At One with our Creative Ideal: Paper-in-a-Post

Just as the sun's rays flow into the figure and become part of his being, so also is the light of creativity an element within every individual, illuminating his soul and urging him toward his dreams.




 

While the Internet and other digital media resources certainly facilitate collaborative efforts and provide a worldwide stage whereon creators can display their work, the creative process remains a largely individual endeavor, as evidenced in Ayn Rand's landmark novel, The Fountainhead.

 

While it will be noted that a vast multitude of history's great thinkers developed and tested their ideas at least to some extent in social spheres, the ideal of creation has always been more so about self-actualization than about yielding to the opinions of others. Rand brilliantly expresses this idea in The Fountainhead through Howard Roark's non-conformist architectural style and unwillingness to compromise his creative integrity. For Roark, architecture is not about pleasing a customer or accruing public acclaim but rather about maintaining one's innovative integrity and staying true to the identity of the creative work as an entity. Peter Keating, whose career represents the diametric opposite of the Roarkian ideal, yet described those who compromise their creative ideal in yielding to others' opinions as follows:

When you meet them, they’re not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict–and they call it growth. At the end there’s nothing left, nothing unrevered or unbetrayed; as if there had never been any entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass.

 With the birth of the Internet and other digital media resources, we have seen how ideas in their infancy can take on a certain vitality of their own as projects garner support from enthusiasts and collaborators, but at its heart, every creative endeavor represents a piece of the creator's soul. One must first discover it within oneself and then breath life into it through pen or paint. Only then, by virtue of his creativity and willingness to sacrifice, can the Promethean creator set the world afire with his creation. Dr. James Montmarquet, author of "Prometheus: Ayn Rand's Ethic of Creation," remarked that "[t]he architecture of the mind is conceptualization and consciousness; conceptualization is at the heart of any cognitive advance." Ultimately, creativity is a manifestation of the human soul and intellect, and the Internet is simply a facilitator of that creativity, a vehicle through which the creator can express and share his work. The ideas of others will, of course, serve their purpose in shaping a creator's ideas, but the creator must find within himself the courage, integrity, and confidence to go forward with his labors, pursuing his dreams even when everyone else tells him that he can't. 



Digital media resources do not, in themselves, cause people to become more or less creative. There is no magical link that upon clicking makes people suddenly burst forth in song or pen a line that captures the enigma of the human soul. Nor is there a website that instantly drains a person of all sense of creative vision and compels him/her to post pictures of cats with misspelled subtitles. Rather, the Internet gives mankind the ability to enact his creative visions by providing access to both the resources and audiences necessary to realize his specific creative endeavors.

Stella, a friend of mine, explained this idea, saying, "New technologies have no power to change who people are at the core. If you could somehow objectively measure pure 'creativity,' I don't think the internet would change what's inside of people."

What's really inside of people -- inside of every individual -- is the ability to think and to create, to call forth a little piece of our imaginations or our dreams into reality. We don't have to chase after the age-old aspirations of our grandfathers or follow the trends of our neighbors and friends, and it just doesn't make sense to waste our time living out someone else's second-hand dreams when we might, with a little effort, attain that which we ourselves desire. The stage is yours, and now, more than ever, you have the tools to realize your creative dreams -- the Internet, the wisdom of the ages at your fingertips, and a wealth of other digital media resources ready to augment your creative abilities.

So, if there's been a song rolling around in your head for a while or a line of poetry that's been haunting you, let it free. All you really have to risk in it is finding yourself and perhaps helping someone else to do so as well. Let me know about the dreams you're chasing.