But a little shift back to an appreciation of the power of collective goals, to an ethic of care and maintenance, a love of art not necessarily for art’s sake but for more than just a stimulus of new ideas, a respect for thoughtful research and knowledge, and above all the space to question the goodness of the new might just be the big idea we need

Psychologists were central to constructing, promoting, and to some extent reifying the concept of creativity—even outside of psychology.

The thesis seems to be that each advance, from the Pythagorean Theorem to Marxism to the atom bomb to the Boeing 747, came ultimately from one person’s desire to express their individuality. This claim—more believable in the case of an oil painting than in the invention of TNT—is, as we’ve seen, the kernel of the postwar concept of creativity