Being creative often means being weird. It requires freeing yourself from the algorithms to be your original, unique, authentic self. We have to move away from the “template identities” in which our social networks try to plug us – as though any of us could fit a mold by answering a dozen or so questions about ourselves. And yet when it comes to creativity, too often, once a good thing comes along, it is copied, molded, and borrowed – our own creative ideas can become “algorithym-ed.” What becomes of originality when everything is copied?
David Gauntlett talks a lot about Lego in his book Making is Connecting. But I wonder about today’s Lego. Don’t get me wrong: I love Lego. I was a Lego kid and spent hours building, organizing, and creating with Lego. This is the Lego that I remember.
The Lego sets that my children play with today don’t look quite like that jumbled pile of bricks that those 80’s kids were so proud of building. They’re cool, for sure. They do things that my Lego never could. I’m afraid that consumerism, profit, and template identities, as Gauntlett explains “reduces our humanity to fit in with the requirements of a machine” and therefore, “we lose something of ourselves.” I worry that Lego has cost our children some of their own creativity. The things that children build look amazing. But today’s Lego is more of a kit that comes with complex direction manuals and every individual is building… the same thing.
I’m hopeful, though, that kids will be kids. They’re willing to play the game, follow the step-by-step instructions, and then, at least in my house, they tear it down, toss all the Legos into a big pile, and put their imaginations to work. They make weird little cars and homes that make no sense. They’re willing to be weird and wild, and that’s a start to creativity and originality.
Mom: Alright, Annaliese, tell me what have you built here.
Annaliese: I’ve built a home / jail
Mom: A home / jail? And what is this in the middle for?
Annaliese: It’s so, since this is a jail, so that everyone inside of here can’t get out.
Mom: So they can’t get out… Let’s turn this around here. I just wanted to see, oh, okay, and what’s this inside?
Annaliese: Someone lives on top of it.
Mom: Oh, this is the house
Annalise: yeah
Mom: and this underneath here is the jail.
Annalise: House. I meant, jail, house.
Mom: Jail, house… okay.
Dominic: … so, here I am building a library. This is the door and I just started.
Mom: you’re building a library?
Dominic: yeah.
Mom: with like, books?
Dominic: well, I don’t have books, just, I’m pretending to… that it does have books and I’m making an upstairs with some platforms.
