Creative technique series:
Creativity Uses the Power of Differentiation
Differentiation is the process of creating difference. This force is the primary force in the cosmos.
Creativity draws its fundamental power from Differentiation. What is Differentiation? Differentiation consists of a number of things:
-The drive of individuation, that is, the force which creates individuality produces details, particularities, variety, range, independence, and elaborates parts from initial wholes and thus creates complexity and non-hierarchical systems.
-Differentiation also creates change and the new and evolution because these are differences that take place across time. (While other differences are those that take place across ‘space’.)
Differentiation then creates the phenomenon of simultaneous evolution where we have one entity simultaneously at different stages of evolution (adults and children, advanced and developing nations etc.)
Differentiation splits time into an endless series of unique moments. Further it spits each moment into a contest of past and future to see which will prevail.
-Also, differentiation creates disorder, chaos, the unstable, the random, wandering, conflict, splitting
-More, differentiation creates duality or dialectic too. It splits all into opposites that are in endless struggle with each other.
-And as a result of these forces, differentiation produces the indeterminate, the inefficient, the non-uniform and more.
In human beings, differentiation is expressed as individuality, freedom, creativity, improvisation, rule breaking, seeking the new, seeking diversity and so on.
Undifferentiation
In the cosmos there is another great force. Undifferentiation is the process or drive to cease differentiation or stop difference, it is the opposite of differentiation.
Undifferentiation takes many forms from similarity to imitation, stasis, unity, organization, hierarchy, rules, models and more. Undifferentiation is against individuation, evolution, the new and change, duality and disorder.
Undifferentiation is essential otherwise we would not have organisms, organization or logical thought or theoretical systems or education or community institutions or government or economies or any unifying structures. Undiff provides structure, repetition, rules, commonality and so on -- otherwise no unifying method or institution would appear.
In the case of biology, you will see undifferentiation abounding in life – organization and stability, repetition as reproduction and so on. We could say that differentiation creates life, and undifferentiation sustains life; or we could say that the spark of life is creativity in a biological sense, and that undiff sustains creativity by allowing it to repeat, thus, the undifferentiation’s job is the repetition of living creativity. Diff creates and undiff repeats this biological creativity.
Human Creativity and Differentiation
For human creativity, differentiation is a set of perceptions and skills that include:
-Rule breaking
-Flash thinking, the imagination’s method of introducing a singular creative idea
-Personal freedom and the creative ego or drive
-The need to be different
-The need for diversity and the new
-Randomness
-Juxtaposition
-Recombination
-Negation, absurdity and humor
-Collecting
-Excepting
-Improvisation
-and many more behaviors
Add to this the creative need to break out of logical mind which is the kingdom of the behaviors of undifferentiation. Intuition, emotion, sensations, memory, subconscious and more help expand the perceptions and skills of differentiation. By entering the diverse inner world of multiple minds we break with undifferentiation and its fixed logic. All this is necessary for a successful creative process.
Undifferentiation and Differentiation Together
But undifferentiation skills are necessary to finish a creative project. One needs rules, models, memory, structure, logic, unifying themes and so on. Imagination and innovation however do not start with these methods or give primary stress to them. Differentiation is the primary force in creativity, creativity cannot actually begin in the realm of undifferentiation. Once the critical creative elements are devised then the logical mind can begin to play a role.
In the case of an improvisation, we have the creative mind leading and the logical mind quickly structuring the random elements of the imagination. In this case creativity still leads and logic follows, it is only that the time sequence is sped up and we have long serial chains of freedom and rule following, expression of self and suppression of self, randomness and building, creative flashes and the threading of them.
Differentiation is Primary
So differentiation and undifferentiation are sets of skills built into our neurology, each is necessary to make a creative product. But the key is know what the primacy is, what the bias is.
This is also true in the case of the world and the greater cosmos. Undifferentiation is NOT primary in society or Nature. Differentiation and its forces of individuality, evolution, duality and chaos erode all structures and rules. The products of undifferentiation have short lives; they erode, split, collapse and die. Human lives, human history, and the history of life on our planet shows that the march of differentiation does not stop. Undifferentiation merely gives us a temporary respite or a zone of retreat, differentiation like creativity keeps pushing and pushing without end.
Cage Innoye
Axxiad News