
The downside of being happy: creativity kindled by sadness - llovan
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/25/why-happiness-might-be-getting-in-the-way-of-your-artistic-brilliance/
======
vinceguidry
People conflate happiness with joy. I can be happy and sad at the same time. I
cannot be joyful and sad in the same instant, though I can flit between the
two rapidly enough to occasionally cause alarm.

What you want to avoid is misery. I banished misery from my life sometime in
my early twenties. I am unhappy somewhat often, but never miserable. Misery
means not seeing a way out of the circumstances making you unhappy.

I believe emotional health revolves as much in how you see your emotions as
which emotions you're experiencing. Reframing the emotions you feel can be a
quite powerful experience for those not too jaded on the woo-woo aspect of it.
"I didn't lose my girlfriend, we just weren't right for each other." If all
you do is reframe, and never do any real learning, then sure, you'll end up
miserable. But in general finding a way to reframe setbacks is a great way to
find the energy to keep moving rather than wallow.

For some people, creativity is tied intimately to misery; I believe that
people for whom their creative output relies on drug use are ultimately
deriving it from misery. Minds need to be in a loose, free state to mix
seemingly-unrelated concepts together. When one is truly miserable, they
cannot see a way out of their predicament and so mind naturally finds a way
towards that state. If they could see a way, then they'd focus on that way,
and having a single point of focus is pretty much the opposite of creativity.

The most prolific creators make a workflow out of managing their minds.
They'll tune out in order to become unfocused enough to get an idea, then
they'll focus on putting that idea to paper, or electronic media or whatever.
Good coders are well-attuned to such a workflow, but often don't think of
themselves as creative, perhaps because their output isn't immediately
pleasing to the senses. Artistic, maybe not. But creative? Absolutely.

~~~
tedks
There are certain culturally universal emotions; happiness and sadness are two
of them, but joy or misery aren't, and I've never seen this definition of
misery before in the literature. Is this based on your own framework and
anecdotes or is there a source for it?

~~~
vinceguidry
My own framework. When I outline stuff like this, I try to be careful to
situate them on easily-relatable concepts so that people who use different
words for the same concepts can work out what I'm trying to convey. Not being
a trained scientist, I can't really relate my own experiences to published
literature.

------
junko
My own experience led me to a slightly different conclusion.

I'm considered to be "creative" by my peers as I enjoy the arts and applying
them for practical use. Contrary to the article, I found that I was
significantly _less_ creative when I was depressed. What was extremely
frustrating was that it all felt 'stuck' \- you can imagine a composer letting
out his black-hole reservoir of pain and sadness in a stream of intense, out-
of-world music, a cry for the greater ... but sadly for me it was less
romantic. I just got stuck. Unable to speak properly, unable to write or draw
or express _anything_ for that matter. And yet it felt like I was ready to
explode.

Now that I've recovered and drawn a line to separate those demons, I can get
intellectual. One consequence of depression is too much noise; of bad
chattering and self cruelty and _emptiness_. Emptiness can also be crushing.
That could explain why I couldn't be 'creative' at all.

On the other hand, the author of the article mentioned a very good point:

 _> >Negative emotions appeared when they fell on hard times financially, when
their health became poor or especially when a close relative died._

But I interpret this slightly differently. Poverty gives pain but I don't
think this is the part that gives rise to creativity. I grew up in a very
rural area where there was nothing interesting to do like video games and
cinemas. That was when I was at my most creative _and_ proactive, like using
poor materials to make something really awesome and crazy. I prefer to call
this "resourcefulness" but thinking about it now, maybe that _is_ what
creativity is all about: the ability to transform something deemed to be poor
or average into another thing that is so much more than the sum of its parts.
It's a weird irony that when my family moved to a "richer" environment, I
found myself hopelessly stuck. Here are the things all laid out for me to draw
and model. Here are the information to do this and that. Here's an infinite
supply of paper. What a joykiller.

~~~
taurath
Creativity does spawn from constrained environments, as any game developer can
tell you. Most of the beauty in hacks or interesting ways of getting around
things is the context of limited resources.

I think people who are consistently creative can frequently either find an
environment that constrains them (a writer taking a retreat to the woods, for
instance), or tackles problems with existing constraints.

If everything in your life is going well and there's not boredom, there's not
a whole lot of purpose to creativity - you are however free to create
constrained environments. Burning man for instance creates a lot of
opportunity for creativity because its out in the desert, temporary, and must
be packed up or burned afterwards. Same with living out in the country with
few social connections. Its easy however to just get dragged down by
depression or just the dreariness of boredom when living out in the country
for me at least - there's a reason a lot of people turn to drugs in rural
areas (in the US at least).

