What if Creativity really is meant to be the central theme of education, social progress, global sustainability, innovation and human brain development? If so, what would we possibly risk losing if everywhere across the country, everyone participated in a weeklong scheme to engage their own creative ideas from how they will reuse their trash and natural resources, to how they might sanitize and decorate their town’s streets and buildings, or cultivate empty land, or implement devices for example, that would support electricity poles to withstand tornadoes and hurricanes, and even be  impervious to the effects of flooding?

In the workplace employees can unleash ideas they’ve been harboring, such as how paper can be reconstituted over and over again without ever going to the recycle plant, or refurbish an office’s interior with greenery for a stress free working atmosphere, or how beneficial it might be to plant fruit trees on building tops to provide free treats for all in-house workers. What if an atmosphere of creativity actually contributed to more efficient workers and citizens?

What if all schools threw out the tyranny of a curriculum for a week? What if boards of education gave teachers the liberty of exercising creative control in the classroom for the subject they are responsible to teach their students – just for a week? What if students were allowed to help design lesson plans and each take a turn to be responsible for administering a lesson in their own creative ways? What if students who believed they were dispossessed of any creative elements were creatively stirred to at least try a new way of learning and studying?

Would the country fall into chaos and disorganization? Would students suddenly and dramatically fall behind and be academically damaged for life? If such an endeavor proved to be completely fruitless and useless, well we could just go back to doing things the way we’d always done them, and never again entertain the idea of letting creativity be so rampantly unleashed.

But what if this scheme churned out unimaginably brilliant ideas from all corners of the country, from folks in both low and high places, from the famous as much as from the infamous – would we be able to cope with that, or would it be too much of a leap for us?

Would we suddenly become frightened of our own creative potential, or would we realize how creative thinking really is the venue for advancing human progress, igniting innovation and solving problems? What if we just did everything completely different for a week – would that still count as a pursuit in creativity? What harm could really come from allowing creativity to flourish for a week?

Perhaps, we ought to seriously indulge this diversion in the form of a national holiday, particularly because most holidays are derived from historical or religious events with little change in their traditions, which in turn negligibly change our progress. If creativity is certainly the hallmark of human intelligence skills, why has it taken us so long to create a tradition that celebrates our most potent potential? Honestly, what could possibly run amok except outlandish competitive creativity? It could happen! Let’s stop for a moment and be truly honest – why do we need creativity? First of all, it’s the best way to learn – but there are even more pressing issues.

Humanity everywhere is abuzz about human progress, change, advancement  improvement, liberation, democracy, independence, peace, quality of life and freedom. How many dot-org’s do we need to create to find ever more ways to feed the hungry, heal the hurting and destitute, educate the poor and forgotten, protect the innocent from the ravages of war that they never picked a quarrel with, or convince world leaders to shake hands without backstabbing? Are we really changing, or are we just sharing a few resources while world problems sneak around to redistribute their adverse effects in some way or another in any vulnerable nook and corner and cranny of our planet? If that stream of adverse distribution is really our doing, then what are we really doing about it?

Technology keeps promising answers and we’re constantly told how creativity is the fire in the belly of innovation. But is creative innovation in technology really holding the key to peaceful and prosperous human progress? For instance, the field of Brain Science proposes to develop technology that aids afflictions of the brain, or amplify our dormant powers of telekinesis and telepathy. But if the brain is fundamentally equipped to do these things, wouldn’t it just be better to cultivate the brain’s natural potential to do these things?

The unequivocal key to changing and improving humanity is to advance our minds. Humanity has survived and thrived because of our creative capabilities. Brain science and technology can do nothing to improve our minds. It is our minds that affect and improve our brains, and anything else for that matter. What’s more important to acknowledge is that creativity is distinctly indigenous to the human mind, which in turn supplies the brain with much-needed-information required to produce a creative idea.

Only the mind can change the way the brain works, and only creativity can supply the mind with the ingredients to make the mind a functional asset. Technology and medicine might eventually provide remedies to reverse and prevent degenerative illnesses of the brain, but have we ever stopped to wonder if it is the human mind that generates our brain and therefore, holds equal power to degenerate our brains when our minds are restlessly suppressed due to a lack of developed creative thinking? Sure, genes never lie, and there are genes showing greater dispositions to aggravate degenerative brain illnesses. But minds are also influenced from generation to generation – as much as the material and various functions of the brain affect the construction of cells and tissues. So while the mind influences the brain, so will the mind and brain affect the development of cells that become earmarked in genes.

The human mind’s capacity, and need to create, is dependent upon our exclusive human ability to imagine. Imagination is the invisible cellular component of creative thinking that makes it possible to transmit mindful ideas into substantial realities of 3-D
proportions. In between all of the challenges of human progress – as well as the motivation to improve global relationships, share resources and be freely creative in every fun and fancy way imaginable – is the asset of the human mind. Creativity is a non-optional element of genuine human progress. Creativity is needed for more than just art, culture, music, problem solving and innovation in technology. Creativity is needed to keep our minds and brains sane and healthy – it is needed for the sake of higher human brain development.

Yes, we have made advancements, and shrunk the world with global travel and communication, but are we anymore sophisticated in our attempts to recruit our creative minds? How much have we really upgraded its 40,000-year-old, say 0.02 version of overall potential, for all of our capabilities, especially where human relationships are concerned? We still have war, poverty, destitution and loneliness. We are just recycling them more technologically, as surely as we keep trying to implement technology to salvage people from the same distresses that unrelentingly prevail.

Human progress requires the use of our brains. Our brains are dependent upon our minds, our minds are animated by our creative abilities and creativity is completely lost
without imagination. All of those assets are priceless, but they are useless unless we can turn them into realistic endeavors that generate and animate every aspect of human progress ~ the humanities as well as technology, with or without funds and philanthropy.

An upgrade of our minds, from the 0.02 version to a 1.0 version that allows us to use all of our minds’ creative potential, would be best generated and fostered when imagination and reality are inseparable processes of human brain development. This equal set of attributes is assigned to a particular stage of cognitive development, wherein creativity can be best capitalized upon – when the mind is uninhibited and most prone to imaginative tendencies.

So while the entire country is spreading tales about the quality of early education and preschool development, perhaps the tale we ought to be spreading, and having an honest discussion about, is the value of the creative preschool mind as the foundation for everything. Why? Because preschool is the foundation for everything, and everything needs a higher grade of creative development, so clearly and necessarily, “quality preschool” needs to be upgraded and converted into creative mind development.

What if we did that? What if we really identified, reconciled, celebrated and reconstructed society for creative development, from the bottom up and from the top down – simultaneously? What do we really stand to lose in the process of tapping into, and exonerating the most exclusive aspect of our human potential that has been confined for so long – for the sake of liberating higher human progress?

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