The creativity myth

---

Reading Practice Test 1
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Q u e stio n s 1-14, which are based
on Reading Passage 1 below.
THE CREATIVITY MYTH
A. It is a myth that creative people are born with their talents: gifts from God or nature. 
Creative genius is, in fact, latent within many of us, without our realising. But how far do 
we need to travel to find the path to creativity? For many people, a long way. In our 
everyday lives, we have to perform many acts out of habit to survive, like opening the 
door, shaving, getting dressed, walking to work, and so on. If this were not the case, we 
would, in all probability, become mentally unhinged. So strongly ingrained are our habits, 
though this varies from person to person, that sometimes, when a conscious effort is made 
to be creative, automatic response takes over. We may try, for example, to walk to work 
following a different route, but end up on our usual path. By then it is too late to go back 
and change our minds. Another day, perhaps. The same applies to all other areas of our 
lives. When we are solving problems, for example, we may seek different answers, but, 
often as not. Find ourselves walking along the same well-trodden paths.
B. So, for many people, their actions and behaviour are set in immovable blocks, their 
minds clogged with the cholesterol of habitual actions, preventing them from operating 
freely, and thereby stifling creation. Unfortunately, mankind’s very struggle for survival has 
become a tyranny - the obsessive desire to give order to the world is a case in point. 
Witness people’s attitude to time, social customs and the panoply of rules and regulations 
by which the human mind is now circumscribed.

---

C. The groundwork for keeping creative ability in check begins at school. School, later 
university and then work, teach us to regulate our lives, imposing a continuous process of 
restrictions which is increasing exponentially with the advancement of technology. Is it 
surprising then that creative ability appears to be so rare? It is trapped in the prison that 
we have erected. Yet, even here in this hostile environment, the foundations for creativity’ 
are being laid; because setting off on the creative path is also partly about using rules and 
regulations. Such limitations are needed so that once they are learnt, they can be broken.
D. The truly creative mind is often seen as totally free and unfettered. But a better image is 
of a mind, which can be free when it wants, and one that recognises that rules and 
regulations are parameters, or barriers, to be raised and dropped again at will. An 
example of how the human mind can be trained to be creative might help here. People s 
minds are just like tense muscles that need to be freed up and the potential unlocked. One 
strategy is to erect artificial barriers or hurdles in solving a problem. As a form of 
stimulation, the participants in the task can be forbidden to use particular solutions or to 
follow certain lines of thought to solve a problem. In this way they are obliged to explore 
unfamiliar territory, which may lead to some startling discoveries. Unfortunately, the 
difficulty in this exercise, and with creation itself, is convincing people that creation is 
possible, shrouded as it is in so much myth and legend. There is also an element of fear 
involved, however subliminal, as deviating from the safety of one’s own thought patterns is 
very much akin to madness. But, open Pandora’s box, and a whole new’ world unfolds 
before your very eyes.
E. Lifting barriers into place also plays a major part in helping the mind to control ideas 
rather than letting them collide at random. Parameters act as containers for ideas, and 
thus help the mind to fix on them. When the mind is thinking laterally, and two ideas from 
different areas of the brain come or are brought together, they form a new’ idea, just like 
atoms floating around and then forming a molecule. Once the idea has been formed, it 
needs to be contained or it will fly away, so fleeting is its passage. The mind needs to hold 
it in place for a time so that it can recognise it or call on it again. And then the parameters 
can act as channels along which the ideas can flow, developing and expanding. When the 
mind has brought the idea to fruition by thinking it through to its final conclusion, the 
parameters can be brought down and the idea allowed to float off and come in contact 
with other ideas.