~~~
epa
Can you expand that argument to work life - as in creative people may be
better at dealing with situations such as startups where a constrained
environment is often time and money. Are there trends that successful founders
often had prior creative outlets in their childhood more often than not?

~~~
taurath
The general trend that I've seen is that founders in general (successful and
not) is that they have a propensity for risk thats out of line with the
general population - frequently (in my anecdotal experience) stemming from a
strong sense of security and exposure to possibilities from a wealthy
upbringing.

------
okreallywtf
I find it odd how they seem to use depression and sadness interchangeably. I'm
not myself entirely sure where I would draw the line between the two though.
The most simple analogy I can think of is sadness can result naturally from a
loss (like the death of a family member or friend) that takes a natural course
that fades over time. Depression can be much more ambiguous and is not always
directly related to life-events and is sometimes rooted in mental illness.

Speaking of mental illness, I'm pretty surprised bi-polar disorder is not
mentioned at all in the article. I think its been fairly well researched that
bi-polar individuals (both today and before bi-polar was an understood mental
illness) can have highly productive periods (manias) that have lead to great
works of music, art, and science and oscillate with periods of depression.

I have known multiple people to fit this description (some diagnosed, some
not) and it would be easy to miss or not understand these cycles and think
that their depressive nature contributed to their creativity when its really
their mania cycles that produce the most.

Personally, my creativity takes a nosedive when I am sad or depressed, which
likely changes from person to person. Things that reduce depression also
increase creativity for me (exercise, sports, good food etc).

~~~
AndrewDucker
To me, sadness is when I feel sad. Depression is when I feel almost nothing,
the whole world seems pointless, and have no enthusiasm for anything.

_Clinical_ depression is when that depression has reached the point where it
needs treatment, is caused by brain chemistry issues, etc.

------
adamzerner
Perhaps I'm missing something, but on first glance, there are some things that
jump out at me:

\- Sample size of three.

\- Linguistic analysis. Perhaps they're not actually sad. Perhaps they just
happen to be writing about sad things.

\- Unrepresentative sample (they're all successful musical composers).

------
rm_-rf_slash
A few years back I was significantly depressed. Every day felt the same and
without meaning. Desperate for an outlet, I began to keep a daily journal to
remind myself that every day, whether good or bad, was a day in my life, and
therefore had meaning. The journal itself did not lift me out of depression,
but it helped me cope through those dark times.

Last year I met someone more dear to my heart than I had ever imagined. Nearly
every day since then has been of joyful bliss. However, I was enjoying myself
so much that I stopped bothering to record my journals for months at a time.
How ironic is it that in this time with so much meaning and so much happiness
and shared experience to record, I felt that there was no need to record it,
because I was having such a great time. Now I regret not having a reference
for us to look back upon.

