Mould

Any one could see, that he was simple-minded, slow at working out the twists of thought, accustomed to let his ideas flow into the mould of words, before dealing with them.

R. D. Blackmore - Christowell: a Dartmoor tale (1882)

A useful analogy this – we certainly can be said to let ideas flow into the mould of words. We see examples of it everywhere, particularly on the internet but also in real life. We all do it, but many people are like Blackmore’s character, they seem to be mostly unaware of it.

The obvious value of Blackmore’s mould analogy is how it highlights something real and important – our thoughts do flow into word moulds, our responses are moulded responses. We are that shallow.

A socially approved word, phrase, sentence or even a non-verbal gesture – these are the moulds. We do not have ideas in the traditional sense, our responses flow into existing word moulds, shaping our response into something socially familiar. It works, but there is nothing creative about it.

To my mind this is one reason why creativity is so readily corrupted into tawdry slogans, woke culture, banal sentiment, comic book media, celebrity culture, vacuous art and the ghastly hollowed-out emptiness we call the entertainment industry. 

Yet curiously enough it is quite possible and generally quite easy to prevent ideas from flowing automatically into a mould of words. It is enjoyable too, but marginally more difficult to be creative and allow thoughts to mould new words and avoid being moulded by old ones. Only to a limited degree perhaps, but it can be done, creativity is real.

Oddly enough this does suggest that we undervalue creativity. That would be “undervalue” in the sense that we corrupt it and in corrupting creativity we corrupt everything.