The Power of Inspiration
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What is an original idea? We usually view creativity as being almost magical: an artist works by himself and all at once produces something that has never before been seen, a musician comes up with a melody that has never been heard, or an inventor pictures an object which has no connection with anything that came before. We regard originality so highly that depending on others can at times seem like a disadvantage. Yet I think the contrary is the case. Inspiration is not the opposite of originality, it is one of the things that forms the basis of it. A great deal of what people call "new" is in fact the outcome of taking something that already exists, looking at it in a different way, and turning it into something significant. Creativity does not always mean starting from nothing. It consists in creating new possibilities out of what has already been given.
The idea that inspiration consists of more than just admiring something is supported by psychological research. According to Todd Thrash and Andrew Elliot, inspiration includes three key components: it causes a person to have an idea or feel a certain way, that experience motivates them, and as a result they are driven towards something that goes beyond their immediate experience. The researchers believe that inspiration is linked to both creativity and motivation. To put it simply, although inspiration may start with something that comes from outside ourselves, it is up to what we do with it.
It is important to make this distinction since being inspired by something is not the same as copying it. Suppose a young artist sees a painting and is fascinated by its colours, they might then use similar colours in their own work, but put them in a totally different situation, express a different emotion, or combine them with techniques that they have picked up elsewhere. The original painting served as a starting point, but the second artist produced something that is their own imagination. Inspiration turns into creativity when the individual puts their own interpretation on what they have been inspired by rather than just reproducing it.
Actually, research concerning creative thinking indicates that creativity usually relies on prior knowledge. According to Thomas Ward's studies of creative cognition, creativity involves generating new and suitable ideas by applying fundamental cognitive processes to knowledge which people already have. These processes consist of retrieving information, drawing analogies, and combining concepts that were previously separate. This contradicts the common belief that creative individuals just get entirely original ideas spontaneously. Rather, the human mind seems to function more like a workshop: it gathers experiences, memories, observations, and ideas and then rearranges them to form possibilities that had not before existed in that particular way.
A clear example is to be found in the field of art history. Although Pablo Picasso is generally regarded as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, his artistic development was not entirely independent. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Picasso's artistic development was influenced by a number of sources, such as Iberian sculpture and African and Oceanic art, it was his contact with African
art that led to the emergence of the ideas seen in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, a painting linked with the origin of Cubism.
This example shows a fascinating aspect of creativity namely that influence can alter the course of history. Picasso did not merely copy the African artworks which inspired him; instead, he took in the visual concepts and changed them using his own artistic interests and experiments. At the same time, this history also serves as a reminder that inspiration must not be divorced from issues of culture, context, and respect. It is important when an artist draws on another culture to know where those ideas came from rather than pretending they appeared out of nowhere. Although inspiration can lead to something powerful, it also comes with a sense of responsibility.
The same principle can be observed beyond the field of visual art. Research into creative conceptual combination has shown that creative ideas can arise as a result of combining concepts, especially when people keep on revising and developing these combinations. A study looking at hundreds of ideas found that iteration the act of repeatedly working on and improving an idea played an important role in transforming combinations into more creative concepts. This is important since it implies that creativity does not have to rely on a single moment of genius; at times creativity is just about not stopping with the first idea.
What I find so exciting about inspiration is that an idea can start off on a very small scale. For example, a person might hear a song, see a photograph, read a story, taste a new dish, go to a new place, or simply notice some ordinary thing in their environment. This kind of experience can then serve as the basis for a different idea. The original source need not decide what the final outcome will be; instead, it acts as one of the ingredients.
That is also the reason why I do not think that losing inspiration means one has lost their creativity for good. It is possible for inspiration to vanish for a while. There may be a time when a person looks at a blank page and feels as if all the interesting ideas have already been used up. Yet simply because it is difficult to find inspiration does not mean that one's creative ability has disappeared. The issue may not be a lack of creativity but a lack of new experiences, different points of view, or connections. Since creativity in part relies on what we know and have experienced, getting to know the world provides the mind with more stuff to work on.The consequences of this idea extend well beyond individual artists; economies and societies too rely on their ability to improve upon existing ideas. Innovation usually results from combining knowledge from various fields rather than from coming up with a completely new and unrelated concept. Research into innovation has shown that recombining knowledge from different areas can lead to economic value, even though the process may also encounter difficulties and limitations. A new business model, technology, or product might therefore be affected by ideas that were already in existence many years earlier. Progress is typically not so much a straight line as it is a network, with one idea linked to another.
There's a philosophical question underlying all of this: Is it possible for anything to be truly original? Each individual is influenced by language, culture, family, education, history, the media, and their own personal experiences. The terms we use to refer to a completely new idea were already in existence before we were born. We inherit a vast amount of human knowledge and then incorporate our own point of view to it. If this is the case, originality might not need to imply having no influences on us; instead, originality could simply mean having a unique way of reacting to those influences.
The way I now view creativity is different: rather than asking "Has anyone ever done this before?", we might ask "What can I do with this?" The first question can make creativity seem out of reach since almost anything has a precedent of some sort. The second, on the other hand, opens up possibilities. For example, a baker can take an old recipe and alter the ingredients. A musician can find new ways of working within an existing genre. A student can learn from another person's idea and then present a different argument. An artist can study a technique and go on to express a completely different experience.
It isn't about standing in the shadow of another person's creativity to be inspired; rather, it is about letting something that is already there serve as the starting point for something new. The most interesting aspect is the change that takes place in the process itself. We get an idea, question it, alter it, combine it with our own experiences, make mistakes, improve it, and in the end produce something that includes a part of where we came from and also shows where we would like to go.
It may be that human creativity has never consisted of creating something out of nothing, but rather has always involved taking the elements we have inherited and then imagining all the other possibilities they might have. Although inspiration provides the initial impulse, it is creativity that decides what we build on that basis. In this way, being influenced does not mean that our ideas are any less original; instead, it means that creativity becomes part of a much broader human dialogue in which each generation draws on what the previous one has given, alters what it receives, and leaves something new behind for the next.
Works Cited
Chan, Joel, and Christian D. Schunn. “The Importance of Iteration in Creative Conceptual Combination.” Cognition, vol. 145, Elsevier BV, Dec. 2015, pp. 104–15, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.08.008.
Murrell, Denise. “African Influences in Modern Art.” Metmuseum.Org, Apr. 2008, https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/african-influences-in-modern-art.
Kaplan, Sarah, and Keyvan Vakili. “The Double‐Edged Sword of Recombination in Breakthrough Innovation.” Strategic Management Journal, vol. 36, no. 10, Wiley, July 2014, pp. 1435–57, https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2294.
Thrash, Todd M., and Andrew J. Elliot. “Inspiration as a Psychological Construct..” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 84, no. 4, American Psychological Association (APA), Apr. 2003, pp. 871–89, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.871.
Ward, T. “Creative Cognition as a Window on Creativity.” Methods, vol. 42, no. 1, Elsevier BV, May 2007, pp. 28–37, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymeth.2006.12.002.
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