The article may not apply to everyone, but to me, it certainly does.

~~~
junko
I can most definitely relate to that :)

I also kept a small journal (which I was very ashamed of!) when I was
depressed, and like you I found that it was helpful as it was at least a small
but very free outlet to express what would definitely be difficult to talk
about.

And I've also recovered :) And like you too, I don't keep a journal so much
now, in fact very rarely I'd write in it and come to think of it, it was
usually when I was very grumpy that I turned to it.

So I can't help but be glad that I don't have much of a journal now. I also
feel your conundrum with happy memories, but one thing depression has taught
me is to count every "now" moment as a blessing. I've a goldfish memory but
I'm very precious about remembering the _good_ emotions, like happiness, peace
etc, and that for me is enough. And enough to carry me forward and whack the
occasional blues. And anyway, I always find that we inadvertently store
memories, be it random phone captures, spontaneous scribbling, reminders of
cringey moments by friends and family ... as corny as it sounds, we're all
made of our past and we all love to share things. So no need for fomo!

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Actually I have consistently been updating my journal over the past month
after a long hiatus. Things are heater than ever, but keeping a journal helps
me keep on track with other things. It's like making your bed and brushing
your teeth every morning: if you're consistent with those things, you'll
likely make a consistent effort to do more than just coast from day to day.

~~~
bind
Can I email you? I'm working on interesting software that does something like
this and it'd be great if you could try it.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Yes please! I tried something along those lines but gave up after a while when
I got tired of making the app and just stuck with Evernote.

Here's the repo for the abandoned project:

[https://github.com/nikkoschaff/Sumer](https://github.com/nikkoschaff/Sumer)

------
thelazydogsback
What about a simple time-management explanation? When one is feeling
melancholy, one tends to also be anti-social - this leaves more time to focus
on one's artsy tasks.

~~~
mpdehaan2
Yeah I don't think there's a reason to perpetuate what is in the article. (I
also recall another study that found startup founders from broken homes were
more successful? yikes? I'm also calling B.S. Freudian analysis here.)

I'm probably more happy when I'm creative and am around creative people. I'm
sad when I can't be creative and don't have those outlets.

If you are having trouble with things, there are ways to get a _bit_ better.
Talk to someone, look into mindfulness about accepting current things more and
worrying less about the future (this is pretty great really), etc. And in some
cases you can take actions to make sure you're in a better situation.

I get a lot of good ideas from being around other people. Yes, you do need
time to implement them, but having a good feedback loop if you are externally
motivated is also a useful thing.

I think it's ok to want to fix the "being unhappy" part, and you can also be
creative along the way. We definitely don't want to perpetuate the idea that
we have to stay unhappy to be productive. Though this isn't always easy and a
lot of people are dealt really hard hands.

There are some good examples of some incredibly unhappy people that were
absolute geniuses (Van Gogh!) and also a lot of people that great creative
geniuses that aren't as tortured. These things are orthogonal. But there are
signs there's a lot of good things going on even when there are a lot of bad
things also going on.

Not to say you can't find some good things about being sad about something.
Developing empathy and caring about things is a pretty powerful asset. This
can cause people to want to do more positive things for the world, knowing
what it can feel like for them.

------
emptybits
From a _research_ POV ... the study focussed on exactly _three_ cherrypicked,
successful artists. It's a very small sample from a very different time and
culture than today. Can a conclusion with relevance to today be drawn?

If the goal was to give anecdotal hope or inspiration to the average "sad"
person today, then this is interesting. :-)

------
cryoshon
here, i will spell it out for you, as the article so carelessly evaded:

the nail that stands out is hammered down

people HATE those who are creative (don't bother with your counter-example to
my blanket statement; it isn't relevant) and make a mess out of them from an
early age. it also doesn't help that creative types tend to be eccentric; once
again, the nail that stands out is hammered down. being hammered down results
in depression/sadness that coexists with other difficulties like losing loved
ones etc.

~~~
rak00n
Thats true for Asian countries. Do you think that holds true for Western
civilization or Silicon Valley?

~~~
cryoshon
SV is just like all other subcultures: a dynamic equilibrium of proper social
signalling is necessary to be accepted and avoid ostracization. layer on
enough social overhead and independent thought has no cognitive space to
dwell. sure, that doesn't explicitly prevent creative people from excelling,
but it certainly chokes out or chills a lot of the people in between average
and brilliant.

stepping out of line is just as dangerous in SV as ever when people are trying
to mentally draw invisible lines between what is tepidly "disruptive" and what
is genuinely subversive or abnormal. the same could be said of the wider
american culture, in which certain segments value signalling of faux
"edginess" while still living in terror of actual contradiction of the status
quo.

what do these things have to do with creativity, you may ask? making new stuff
is perceived on some level as an attack on the old stuff-- and that old stuff
is held onto with a deathgrip.

------
paulcole
Somewhat related, but in _On Writing_ , Stephen King talks about the cliched
link between great artists and substance abuse. Basically he says in his
opinion it's bunk and a really damaging belief because it leads to substance
abuse and not necessarily great art.

