<p>From Online pre-test:</p>
<p>Given the importance of human creativity, one would think it should have a high priority among our concerns. But if we look at the reality, we see a different picture. Basic scientific research is minimized in favor of immediate practical applications. The arts are increasingly seen as dispensable luxuries. Yet as competition heats up around the globe, exactly the opposite strategy is needed.</p>
<p>Adapted from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention </p>
<p>Assignment:
Is creativity needed more than ever in the world today? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>
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<p>Creativity has and always will be one of the defining properties of human culture. Some may argue that the age of creativity has passed on into an age of science, but the fact remains that creativity is needed more then ever in our increasingly competitive, complex and constantly evolving world. On a practical level the forces of creativity in the 21st century will help developing nations, like India and China, compete with established industrial nations and on a higher level creativity will continue to flourish since the human desire to express through art forms is not only universal, but a necessity.</p>
<p>In his current bestseller, The World is Flat, Thomas Freidman examined the economics of the past decade and the developing century. Freidman concluded that the competitive global economic field has been leveled and developing nations like India and China could now compete with industrial powers in Europe and the Americas. In order for America to triumph and excel in this new century as we did in the last century the dams of conservatism must be breeched and a new flood of American creativity, ingenuity and innovation must be unleashed. In this new century creativity is needed in the business world more the never, both for Americans to succeed and for Asian nations to elevate themselves to the prosperity of developed nations. </p>
<p>As long as there are humans on the earth, there was culture, and as long as there was culture there was art, and since there has been art there has been creativity. This new century is no different then any other, art forms are constantly springing up all across the world. An example of a modern art form born out of struggle was both the blues and later hip-hop which was born from the blues. These musical forms were created in large part to the sentiment among African-American communities that had struggled through centuries of hardships and intimidation and their music was their outlet to express their feelings to the world. As long as there are people in plight there will be art to tell the world of their hardships, thus like in past centuries creativity will still be a necessary tools of ethnic communities.</p>
<p>Creativity was a beast born from humanity that will exist into the end of humanity. The forces of innovation and creativity will enable the shrewd to succeed in this brave new business world and creative forces will continue to empower supressed and embattled minority groups in the modern world.</p>