The valuation of intelligence and creativity

One of the interesting trends in human history is the growth in power of mankind and as a result the growth in power of individuals. Look at music which originally was passed on by hearing directly, so one had to go to the original creator or someone whom he taught to enjoy a piece of music. Standardized written musical scores allowed for the storing and distributing of music, and circulation was greatly increased by the advent of the printing press. Any well trained musician can perform any piece of music that he can get the notes to. Music began to become scalable.

The inflection point came when Edison first copied "Mary had a little lamb" onto a wax cylinder over 100 years ago. Suddenly, the performer was absent from the performance and the quality is limited only by the quality of the microphones and the speakers. Technology has moved from wax to vinyl to radio to tape to cd to mp3 to the internet. The performer can record a song and have millions of people listen to it only a few days later. More than that, musicians don't need to have any real technical skill (though most do) as modern synthesizing programs and sampling have moved us from a paradigm of performance to a paradigm of musical taste and ideas.

Originally, the power of the musician to delight an audience with his creative idea was limited by how many people he could crowd in a room. Now this power is limited only by the quality of the idea and the number of people online which will soon be everyone who has the money to afford the rapidly decreasing price of connectivity. Thanks to technology, the power to affect a large number of people has become very cheap and is firmly in the hands of individuals with ideas.

This effect of the growth and ultimate individualization of power can be seen in many areas from military power to knowledge to sermons to books and behind it all the power of ideas to affect multitudes. Essentially we now can "move mountains with a joystick" as long as someone has a really good idea for how to make that joystick. So the key now to power is the idea and technology will take care of the rest.

The idea, then, is all that really matters, and only parts of the person are valued that can create ideas: intelligence and creativity. It is by those values that we hold highest that we also begin to value people in our society. So I think most people today find their value in whether or not they are intelligent and creative. I think this is the reason why some of the gravest insults in the modern world are to insinuate that one may be stupid or un-creative for it is akin to saying that they are without value to society.

First, I believe that these are ultimately two very, very morally ambiguous virtues, and as such should be low on the totem pole. Take the always classic example of moral depravity, Hitler, who was intelligent and quite creative in the way he made war on the rest of the world and was incredibly efficient at killing people. Intelligence and creativity can be used for completely evil purposes. I think we could all attest to this in our own lives as I am sure that as we all wrestle with our flesh we wish it were quite a bit stupider and not quite so creative in the ways that we are tempted.

Secondly, I think that intelligence and creativity even regularly deliver what they promise. How often has a creative idea simply come off poorly or something that seemed so intelligent be simply foolish? All the time consulting companies are hired and though abounding in intelligence, lack the experience to develop good solutions. And often when we are creative we create something new that just isn't as good as what we had before or in fact the act of being re-created caused more problems than it could ever improve.

Finally, if we do adopt these ideas as the last vestiges of human value, they will soon be obliterated and the technology that we have created will become of greater value to us than we are ourselves. That may sound far-fetched, but let me provide an example in line with my original discussion. Recently, a computer program has been developed that can produce highly convincing mimicry's of Bach chorales and other classical pieces. Here are two examples:

Bach
Chopin

So what will happen when computers and technology finally control those last strongholds of the need for humans? Well by that time I hope that we have a great practical theology of the men and of persons ready to respond.