Creative Amputation: We're Cutting Off Our Ability To Be Creative

"I recently spoke with a friend and they asked me how I come up with creative ideas. I explained my process. Scouring the web searching for reference, the connecting of random ideas, the failed attempts at realizing what works and what doesn't. Then they asked me, 'No, I mean what prompts do you use?' That's when I realized... we are f*cked.”

Before you close this thinking, “Ah, another AI is bad rant'’. It's not. It's something worse. Much worse. It's about what happens when we forget how to creatively and critically think.

Let’s go back to the core of it all.

Part 1: How Creativity Works (in my opinion)

First, there’s understanding. This is when you actually grasp something through your senses. You see it, hear it, touch it, taste it whatever. Your brain’s neural network fully understands what you’re experiencing. Think of it like approaching a river for the first time that you wish to cross. You don’t know how to cross it yet, but you’re standing there judging the depth, strength of the current, looking for anything to help you cross it, maybe even dipping your toes in for a quick check. Information flows through you and you begin to understand what it is you’re trying to do. Then and only then, can you build from that understanding.

From understanding, comes relatability. Now that we’ve understood something, played around with it, grown to develop our own framework of it, we can now connect it to other things. Like a mechanic who understands fuel flow and combustion, then uses that knowledge to enhance the speed and power of their engine. You’re not just following instructions anymore, you’re making relatable connections.

Lastly, there’s the derivative stage. You’re now, so to speak, an engineer of your creative ideas. You’re creating alternatives, making them one of a kind. You’ve internalized the process enough to mold it into anything.

To sum it all up in a simple analogy, “Think about when you first learned to cook. You didn’t just downloaded a recipe into your brain and instinctual know everything. You burned stuff. You oversalted, overbuttered, overcooked. You watched the butter bubble and learned that medium heat might not be the best choice by observing it. That’s understanding. Then you started testing, oh wait, butter might not be the healthiest choice, what about oils? That’s relatability. Eventually you’re making your own recipes but with sriracha because why the hell not. That’s derivative. That whole messy process…that’s creativity.

Part 2: Murder Weapon

So how is creativity being killed, you ask?

Most creative output nowadays isn’t developed the way I described earlier. It’s instead enslavement to perception, how we want to be perceived rather than what we actually create. The vast majority of creative output today goes like this:

“Hey AI, what’s a creative thing I can do? AI answers, ‘Great!! Can you give me a few examples?’ AI answers, ‘Awesome! Let’s change these minor things so it’s not AI.’ AI changes details, ‘Hmmm, that’s not what I wanted but I’m not even sure honestly. I need to post today, so we’ll go with it.’ Downloads and uploads.

Do you see what’s missing? The entire process! No understanding, never standing at the river. No relatability, you never connected the dots yourself. No derivative, you never made your own recipe. You just, simplified and received.

Technology is amazing, I don’t disagree with that. But what used to be a true degree of having to spend time in your own thoughts, in other people’s work, in outlets that ‘manifest’ creativity, that’s all diminishing. Because the effort required doesn’t equal the value outputted anymore. In other words, spending 100 hours on something you love doesn’t mean shit.

And here’s the kicker, AI isn’t the villain here. As much as people want to bad mouth it like some forsaken angel, it’s here, it will only grow and either humanity embraces it as a tool or someone else will and eat your lunch. You know Chad, the one that also took your wife.

Part 3: The Cost

Deep down, nobody wants to admit it, but when you skip the process, you don’t just lose the output quality. You lose the ability to judge quality all together.

Think about it for a second, how do we know somethings good if say we never made anything bad? How do we develop taste without tasting something awful? You can’t just simplify your way to knowing something feels off. That’s earned through repetition and screwing up… a lot.

The world we live in is creating a generation of ‘creators’ who can generate but cannot evaluate. People can prompt a logo in 30 seconds but cannot tell you why it intrinsically doesn’t work for the brand. Or generate a million words of content but cannot spot why it’s garbanzo beans. They’ve got the output but not the eye.

