Creative Case

Humans going throughout their daily lives on autopilot occurs more often than we’d like to admit. Most of us can agree that when we enter a coffee shop and order a coffee the likely conversation that is to be had between the customer and employer will be something along the lines of “ Hi how are you?” followed by, “ I am good” you can finish the rest of the scene in your mind because it is so conventional. Is this conversation in fact really an experience we are aware of and engaging in? Or, is it simply human beings continuing in a thoughtless manner?

This is a situation in which Lonergan would encourage us to be more aware of our actions and environment, and, to ‘be attentive’ to the experience. Carley writes: “ Consciousness, in Lonergan’s scheme is not standing back and taking a look as if one were a spectator at the parade of life.”( Carly CP,p. 31) Instead of reacting by spewing out an automatic sentence, take in the experience, ask yourself how you’re actually feeling and embrace the presence of engaging with another. Being more conscious of our experiences is the first step in expanding our consciousness according to Lonergan. We can expand further into intelligence, to gain insight and understanding, by asking questions such as what is it? ,why is it? After contemplating ‘what’ and ‘why’ we then proceed to the relatively significant level of rationality and reflectivity by asking is it so? Am I correct? Finally, we come to the conclusive level for Lonergan, the level of morality, where we then must take on the responsibility to decide, act, or express.

Simply the act of attempting to execute Lonergan’s levels pertains quite a bit to the concept of creativity being both a dance of discipline partnered with freedom. We as humans are able to perceive our experiences as we like, thus the freedom. Whether organically or with more of a rigid structure, the way in which we perceive experience can range from obliviousness to hyper analysis, depending on the ‘subject’. Applying Lonergan’s levels to our daily lives takes both some practice along with control, just as any other creative medium. In order to apply Lonergan’s method we must cultivate our minds to do the work. “ Creativity also imposes restrictions. While it uses methods other than those of ordinary thinking, it must be something that sooner or later, ordinary thinking will understand, accept, and appreciate”. (Carly,CP,p.34)

Discipline and freedom may be thought of as a synthesis that lends itself to creativity, similar to the synthesis of our left and right brain. In ‘Is it true that creativity resides in the right hemisphere’ Hermann writes: “The left hemisphere was shown to be logical, analytic, quantitative, rational, and verbal, whereas the right hemisphere was revealed to be conceptual, holistic, imaginative, and non-verbal. Thus a classic dichotomy was born.” ( Hermann. CP,p.59) He