Skip to main content

The soul's purpose in creativity


“The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.”

Daniel Defoe


Creativity in Western Society

I worry when I look around me at the lack of creativity in our Western society. Now in order that I can articulate this correctly, it goes something like this. Our western society encourages individualism and pre determination, it has to, because it is what the whole basis of democracy and capitalism is based on. The economy encourages individuals to think outside of the box so that they will flourish as independent economic leaders. It stops here though, because an individual cannot think outside of the box when their soul is not nourished. The soul is the essence of the individual
and in order for it become individualised and healthy, it needs to be creative. Our Western culture seeks religion to satisfy the growth of the soul and therein lies the problem. Religion does not feed the soul, nor can the answers be found there. Religion serves as a community support system, but it wrongly purports that in order that a soul is to be nourished, it will be religion that will be able to do that.

I look to the Communist states and the renouncing of religion and I see incredible writers, poets, philosophers, engineers, filmmakers come out of these states. Russia has produced a phenomenal amount of important creatives; the names are too many. Has the fact that this society asked individuals to look into themselves for creative purposes, as opposed to looking to religion made this a point of difference? Religion has a place and a stance, and I'm not making any comments on the economic viability of one system over another, I am simply commenting on the formation, creation, development of the soul, and if religion is really a necessary element in the fostering of this. I think not. The soul is the essence of every individual human, and the soul needs to be nourished and the only way that it can do this successfully is through creative practice.  Eliminate the creative practice from a human, replace it with dogmatism and didacticism of sorts and the soul diminishes.

We are after all, individuals because of the individual soul that we do have. The soul is the essence of who we are. Vanilla is an essence of the cake that gets prepared, it is a small part of the cake, but a very important part; it gives the cake flavour, character, an individual quality that 

A Soul Brought to Heaven, William Adolphe-Bouguereau-1878  distinguishes it from other cakes. That is the soul. What happens to the soul when we die then? Well, the blueprint of the soul remains, call it the legacy, the creativity that had been made, formed, played with in life. For the cake, it is the recipe that lasts. The analogy might be a little far fetched, but I see similarities.

So, as with the vanilla essence, one's soul is the final element in the formation of the individual. Take the vanilla essence away and the cake is bland, take the soul away and the individual is bland.


I strongly feel that this is why there is such a major problem with creativity in the Western world. Too many people's souls are not nourished enough. Religion cannot be the sole feeder to the soul.  Art, dancing, films, stories, can and will suffice nicely, and even better for the soul is when the individual embarks on a creative process to make these all happen in some form or another.  If creativity became a natural part of everyone's life then life would be different.  It doesn't matter what that creativity looks like for each person, but it should exist as a priority, it is after all, food for the soul, and the latter, a diamond in the making.








Stella Dimadis
July 2015   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

"Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. "   Corrie Ten Boom Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker, who had helped many Jews escape during the Holocaust, was a prisoner and then a writer.  She held many memories, no doubt, fears; images that would stay forever and haunt her, but they were able to unlock a future for her that she would never have imagined.  Her writing and her boldness initiated her knighthood by the Queen of the Netherlands, The King's College in New York City named a new women's house in her honour, her book "The Hiding Place", was  made into a feature film, twice. Locked away in our computer hard drives are examples of our work and lives that we lock away when our computer sleeps, forgetting about their importance because we are always told to focus on the now, forgetting about our past.  Well, perhaps it is time that we also learn to love our past, regardless of what it was like, so that we can understand what our...
Post a Comment
Read more
  Apocalyptic Art 'This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper." T.S Eliot For centuries, artists and creatives alike have depicted the Apocalypse, which is the fantastical, unimaginable end of the world and all life on it.  At some point it is going to happen, maybe about 5 million years away when the sun burns out, so perhaps it is this truth that has artists thinking of what this end may look like.  Since it will happen, down the track. Recently it has felt like humanity was in the midst of it with the advent of Covid, but also with the devastation that climate change has been and is inflicting on the land and people globally.  It is very easy to start to think of the end, grim as that may sound. When I had created yesterday's art piece, even though I wasn't happy with the art work, I was very much intrigued by the colours in the background which reminded me of an apocalyptic feel, vibe.  So today's challenge I set ...
1 comment
Read more

Silver Linings Playbook-Cinematography

Cinematography "Photography is truth.  The cinema is truth 24 times per second." Jean-Luc Godard. It comes as no surprise that I made a point of watching 'Silver Linings Playbook', directed by David. O Russell for the one and only  reason that Bradley Cooper is the lead.  I admire his ease and fluidity as an actor in front of the camera, coupled with the control that his eyes muster with each line of dialogue that he delivers.  'Silver Linings Playbook' revolves around Bradley Cooper who plays Pat Solitano, a teacher with Bipolar disorder who has been released from the psychiatric hospital, under the care of his mother, Jacki Weaver and his father, played by Robert De Niro.  He is determined to win back his ex wife, but in the interim meets Tiffany Maxwell, played by Jennifer Lawrence, a recently widowed sex addict who tells him that she will help him get his wife back, providing he enters a dance competition with her.  It is a feel good story by ...
Post a Comment
Read more