Creativity as defined by you is the difference between the ever-advancing human race and a scruffy semi-upright ape-creature dodging lions on the African plains.
Thats exactly what I was thinking about when I posted this. Mans brain evolved back when he faced constant life or death issues. Besides eating and staying warm he had to figure how how to form a society, how to win wars, all aspects of science were wide open and most had not even been discovered yet. We could get by just fine with a lot less brain simply because we aren’t faced with the same kind of issues. Or do we really need to be creative to thrive?
That’s the definition of problem-solving, not the definition of creativity. Creativity is certainly involved in lots of problem-solving, but some solving of problems is strictly routine procedure-following, and some creativity doesn’t really involve solving a problem.
I think we have many more opportunities to be creative today than ever before. With so many new things there are more opportunities to use them in new ways, as opposed to 99% of people being peasant farmers who barely stayed alive doing things the old ways, and who did not have the resources to risk doing things a new way.
Look at the greater opportunities for writers - maybe lots of ebooks are crap, but they are examples of people being creative.
I can testify that creativity that works gets you more money - not sure about attractiveness to the opposite sex, though. Only members of the opposite sex who are creative and a bit odd. (My favorites.)
It is not that everyone is creative - many people seem happy just to go through life absorbing other people’s creative output, not making some of their own. But people who are creative can express it more easily now.
