Ethical Ripples of Creativity and Innovation

Seana Moran

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137505545
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

If we are going to promote creativity as an ideal to strive toward, shouldn't we make sure we also instil ethical anticipation so our creative contributions produce a better world rather than chaos and waste? Creativity drives cultural development. We all, directly or indirectly, collaborate in the creation of culture, and we are jointly responsible for the way that culture develops. The goals and decisions we make as both creators and adopters pave pathways into the future for us all. Instead of merely reflecting on past events, Ethical Ripples of Creativity and Innovation educates for 'proflection'—through cases that present what-might-be scenarios for creative contributions that are emerging into mainstream culture, stimulating real-time thinking about creativity-in-action.. This book offers the opportunity to strengthen ethical anticipation by considering the possibilities streaming from current creative offerings that affect our bodies, emotions, selves, and social interactions.

Part I

Creativity Plus Ethics Anticipates A Greater Common Good

1

Origins

Is creativity good or bad?

In the early 21st century, we call on creativity to save lagging economies, solve intractable problems, and offer up entertaining gadgets and lifestyles. We voraciously consume the latest devices, fashion, music, foods, apps, travel destinations, and ideas. We’re terrified of not being in the know, behind the times, or perhaps worst of all, obsolete. But creativity was not always held in such high esteem. Where do some of our feelings about creativity originate?

Greek mythology portrays humans who attempt to reorder the way things are as being punished for their hubris. Icarus flew too close to the sun and fell to his death as his wings melted. Prometheus taught humans to use fire and was condemned to birds pecking his liver painfully forever. Sisyphus’s clever trickery consigned him to a fate of repeatedly pushing the same boulder uphill. If humans had an idea, it came from divine inspiration, the muses, or our moral spirit – a genie (from which the more positively toned “genius” is derived) or daemon (from which the more sinister “demon” is derived).

Literature depicts creators as parents of abominations, arrogant and destructive loners, and rejected weirdos. In Frankenstein, the creation struggles for approval, yet is too different to be accepted into society (Shelley, 1818). In The Fountainhead, the creative architect is portrayed as inflexible, willing to destroy his own building rather than have its purity tainted by others (Rand, 1943). In Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the bird with his new aerobatic way of flying is shunned by the flock, but faces the scorn by returning to teach the others the power and joy of flight (Bach, 1970). In The Giver, alternative ideas are anathema to society as no other options beyond what already has been agreed upon as good are allowed to be thought – only one person in the society, isolated from all others, is the keeper of options from the past, which remain unshared (Lowry, 1993).

History texts recount the triumphs of the few “genius” creators and their creations, such as guns and the atomic bomb in warfare, rule of law and democracy in government, ethics and logic in philosophy, money and markets in economics, perspective and abstraction in arts, genes and the unconscious in sciences, algebra and calculus in mathematics, or the light bulb and airplanes in invention. But primary sources from these geniuses’ own eras illuminate creators’ struggles, such as Galileo and Copernicus with the Church, or the Impressionists with the Academics in art. Furthermore, individuals and groups whose ideas were not accepted have been left out of this “official” record of the past.

Yet, these descriptions of creativity from the past leave us without practical tools for how we ought to think about novel contributions as we encounter them in our lives now. How can we make good judgments about innovations – as creators or users – when they first emerge? The tenets we rely on to judge conventional contributions may not apply to novel contributions. As creativity changes cultures over time, even innovations considered positive at their introduction can lead to long-term negative consequences. For example, understanding bacteria developed antibiotics that save many lives but also led to biological warfare and more virulent bacteria with antibiotic overuse. Or, mortgages allow more people to own homes but also lead to personal bankruptcies and societal financial crises. Conversely, innovations initially criticized as destructive to society – such as slave emancipation or the printing press – eventually were given high regard. Even at the time of introduction, an innovation can differentially affect individuals or groups – for example, those who have a new work-reducing appliance and those who do not, those cured with new treatments and those without access, or entrepreneurs enriched by the computer revolution and workers replaced by robots (Moran, 2012).

