Creativity in times of war and peace

Was the world more creative before or after the two World wars ?

This thought keeps me awake through the nights as the 21st century’s two ongoing wars hint at a mega war with unimaginable consequences – that humanity will be forced to witness. If world leaders are anticipating it to be a high-tech, high-octane video game, then we will need another war and another and another till we exhaust the power supply to these games. There will never be any lack of ultra weapons because they are mass produced.

It would be wrong to say that there is no creativity in the act of war. In the words of Dr. Milan Vigo, the Professor of Operations at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, “War is largely an art, not a science. While technological innovations should never be neglected, focus should be clearly on those aspects of creativity most directly related to leadership. That is where the outcomes of military actions were determined in the past and it is where they will be determined in the future”.

So that raises a basic question – what is creativity? It certainly is not a hobby, or some project demarcated for peace times, it is applicable to wars too!  Aren’t there as many creative minds working endlessly to make war interesting and full of surprises for generations to talk about? Didn’t the Japanese and U.S. navies create fast carrier groups in the interwar years and the Soviet developed the deep battle concept?

But everything the world has created post the two world wars is not novel anymore. Don’t we all need some new ideas to tinkle human creativity? Don’t we want new generations who had been listening and reading the glories and horrors of past wars to win awards for World Peace themselves? The earlier ones have already gotten their fair share, and the new ones are eagerly waiting in queue to break new records.

If the true test of humanity is seen during adversities, then this century had already witnessed a deadly pandemic, and creativity was its fullest in terms of new vaccines to bizarre methods to evade the Corona virus by drinking cow urine. The only thing left to check the list before the century ends is a war.  Crisis breeds creativity, but does war need to be the next crisis?

Contrarily if world peace demands any creativity, it should not fall upon the poets, the novelists and the art creators around the world – to tear down the ugly face of war and bring humanity back – to show how a delicate rose pleaded not to bleed through its own thorn and repeat the mistakes of a known past. Shouldn’t then the responsibility rest with the world leaders to be more creative and take this war business to other planets – at least they can settle their score on orbits that don’t challenge Earth or its satellites. Once the winner is decided, they can distribute the mighty Earth accordingly. This will ensure there’s no further environmental degradation on our only habitable home, with the collateral benefit of saving millions of thumping hearts.  Hopefully when the fight is happening in the space, the leaders look down from their egoistic warships and realize that there are no boundaries on earth, it was just man made as depicted in Samantha Harvey’s novel, Orbital.

Here’s a gentle reminder to human mind’s creativity cells – one nuclear reaction caused Hiroshima, and many such nuclear reactions can do unthinkable ‘Hiroshimas’ – don’t allow human mind’s chemical imbalances to explode creativity in the worst ways.