How Judging Others Makes Creative People Stupid
Creative individuals have a desire to better themselves and push through to the next level. Due to this impulse, and the fact that creatives tend to constantly observe the world around them, certain stereotypes and hierarchies can become apparent over time. Hopefully, being able to see different hierarchies at work won’t make you shortsighted and disdainful or snobbish of others.
It can be very easy to fall into the trap of judging people and having genuine opportunities pass you by as a result. One example is, you go to a screening where there’s bound to be a few actors and filmmakers in the crowd. What do you do? You pigeonhole the people you don’t know into boxes as “nobodies” and set your sights on talking to the most famous actor there, nevermind the fact that he’s surrounded by people. Little do you know, the friendly woman who just started a conversation with you is his agent.
If you’re a writer, you might tend to define people by their character traits and get upset when they deviate from them. As a visual artist you could attempt to assign people to a certain visual style and when they change their style you would be frustrated.
There’s a key difference between being an insightful individual and evaluating the world around you, and being a judgmental, negative person. Let’s say you were at a party, talking to some friends, and having a good time. You see a girl across the room who’s wearing clothes that are all 80’s throwbacks. If you’re the insightful type of person you might look at her and think, “Oh, look, she’s wearing a Member’s Only jacket and a Corey Hart t-shirt. She likes stuff from the 80’s. I wonder what her connection is to those pieces of our culture?” If you’re a more negative, judgmental type of person, you’d look at her and think, “God, she’s just riding the wave of 80’s nostalgia. What a poser. I’m so ready for this trend to be over.”
One of those scenarios might end with you talking to her, learning about her, and possibly even making a new friend or getting an idea that will feed you creatively. The other just puts negative energy into the party. You don’t want to be that person do you? No. Who has time for that?
Being judgmental gets you nowhere. It doesn’t help you advance in your career, it doesn’t help you make friends and connections, and it doesn’t make you any better of a person. All it does is puts you in a hole that you have to dig yourself out of. That’s time and energy that you could be devoting to making things. That’s momentum that you could put towards achieving one of your goals.
Being a creative individual is about making the world a better place. It’s about creating the stuff you’d like to see. It’s about turning a mirror onto culture and showing it what you see. That doesn’t have to always be positive but it should always be constructive. As a creative you should be looking and evaluating but not allowing prejudice into your assessments. That only sets you back. You want to be pushing forward. You want to be moving forward. You want to be striving to reach the next level.
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