
What is it that makes us human? What separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom? Hell, the rest of life?
Your first instinct might be to answer, “emotions.”
But research shows that’s not necessarily the case. Increasingly, we’re seeing that other animals are, in fact, capable of a wide variety of emotions. Increasingly, scientists are finding that sentient beings are also, to a degree, emotional. What if the answer lies not in the emotions themselves, but in one of the ways in which we humans express and process them?
Honestly? I think creativity is what sets us apart. Not emotion.
Artistic creativity, specifically. Creating images and telling stories through a variety of abstract mediums to reflect and comment on the human condition. Studying what it means to be human, what it means to live in the world.
The good, the bad, the ugly. The cruel, the heartbreaking, the achingly beautiful.
Art gives us the means to explore these ideas in a way no other organism can.
It’s one thing to feel the gamut of human emotion. In any given day, we are prone to anger, joy, fear. We are simultaneously capable of jaw-dropping awe and existential dread. We stare into the sky with the same reverence we gaze at our loved ones.
We ask ourselves big, impossible questions—and many of us spend our entire lives trying to answer them.
For some, that leads to a life of science. Devoting our limited years to discovery and the pursuit of the next. For others, we look inward. We take life’s impossible mysteries and we examine them in a different way.
Fiction speaks to us in ways the real world cannot. We face truths we would otherwise ignore, so long as they’re packaged in narratives that transport us out of our lives and suck away hours from our day. We lose ourselves in novels. We stare longingly at intricate paintings. We pause and sit with the way a lovingly crafted poem hits us in the heart.
We mourn death when words fail us. We grapple with the notion of love, even as the concept itself eludes our admittedly primitive understanding. With art, we look not at the surface, but we dig underneath.
We try to understand the incomprehensible.
We crave meaning in a world stubbornly devoid of it.
I’m often fond of saying fiction is the weapon I wield against an unjust world I’m powerless to change. Humans are capable of terrific, awe-inspiring things, but even we have our limits. There are mysteries, cruelties in this world we’ll likely never make sense of—not without art, at least.
We study cave scratchings and medieval architecture not only because they make us feel, they give us insight to those who came before us. They teach us about where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re headed. Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets revealed the human condition—showing us the ways in which we have both evolved and stagnated.
I take such a keen interest in creativity not only as a consumer—as someone who enjoys movies and books and paintings and music—but as someone who thrives in creative pursuits. Sure, I’ll likely never be an international bestseller, and chances are my work will never be adapted to the screen (big or small), but I seek and derive meaning through the act of writing.
Even in writing a piece like this.
Humanity is fascinating and perplexing in equal measure. We are capable of both inspiring good and disheartening evil. But we are also capable of beauty that can only be felt, not explained. We are capable of exposing realities both comforting and disturbing—and we’re intelligent enough to understand we need both.
Because intelligence is at the heart of creativity. Not intelligence the way our education system measures it. This isn’t a case of rote memory or successful test-taking or the ability to recall and apply provable facts.
This is emotional intelligence. Creative intellect. The ability to understand what we don’t understand, and to know that exploring the indecipherable has to be done in a much different way than how we explore the moon or code a computer program.
Science and mathematics and history and engineering show us the how of the world.
The arts show us the why.