~~~
bind
The creativity link demonstrated in the article isn't to substance abuse. It's
to sadness.

------
aleyan
Zhirinovsky, the populist leader of the LDPR party with ~20% of the seats in
the Russian Duma, put suffering and otherness at the center of creative
process. In his lament to Putin about the lack of cultural development in
Russia he said the following:[0]

    
    
        Why did Dostoevsky become a great writer? 10 years of hard labor.
        What conclusion do I draw? We must incarcerate.
        After being in jail for three, four or five years, a Dostoevsky will appear...
    
        [sic]
    
        The history of art and culture is developed by jail or by sexual minorities.
        We utilize neither today, therefore we don't have any great cultural creators.
        A straight person living in a luxurious Moscow apartment will not create.
        For creativity you need a trouble maker. A freak will create.
    

I don't subscribe to his views, but I do find his opinion relevant to the
article. Hope you are richer for having read it.

[0]
[https://youtu.be/Hl_VvgpwNMw?t=4m54s](https://youtu.be/Hl_VvgpwNMw?t=4m54s)

~~~
api
A friend of mine recently said something similar. He said that there's
basically no new music or movie plots because antidepressants and abundant
entertainment have killed everyone's muse by doping them up and making them...
well... too happy.

He said something that stuck with me too (paraphrasing):

"I was driving with my daughter the other day and listening to her music and I
was constantly thinking about how it was just like what I was listening to in
the 80s and 90s. That's perverse and wrong. Her music should be strange and
alien and vaguely alarming to me. I find this really terrifying. I am afraid
for her future."

I am not totally convinced of the suffering angle but I very much agree with
the second part. I find the lack of cultural creativity alarming as well, and
maybe as the leading indicator of a coming dark age or something.

~~~
Neeek
Creativity hasn't bottomed out, you're just not looking in the right pond. Of
course your huge money making pop label isn't going to be pushing the
boundaries of contemporary music, take a moment to go looking for something
new and alien if you're that worried.

The driving forces behind popular music, Hollywood, TV, video games even, have
never been larger. It's easier to just say their shadow encompasses everything
than it is to walk over to the edge and look out.

------
throwaway14694
I stopped making music some years ago after realising that everything I
created was driven by an endless dark hole, pure death. And only that. Was too
much even for me to listen and, hell, I'm not even a depressed person.

And I realised that even the most darker blues, or the greatest tragedy is
driven by some kind of light, by what they call redemption.

You fall down, you hit rock bottom, you see some light, you feel relieved,
maybe just a bit, but you do.

I felt like I just cannot see any light.

It's all about counterpoint, after all.

------
at-fates-hands
The funny thing is how prevalent this is in music.

The best example I can draw is James Hetfield. In the early Metallica days,
his writing was amazing. Dark, depressing, powerful. Then he decided to get
sober and nearly overnight he's creativity dried up and we got "St. Anger".
The albums since his sobriety have been mediocre at best and lampooned by
critics.

I have other examples, but this is probably the one that really jumps out at
me.

------
uf
Two thoughts. 1\. What is creativity? Keith Johnstone (whom I had the chance
to work with) in his work on theater improvisation adds substantially to the
definition of 'creativity': A work of creativity does nit need to be
'complicated', 'new' or 'extravagant'. Often the most simple thoughts and
actions are 'creative enough'.

