The Creative Spark:  How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional, by Augustín Fuentes

It is often the case that writers know far less than they presume to know about the subject of creativity.  There are a wide variety of reasons for this.  For one, few people are interested in looking at the history of how creativity has been viewed by others, how it has been conceived, and how recent of a phenomenon it is to be focused on, all of which may be one of those trade secrets of a field that wants to view itself as being far more ancient and worthy than it is.  Connected with this is a tendency that is common among contemporary authors, particularly those with scientific pretensions, to attempt to connect various aspects of creativity with evolutionary speculations (rather than recognition of the imitatio Dei of creativity).  As a result, books like this are all too common and not particularly all that worthwhile because they feign a knowledge that they do not possess and do not give credit where it is due, as a result, this book is certainly neither as a creative as it thinks it is nor does it do a good job at capturing the nature of creativity.

The author begins this book with an overture that talks about the trumpeting of creativity, something that is fairly common.  After that the author looks at the supposed “first creativity” of prehistoric mankind with a discussion of creative primates (1) and humanity’s place as the last hominem standing (2).  The author speculates on how humanity got to be creative on making weapons like knives (3), the creativity involved with early killing and eating (4), the beauty of standing in line (5), and the way that humanity accomplished food security (6).  It must be admitted that not all human beings at present have food security thanks to the insecurity of their political leadership, though.  The author then turns his attention to how human beings shaped a world through war and sex, talking about the creation of war and peace (7), the immense human creativity when it comes to sex (8), something the author is quite disgusting about.  After that the author turns his attention to three aspects of human creativity that supposedly created the universe, namely religion (9), art (10), and science (11).  It is clear where the author considers truth to lie based on the order he talks about such matters, giving religion short shift as is so often the case among writers who fancy themselves to be scientific.

We can learn about others to the extent that they see certain things as creative.  The author has a great deal of interest in evolutionary speculation and trying to divine truth from contentious bones and assumed prehistory.  He writes a great deal about sex, and fails to understand the nature of moral pollution that we see in the sexuality of human beings (and animals) around us at the present time.  The author also clearly is not someone who views himself as being religion even if his view of science is as totalizing a worldview as any religious worldview he understands only in the shallowest of evolutionary perspectives.  Obviously, given this lack of understanding, the author is going to bring with him defective views on art and morality, which shows though this book.  Admittedly, this book is somewhat entertaining, but in the way that monkeys throwing garbage around is entertaining, not in the sort of entertaining that helps people become better or that genuinely explains how it is that human beings acquired creativity.  One is not going to find such an answer looking down rather than looking up, after all.