Text 15957, 39 rader
Skriven 2007-07-12 08:12:28 av strong.donald@gmail.com (2430.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 15930 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (2403.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: obsolete thousand year-old shadow ships?
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On Jul 12, 3:45 am, Kurt Ullman <kurtull...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>    I think that is one of the points. That creativity can also burn out
> after a while. Then that muscle begins to atrophy after you don't use
> it. There will always come a time when a race has just accomplished as
> much as they can.  Then it may be time to move lock, stock, and barrel
> to the next universe, galaxy or whatever lies beyond the rim.

You make a number of good points, but this is the one that's giving me
brain shock: the concept of a society-wide death of creativity is not
something we've experienced in the history of the planet, so it's hard
for me to imagine that any race that advances doesn't do so by drawing
from a wellspring of creativity.

The real question I'm getting at here is just how much you have to
know, just how big you have to be before creativity doesn't open new
horizions for you. The only reason the creativity muscle would atrophy
would be--as with any muscle--from disuse, and the only reason for a
race-wide disuse would be that it has become ineffectual for whatever
reason. Being creative no longer has enough payoff to be worth the
energy it requires.

We see this lack of creativity in individuals, and we also see
extremes of hyper-creativity--people who constantly need to discover
something new because life has lost its luster and everything becomes
dull far too quickly. As such, we can extrapolate either to the
definition of an alien race (or a handful of races), but what we can't
extrapolate--because nothing of the sort has ever existed in human
history--is a time when creativity is impossible, when thinking
"outside the box" not only doesn't net you anything, but *can't* net
you anything.

That's where the idea becomes mind-blowing, to me. All of the first
ones--not just the Shadows and Vorlons--have reached the limit of what
they can do within this galaxy. As such, I believe what they represent
is truly reaching a limit--walls on every side that nothing can
breach, whether it be creativity or rage or love. The only choice--as
you say--is to go beyond the rim and find new sky, new limits.
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
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