Have you ever noticed how quickly we label people in society? We label them stupid, dumb, creative, brilliant, or genius, but have you ever stopped to consider which is which before making that call? In fact, we are all guilty of creating stereotypes, even if we claim not to be. That is, we make observations of people by categorizing them fairly regularly, despite our disdain for labels and the fact that we would never say anything outside the scale of political correctness out loud.
Looking at this, we notice that people are often labeled as creative, almost as an excuse for their behavior. “Oh, it’s creative.” Sometimes we stereotype someone as creative for a piece of art, song, poem, or design. “That’s so creative, she’s brilliant.” Perhaps, you have noticed the reviews of plays, movies or novels and the word brilliant is used by all the critics to label the play, the actor or the writer? Are they really shiny? And what is the difference between a creative person and a brilliant one?
In fact, I would tell you that all humans are basically creative, once they learn to think. Unfortunately, we train people to memorize and then sit and watch television for hours a day, surely this reduces the creative nature of a human being. Fact memorization, knowledge gathering, and rewards for getting a correct answer on a test can all hurt the creative mind. Perhaps that is why when we see a student who is doing poorly in school, but comes up with interesting or brilliant things, we say; “Oh, he’s creative,” as an excuse for his low test scores.
However, creativity is something that all humans have and they have a lot of it, so being creative is nothing special, although most people perceive it, perhaps because they have lost their creativity through social conditioning, upbringing, etc. or the bombardment of the media. Interestingly, we label people smart or intelligent if they are aware of the latest information from the media and have the answers to all the trivia questions. But remembering facts and figures is only one part of intelligence, there are about 7 or 8 different tests of intelligence and having a lot of data stored in your head is only one of the skills.
Actually, a smart person would do very well on the tests, but the really smart ones would also have a bit of cunning. Cunning is a form of creativity, and it shows intelligence in other ways. So really, a creative person is someone who has one set of skills and a smart person has the other set. Very intelligent people have both sets. And bright people can wear both sets very well. Genies use these abilities to their fullest. So this seems to be the difference; at least in our current period and in our current society. The dictionary may have a different set of described values, but the current context is what’s important here.