And it’s getting worse. Everything is starting to look the same. Sounding the same. Feeling the same. You know that weird feeling when you read something and technically it sounds correct but feels bleh? That’s all becoming today's baseline. We’re homogenizing the creative process into this bland mushy middle ground because honestly and this is an opinion of mine (like all of everything I do), the vast majority of the world out there is average and AI is training on all of that average.

Sad reality is, the market’s rewarding this. Post daily or evaporate into the abyss of the internet. Again, ship fast or become irrelevant. That person spending 100 hours perfecting their craft? They’re getting buried by the vastness of who prompted 100 variations in an hour. Quality doesn’t trend. Quantity does.

We are watching creative muscles atrophy in real time. Every time you skip the struggle, you’re becoming a little less capable of struggling the next time. Until one day you literally cannot create without the crutch. You’ve become dependent on the very thing that was suppose to “enhance” your creativity.

Part 4: Grifter Economy

It is all over the internet. Every time your open YouTube, after a few videos in you’ll be bombarded with, “Let me show you this one simple secret that will unlock your full creative potential!” Here’s another one, “Do these creative tricks to earn $5,000/mo!” Honestly what a sack of garbage.

These videos prey on peoples insecurities and their cheap dopamine seeking brains. Consuming all their potential! They’re selling you the secret drug of creativity without the work. “Why spend weeks learning when I can tell you the secret?” They are teaching dependency.

Funny part, as I’ve known a few people in my life try and sell me on something “revolutionary”. You know those pyramid schemes? The world is full of grifters teaching people to use AI to create content about using AI to make money using AI. Recently I heard a friend of a friend say, they’re searching for a tutorial that will help them with their creative output. They found one tutorial and that course was $3,000!! Guess what, that course was no different than a free YouTube video.

This all works because our society has morphed our brains into low-effort dopamine seeking machines. We want the result or a secret, NOT the process. The destination without the journey. The six pack abs in 7 days. The million dollar business by age 30. The creative genius in one simple prompt.

Part 5: Uncomfortable Truth

Theres a difference between using a tool and becoming a tool. Having a chisel doesn’t make you a carpenter. AI doesn’t make you creative. The people who will win aren’t the ones who prompt faster. They’re the ones who understand WHAT they’re prompting FOR.

Think about this for a second, who’s going to use AI better? Someone who’s never struggled through the creative process or someone who knows exactly what they want because they’ve done it manually a thousand times? Someone who can’t tell the difference between good from bad or someone who’s developed an eye through years of making bad renders until they’ve figured out what good looks like?

The paradox is this, to use AI effectively for creativity, you need to be creative without it first. You need to be able to identify what it is you're looking for. You need to develop that muscle memory, that developed eye, that understanding of why something works or doesn’t. Otherwise, you’re just a monkey hitting buttons hoping for something that in that split seconds feels good.

You cannot skip the fundamentals. You just cannot. It’s like the all important saying, you cannot run before you crawl.

What Now?

It all boils down to, creativity is a muscle. Not some magical gift. A muscle. And like any muscle, it’s built through countless reps, through breaking it down and rebuilding it, through pain and failure and doing it again and again.

All these tools within AI and whatever comes next, they’re suppose to enhance what we’re building. But be wary. They’re wolves dressed in sheep's clothing, promising you the world while slowly making you forget how to truly create it yourself. The world is full of mechanisms designed to degrade your creative intellect, make you lazy, turn our brains into passive consumption machines. It’s our responsibility to not fall prey. To overcome.

The more you let something become automated that shouldn’t be, the more we become a vegetable. A consumer. A copy paster. Not a creator. Never a creator.

You have to earn it. Through understanding, actually grasping things with your own brain. Through relating, making connections nobody told you to make. Through deriving, creating something that’s truly and uniquely yours, even if it’s garbanzo beans. Even if it takes 100 hours for something someone else prompted in 10 seconds…

Keep exploring. Stay in your own thoughts, not someone else’s outputs. Wander religiously. Fail consistently. Try again and again and never give up. Because sooner than later, if you do the work, the real work, your mind will be in control. Not the algorithm. Not the prompts. Not the world around you telling you to optimize and scale and hack your way to some “creative success”

Your mind. Your creativity. Your work.

And yeah, it’s much harder. But that’s the f*cking point.