2\. Is creativity linked to motivation? Motivation and resulting action is
U-shaped. While being not motivated at all will result in (nearly) no action,
both negative ("sadness", anger, hunger, etc) and positive motivation provide
a good basis for getting active. That may explain why being sad 'is better'
than feeling overall satisfied. However, positive motivation has a much
stronger impact. So instead of forcing yourself to be sad and miserable in
order to be creative (and god knows alot of actors exactly do that...), get
interested, 'catch fire' like we say in Germany. Results wil be the same or
better. And your overall quality of life, too. Just my 2 cent.

------
RankingMember
My experience is that being in a depressed state makes me want to do anything
to get the depressed feeling out of my body, which drives me to write/play
music/whatever it takes. For me, expressing the sadness/whatever negative
emotion I'm feeling can slowly chip away at it.

------
cesarb
Perhaps relevant, the TV Tropes page Creator Breakdown
([http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreatorBreakdown](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreatorBreakdown)):

"[...] and it would be hard to argue that angst can't help you make some
really good art. People who have something to work out through their
creativity also tend to put a lot of effort into making it good, if it's
concerning something important or special to them."

------
Iv
To paraphrase the author of Leftoversoup: "Every day I drive past a church
sign saying in big letters STOP SUFFERING. Every drive I pass it thinking
'Fuck you but no, I will do as I want. I have more important things to do than
stop suffering' "

Heh.

------
anders098
I am not happy because I am blocked by washingtonpost pay wall.

~~~
Kenji
Well, according to the article, that must be a good thing because you are now
more creative.

------
scastillo
I rather a positive title: "The upside of being sad: next time you are down go
create something"

------
free2rhyme214
This is true. How many ideas were created out of frustration? (Dropbox,
Airbnb, etc)

------
known
Happiness? Quite simple. Practice altruism.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Ain't called the blues for no reason

~~~
niccl
Like they said: You can't play the blues in an air-conditioned room
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR8qG2ErTRI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR8qG2ErTRI)

------
Karuma
Funny how every comment here is "I'm more creative when I'm happy!!!!!11", and
their creative output is probably just some phone app or a poorly written poem
that only your partner liked.

The article is talking about deep creativity. Things that changed the world
forever, that are still loved hundreds of years later.

No one will remember your two creative lines of code within a couple of
months. Stop comparing yourself with real creative geniuses.

~~~
ci5er
I'm curious: what do you find deeply creative?

For me, observing the world, it's the: "aha!" moment. Simply realizing that
this made some pieces fall together. When I discovered GAs in 1989, I had a
jaw-dropping to the floor, hit-the-library-right-now for 120 sleepless-hours
kind of moment. When I understood Moby Dick to be the American Bhagavad Gita,
I had a similar moment.

But, for when I, myself, create - it's been very rare. Probably because I am
not a creative genius. At best, I am a poly-something-or-other synthesist.
Applying Claude Shannon to evolution was about my peak.

I could say that my moment of creativity came when I was borderline losing it
- certainly unstable - maybe insane - probably not recognizably sad.

What is it like for you?

~~~
Karuma
For me it's about creating something so beautiful and unrepeatable that no
other human being could have ever created.

It's not about solving problems or finding more elegant solutions... It's
about creating something almost from nowhere, as if it were magic.

And it has to be unrepeatable. Beethoven himself wouldn't be able to create
the same piece twice. It's just that one-time miracle in a moment of
inspiration that you'll always look back in awe...

------
Kenji
Aah, the good old romanticising of depression makes it to the top of HN again.
You gotta make up reasons why depression is valuable, otherwise it would be
pointless to suffer, wouldn't it?

------
nether
Let's not forget that "X makes you creative" articles are bullshit.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916132)

------
dschiptsov
Happiness, defined as self-deluded positive attitude maintained by
confirmation bias and caffeine, is a mild form of stupidity.

Seeing things as they are, ideally without differentiating for "good" and
"bad", and calling things by its proper names is beginning of intelligence.

Joy, contrary to happiness, is a natural state (that's what makes children so
different), which has nothing to do with social and environmental
conditioning.

------
branchless
It's just a film but the counter-argument to this is well put forward by:
[https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/frank_2014/](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/frank_2014/)

------
ascotan
and the paywalls continue..

