Creativity and Deceit

At first, I would like to share my understanding of what Vygotsky said, which I think is interesting. From the title, the article seemed to mainly discuss the imagination and creativity in childhood, however, I think the underlying mechanism of the mental effort is not limited to childhood. Vygotsky quoted many adults' work as examples for his claims, including Riobt, Tolstoy and Pushkin and so forth. I could understand better with the instances of more sophisticated creative imagination activity, such as from works of literature. The elements elaborated in the literature are much more clear and obvious to grasp, while children have not reached the sophisticated ability to display their product.

As for two different developmental stages of childhood and adulthood, Vygotsky emphasized the different traits of mental competence. From the start, he stated that the compacity of imagination greatly depends on the richness of experience, Because imagination is a process of combining and operating with reality. Adults possess affluent experience than children, they are thus better in imagination. The conclusion seems to be contradictory to what we perceive in real life. Children are always known to be more likely to produce creative imagination. However, Vygotsky demonstrated the developmental lines of imagination and intellect, showing that as we grow older, our imagination ability increased and declined, but intellect/reason arose and maintained. It is reasonable that children's faith in factual elements or the product of imagination is much stronger than adults. They would not kill their naive ideas or imaginative products in the cradle and dare bravely express their ideas. I don't think adults would not do that, but those sparks are intentionally, or learned unconsciously, depressed. 

The competence if "think out of the box" determines the possibility of creating new things. From Vygotsky's words, the process of creation is based on dissociation and association of impressions obtained through perception. When we create something, we need to break the natural association of elements in which they were initially perceived. For children, if the best way to foster their imagination is to enrich their experience, in person or in a vicarious way. Then for adults, based on the prerequisite, it might be a supportive and friendly community, where every member is respected and feel free to express.

Another thing that crashed into my mind when reading the anecdotal that Tolstoy created a novel character by dissociating and reconstructing two people from his real life was that, good words, or say, deceptive can be deceptive. Tolstoy created an imaginary character and enrich it through vivid depiction. This kind of creation could lead readers to generate a specific impression of a character, an event or a place, which could happen in creative literature writing, or in real life. 

Writing is a reflective process of creation, based on our impression or imagination reality. However, the impression can be not authentic and the reality could be deceived by using skillful words and insinuating countenance.

I remembered most of my writings during elementary school life were about a monotonous theme, piano. I implement the rhetorical device to describe the process of my everyday practice, and my zeal of piano and intoxication of melody were depicted between the lines. However, I was clearly aware that I hate practicing piano. My interest faded quickly, what I had to do was to bear the boring tedious repetition. When I saw the writing topic was to describe my "hobby", I thought I could not say that I loved watching TV or playing computer games. Therefore, the composition of the piano was created in a purposeful way. Once the teacher read out my writing in front of the class, all my classmates trusted it and said, "Wow, you love the piano so much! I don't even know that." Awkwardly, I looked around and thought, "That is not true." However, I don't know whether it is true or not.

The creation of words can deceive people, or even deceive the authors themselves. Literature and the created space of imagination mobilize reader's sense perception, and thus, to some extent, knits an unrealistic world. Literature is always endowed given a beautiful space of imagination, even admirable moral hallmark. However, it is possible that we overlook its potential of deceiving or even serving the devil.