Where does our creativity come from? Our ideas, thoughts, poems, stories and all. What makes one person more creative than another? Is creativity a product of our environment, upbringing or life? Or is creativity something innate, something we are either born with or without. These are some of the questions discussed in Isaac Asimov's "Those Crazy Ideas", and Alice Walker's "In search of our Mother's Garden". .
Alice Walker and Isaac Asimov have two distinctly different theories on the subject of creativity. Both authors offer a convincing argument as to where a person's creativity stems from, although I tend to agree more with Walker's theory. Asimov's theory is basically that a person must be very intellectual to possess a greater level of creativity. He states five criteria that a person must meet in order to be creative. The five criteria are that the person must be broadly educated, intelligent, intuitive, courageous and lucky. However, what does luck really have to do with being creative? The word "luck" in itself is contradictory to the word creative. How can a person create something by luck? A person might stumble onto an idea, but this is not, in my opinion, a sign of creativity. Education doesn't have much to do with a person's creativity either. If a person must be educated in order to be creative, is that to say that a young child cannot be .
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creative? Is that to say that a child or adult would gain more creativity through higher education? I think not. Now perhaps intelligence does play a role in the creativity of a person. Being able to understand things allows you to create things. However a person doesn't necessarily have to be educated to be intelligent. .
Walker's ideas and theories seem to be more logical. Walker theorizes that people, and more so the black woman, are creative through their environment and the experiences they have had. That creativity stems from a person's everyday activities, chores, experiences, and above all their spirituality.