their views when they think they are in the minority” (Griffin, 2009, p. 372).

 It would seem that if this “spiral of silence” (Griffin, 2009) is permitted to hold sway in a person (people), they must also suffer the loss of creative thinking and courage to change. 

References

Bonhoeffer, D. (1995). The cost of discipleship. Austin, Tx: Touchstone.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Perennial.

Griffin, E. (2009). Communication:a first look at communication theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.