Creativity stimulates cultural development

“Creative” has been attributed to an increasing array of individuals, groups, tasks, occupations, processes, environments, ideas, products, and more (see Moran, 2009) to such an extent that it’s difficult to discern creative from uncreative. Furthermore, as creativity has grown in economic value, the levels of creativity have expanded into a spectrum from “mini-c” personal understanding through “little-c” everyday creativity to “big-C” eminent creativity featured in history books. I do not dispute the various venues or levels of creativity, which I’ve discussed elsewhere (Moran, 2015a, 2015b). Instead, in this book, I and the student authors take a developmental view of creativity. Development focuses on the unfurling of potentials into qualitative changes that increase the capacities of a system. In this case, creativity is an endogenous mechanism for cultural development.

Creativity references an individual’s or group’s contribution to culture that includes a shift of meaning. This meaning-making occurs first by an individual, then is shared with others, some who adopt it and some who reject it. Eventually, the shift may become the new, socially agreed-upon meaning among cultural members (see Bourdieu, 1993; Glaveanu, 2011; Moran, 2009, 2010a, 2010b, 2015b; Moran & John-Steiner, 2003; Valsiner, 2000).

What is at first labeled creative – novel and surprising with potential usefulness (Bruner, 1962) – becomes an innovation when introduced to others. An innovation is a potential tool for renewing some aspect of the culture. If this innovation survives the gauntlet of gatekeepers’, critics’, and adopters’ judgments and is found actually useful (Rogers, 1962; see also Moran, 2015b) within the political, economic, and social affordances of a particular time period (Moran & John-Steiner, 2003; Simonton, 1996), the innovation may become the new cultural norm, worthy to perpetuate to future generations (see Moran, 2014b, 2015b). We may attribute creativity to a person after the fact, as the perceived cause of creativity. But creativity is not something we are, it’s something we do. It is an action that instigates innovation, which develops the culture anew. This view of creativity highlights that creativity is systemic, the system it affects is culture, the effect is by way of meaning development, and the mechanism is via social diffusion.

Creativity is systemic. A system comprises connected parts that interact over time. These interactions lead to dynamics that “move” the system into qualitatively different states. Creativity comprises many systems. Based on Vygotsky’s developmental theory (see Moran & John-Steiner, 2003) and Gruber’s (1988) evolving systems theory, we adopt agreed-upon meanings from adults or artifacts in our culture. Our purposes, emotions, and knowledge interact to formulate metaphors, insights, and other tools that help us weave learned concepts with imagination into creative thought. Increasingly, our personal experiences develop idiosyncratic senses of how the world works. We may share these senses – as personal opinions or insights – with others, who may accept them and pass them on to others (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988, 1999; Moran, 2009, 2015b) through conversation, publication, or symbolization. For example, current social media make these processes more visible and quicker on digital platforms than previous media.

The system affected is culture. Culture comprises the customs tilled and guarded by a group over time. These customs differentiate the group’s behavior from other groups’ and creates a “bank” of behaviors for future situations that we may encounter (Hofstede, 1980). Customs accumulate through our adoptions from each other of habits, beliefs, and the like (Shweder, 2008). As we interact regularly, we come to share a common set of meaning-making frames. We are all contributors to our culture by continuing valued traditions, often organized through institutions, and by expressing potential improvements to our shared way of living (Moran, 2009).

The currency of culture is meaning. Meaning imbues our experiences with significance, understanding, and a foundation for interpreting later similar experiences (Park, 2010). Culturally agreed-upon meaning instills value that is both personalized and socially sharable – via language and artifacts. Shared meanings can build into collective norms, which make relationships more predictable (Olivares, 2010; Valsiner, 2000). As we develop, the meanings we accept from our culture become habitual. Our contribution is helping to perpetuation the culture by “carrying” cultural knowledge in our minds and behavior.

