What is Creativity?

Kim Jong Il said:

Creativity is an attribute of social man who transforms the world and shapes his destiny purposefully and consciously.

Creativity is one of the essential attributes of man, social being.

With creativity man transforms nature and society to be more useful and beneficial to him by changing the old and creating the new.

Creativity is an attribute of transforming things and phenomena of the world actively, purposefully, and consciously in conformity with man’s independent desire and demand.

Monkeys or chimpanzees get their food with stones and sticks and beavers make embankments to protect their nests with trees. Their behaviors are only the blind activities based on their instinct and therefore, there are no changes in their activities in the past and at present. However, man not only utilizes phenomena as they are but utilizes them by transforming the world actively, purposefully and consciously in conformity with his will and demand.

Creativity is an attribute of creating the new.

The most important characteristic of man’s activities is not the partial reproduction or change but the creation of the new that does not exist in ready-made forms.

Thanks to man’s creative activity of creating the new he can create the new things, the artificial things which can never be done by the nature itself. By doing so man expands ceaselessly his domination over the world.

Like this man becomes a being with creativity, the creative being because he transforms things and phenomena in the world in conformity with his demand and creates the new.

That man has creativity means that he has creative capability to transform nature and society in conformity with his will and demand. With creative capability he becomes the most powerful being in the world and makes creative activities of transforming nature and society to be more useful and beneficial to him.

Creative capability includes scientific and technological knowledge, experience and skill.

Scientific and technological knowledge is a social consciousness that reflects the essence and law of things and phenomena, methods and means to change them. By virtue of scientific and technological knowledge man can make creative activities of liquidating the old and creating the new. Of course man’s creative activities of liquidating the old and creating the new have relations with experience and skills. However, man plays no more decisive role than scientific knowledge.

In this respect, the main factor determining man’s creativity is said to be scientific and technological knowledge, which is, so to speak, creative capability of man.