The Value of Creativity and Sense
In November, the scientific conference ‘Psychology and medicine: the retrieval routes to optimal interaction’ took place at the Ryazan State Medical University, Ryazan. In these places you can find the mushrooms with eyes. It’s a joke of course. Candidate of Psychological Sciences Alexander Mikhailovich Lesin gave a great lecture on “The value of activity, or active values’, which was delivered with passion.
I’d like to add one note before we start, Milton Rokeach created the Value Survey (RVS):
► The terminal values present desirable end-states, which are in themselves important, like mature love, happiness, wisdom, a comfortable life, pleasure, freedom, true friendship and social recognition.
► The instrumental values present preferable modes of behaviour. We use them as means of achieving the common goals, like love, cleanliness, self-control, financial security and ambition and also intellectual prowess.
And now I want to share with you some intriguing facts based on those discussions.
1.To be well-educated and becoming intelligent is rather trendy as compared to educating oneself and getting wisdom. Nowadays the majority of students crave for education, and we can prove it with the studies that revealed ‘education’ takes the fourth-important point among the vital goals for individual in the instrumental tab. But if we take a look at another table — the terminal values tab — wisdom, or a mature understanding of life, takes only… 14th place. What is that? Is it commitment to hit the books, to study or just a desire to earn the degree? Is it the social status? We can say that’s only an hypothesis.
2. Our fear of conflicts promotes cognitive rigidity. As the intensity of our fear to confront with people grows, so does intensity of fear of intrapersonal conflict and inevitably our inability to resist inflicted values (extrinsic values) grows so far. In this modern world, the world of colorful and meddling commercial, a risk of having conflicts increases and it makes people to feel like marionettes. But don’t let’s ever be afraid, okay? Conflicts are a normal part of life and they are not in the least worthy of our fears. We are all different. And we learn how to find compromises.
3. When software had digitized data of the research material of A. M. Lesin, it divided into two groups by the selected values. According to the list of values these groups got the following names: “proactive innovation” and “non-active mercantile”. That’s funny. If creativity is important for a life of person, then we watch a person full of energy and of initiative. As many material values preponderate over spiritual, as there is less potential energy.
4. So, we can point out a regular pattern: if there is a creative person, it’s safe to say this individual has initiative and potential energy. And if a person takes initiative, then he can define the meaning of life. The meaning of life itself has the energetic characteristic, and at this point creativity takes a role of accelerator.
5. In the studies on values in 2000s “love” as a value correlated with such a group of values as honesty, loyalty, and family. The latest results (2016–2018) revealed that “love” correlates with such a value as financial security. Let’s not hurry to draw an inference from it, it sounds weird though. And other values as honesty, loyalty and tolerance are hardly in top-10.
If you want to add some drops of meaning and energy into your life: do wonders! Do everything in a new way, not as you’ve previously done! And let your love correlate with what you want to feel.
text Iliya Blagov
edition by Victoria Bikashova
edition in english by Bello Muhhamed