Of course, we are not mental clones of each other. In any group, variation results from idiosyncratic senses of experiences. This diversity of meaning-making gives rise to uncertainty in social relationships – we aren’t really sure what others think (Valsiner, 2000). Most people address this uncertainty by adapting accepted cultural meanings as “good enough” tools for understanding others or by seeking leaders to make sense of ambiguity for them (Mumford et al., 2014).

Creativity contributes new meaning to culture. But sometimes, we may problematize the uncertainty. We consider culture’s current ways of addressing a situation as inadequate (Kaufmann, 2004), and we forge our own different sense to restore our personal coherence about our lives (Park, 2010). We may share this idiosyncratic sense with others. Sharing introduces the novel way of thinking into the culture. Our way may alleviate others’ uncertainty (Proulx & Heine, 2009). Or it may increase others’ uncertainty by showcasing misalignments within the culture (Moran, 2010c) and starting a ripple effect of further sense-making (Moran, 2009).

Creativity turns a cultural tenet into a variable – it can open culture to multiple meanings (Moran, 2014a) as the various ways individuals “make sense of” these meanings compete for attention (Rogers, 1962). Creativity does not require an actual product – simply changing the meaning of an existing object, such as a rock becoming a pet, is sufficient to start a cascade of meaning change. Another example is the notion of “service.” It has changed tremendously from personal servants like a lady’s maid, to specialized marketed services like hairdressing, to trade services like plumbing, to professional services like medicine, to digital services like social media sites.

Creativity requires acceptance and adoption. Creativity launches innovation, a social judgment process by which cultural members decide the new contribution’s worth. An idiosyncratic sense’s value is assessed by comparing this new contribution to the culture’s norms, capacities, and alternatives at the time (Moran, 2015a). As contributions are accepted, they enrich the repertoire of capabilities and tools by which all of us in the culture can respond to relevant future situations (Vale, Flynn, & Kendal, 2012; Valsiner, 2000). The culture has developed.

At least a few open-minded, tolerant individuals, who are willing to try something before its implications are fully known, are helpful to spread an idiosyncratic sense to even more people (Moran, 2010a). These tolerant “innovators” and “early adopters” help later adopters see the forest for the trees: they shepherd the novel contribution through the trees of individual anxieties to help later adopters visualize the forest of future benefits (Jaques, 1970; Rogers, 1962). Without this early shepherding, the novelty may not spread, and then it cannot develop culture. It becomes an error or a fad that withers away (Moran, 2015b).

Then, the novelty enters the mainstream culture, which is composed of most of the culture’s members. Even if we do not instigate cultural development as a creator sharing an unusual personal sense, we still play an important role in renewing culture as adopters. We judge others’ contributions when we make purchases, hire employees, vote, join organizations, invest, and learn. These seemingly small acts aggregate to the cultural value of a contribution. As part of this ripple effect, we contribute, in some ways, to a “social activism” by accepting new ideas and meanings that indirectly can alter social structure (Moran, 2010d). For example, the expansion of what constitutes a “person” over time has led to abolition of slavery, women’s right to vote, pets viewed as family members, lab chimpanzees argued as liberated beings under the law, and corporations having individual rights.

Creativity involves time and relationship. Judgment and adoption take time as individuals adjust their attention, interest, and investment away from tried-and-true options toward the novel contribution. Surprise at the novelty may stimulate interest, but judgments of usefulness often require recommendations, simulations, or actual use. Immediate technological usefulness is easier to decipher than social and cultural usefulness. Radical innovations are most difficult to judge (Garcia & Calantone, 2002), and often it falls to the creators to persuade others of a novelty’s value (Bourdieu, 1993). Adoption rates can be uneven as some of us are more open to innovations, whereas others won’t change unless forced to (Rogers, 1962).

Furthermore, adoption can become more difficult when novel introductions come so fast that we don’t have the opportunity to “digest” and stabilize past contributions to refer to for judgme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I  Creativity Plus Ethics Anticipates A Greater Common Good
• Part II  Gadget Controllers
• Part III  Body Shapers
• Part IV  Emotion Tuners
• Part V  Self Definers
• Part VI  Social Connectors
• Index