Is Creativity Contagious?
You might have heard the news this week that suggests that obesity may be socially contagious. It may have come as no surprise to you that such a thing might be true. It certainly comes as no surprise to me.
In the reports, it’s made clear that the attitude about obesity, not the obesity itself is what becomes contagious. If ideas and attitudes are contagious, wouldn’t that mean that creativity could be contagious? That’s something I thought about this evening.
There are a lot of projects going on at work right now. Some of them have some tremendous creative energy backing them. I think that energy is contagious. It makes others in the general area (myself included) want to put a little extra into their work to make it fresher.
The energy is certainly contagious, but what about creativity itself? I’m inclined to think not as much, because to me creativity is not really a learned or transmitted trait. Overall, you’ve either got it or you don’t. You can exercise your inborn creativity to strengthen it, but it seems hard to develop it if it’s underdeveloped to begin with.
The danger of contagious creativity, for me anyway, is seeing the fruits of what’s going on around me and thinking, “wow, I want to make something like THAT.” Well, that’s certainly not very creative, is it?
What do you think? Is creativity truly contagious, or is it just the energy of a moment that people share that sparks creativity?
[tags]creativity, contagious obesity, creative energy[/tags]