How Populairty kills Creativity.

As my last post said, I’m running out of creativity as also of reasons to put the blame on. Being utterly jobless, I resorted to my 2nd most visited website (first being orkut I’m ashamed to admit). And I put creativity to search and this is one of the images which popped up.

It was so simple yet so true and enlightening at the same moment. Its my “wallpaper for a long time”.

Yes, Popularity is killing all creativity. Rather the popular media. TV, Internet, Cell phones, ipods, and all those things that keep you away from the real world.

I must make it clear outright that I’m not against advancement of technology. I’m glad there are these medium to bring people together, even tough it sorts of backfires at places.

TV from being a mode of disseminating information and a bit of entertainment on the side, has turned out to be this monster which has everyone and anyone addicted to it. Its worse than drugs. Yes, you may not watch TV, but you download all those series and stuff and watch them obsessively either ways. Here again, I must say some of them are really good- the TV stuff, but how can you watch them again and again and with such dedication? Reality TV is the worst thing happening to mankind. It’s the most distorted form of reality being fed to millions who accept anything that comes their way. It’s the most gruesome intrusion on privacy and a perfect example of how nobody’s business is everybody’s business.

Then there’s the internet. Second life, virtual reality, orkut and all sorts of networking, cool gizmo sites- all cool stuff man. But at what price? I’m sure there are more lonely depressed chronic schizophrenics now in the world than ever before. The internet seems to be the panacea to all our miseries in life. We allow the hidden monster to come to fore here. Take my own example for instance, years ago when I was bored or frustrated I was with friends (face to face conversations in the real world), reading books, and writing in my diary. Now I chat on gtalk or on my cell or I blog (I’m not complaining at all here). I’ve met some really brilliant people on the internet and met them in real life too. And I’m grateful for that. But then I hear so many of them call the internet their best friend and how they are married to the screen in front of them.

Then we have our favorites- cell phones and ipods. When I see people walking alone ( or even when they have company), they are chattering away on their cells or listening to their music on their players. What did people do when they didn’t have these? They just walked right? Maybe thought about life and stuff and came up with some great works of art and literature. All the man-hours spent on these gadgets- I’m sure takes away all the time share for grey matter to exercise. What if all those news items regarding brain and oral cancers due to usage of cell phones turned out to be true and not just a pile of rat droppings?

In the good old days, when there were no such media to “ bring people closer” I think we were better off. We had more time on our hands. We did our work, met people and had a good time and when we had leisure, we pondered and thought and thus philosophers came. It was a good time to have such people who devoted their life to think about the world and universe and life and birds and bees and humans and ethics and society and all those things that now we find easily on Wikipedia. Knowledge is power and we have it our fingertips, literally. But somewhere we are losing our imagination. Someone had once said ( I think it was Einstein) : Imagination is more important than knowledge. We’re losing that by the day. We have some creativity left, but it doesn’t seem all that refreshingly fresh. We are becoming a generation of androids glued to screens, every waking moment of their lives.

If we think of philosophers, most people, or atleast I would, think of Plato, Socrates, Nietzsche, Marx, Machiavelli, et al. I can’t recall any of the modern ones as such except maybe Albert Camus, Sartre and Bertrand Russel. And I’ve only just heard of them.
This list maybe helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Western_philosophers
Same of writers, http://gutenberg.net.au/greatest-books-a.html
Go to the end of the list and try to find out how many and how much do you know about them ( not that you’d know a lot about the old ones). And somehow if you see the timeline for invention and widespread use of technology and media-
TV- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televison
Internet- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
Cell Phones- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones
Ipods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod

- you’ll find some link between the lack of creative greats in this era and that of increasing dependence on such media.

I could be completely wrong in my opinions here. Maybe I’m biased in restricting creativity to writers and philosophers. Maybe I’m handicapped by my own lack of knowledge about today’s literary icons and intellectuals. Maybe these guys would be legends for the generations to come. But something tells me Shakespeare would still be more famous and acclaimed than Rushdie. And I’m sure really intelligent and widely read and omniscient persons will find this rubbish, but then hell its my blog :P. All I'm trying to convey here is that this age of " being connected 24/7" seems to rob us of any creativity that we could possess. I do not mean that the internet and others don't allow us to be creative. What I intend here is to point out that, there is an over-exposure to lots of attractive things on these media and we get distracted and are sucked into a whirlpool of instant entertainment and gratification and don't really sit down to to ponder and express and explore our own creative talents to the fullest. Well, that's about it, I guess. I have to wake up early tomorrow.