It sounds like you are doing a great deal of speculating! 🙂

Jayhuck: Regarding arrested development, you never responded to my questions about whether this term is actually synonymous with Neoteny or not. I think you might have rushed to assume this. Having childlike qualities (something that I think would be good for so many of us to have) isn’t really the same thing as suffering from arrested development is it?

Let’s not try to dilute the topic until it gets lost in general human traits. If you look at recent studies, they already start from the premise that on average gay men are more feminine than their straight counterparts. This neoteny hypothesis builds on the concept of paedomorphosis, which posits the existence of bio-evolutionary similarities between females and children’s physical make-up. They extend this idea to SSA-ed males who, on average, are more feminine than OSA-ed males. Of course, there is a world of differences in other ways between females, children and SSA-ed males, but this hypothesis looks at the commonalities and how they are expressed even if in different ways, according to sex or age. Childlike males may only share smooth appearance and coy demeanour with females, but share playfulness with children and emotional empathy with both females and children. It could the same thing expressed differently, according to other variables.

The relation to the Freudian idea of ‘arrested development’ would have to be inferred in a history of scientific ideas. Freud had technologically and scientifically limited ways at hand to examine this issue and others.

I’m assuming this goes for the creative heterosexual as well as the creative homosexual, right? here is an additional way of understanding the people you know who aren’t happy – Are creative people possibly more self-aware? – sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Yes, however the trait could be more specific, on average, to homosexuals. But then, there could be more paths leading to the same thing, inasmuch as it’s about intra-gender differentiation.

thanks for the chuckle.

In general I don’t like to presume I know how someone is defining something when someone hasn’t told me what they mean. I’ve been burned many times before for doing such a thing.

As for “So, you can have ‘creative’ in a vast assortment of people…it will express itself differently but it is always that blend of imagination and striving for something new. A creative cook, homemaker, gardener, thinker, teacher, pastor, artist, salesman, activist, blogger, leader, therapist, scientist, musician, entertainer, etc.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself or agree more 🙂

They didn’t need to define ‘creative’ since they were using it in its well-defined sense. Talking about people who “have the quality and power of creating”…’creating’ is “to bring into being; cause to exist; produce”…it is having things ‘evolve from one’s own thoughts or imagination’.

So, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a thinker or an artist; it matters whether you’re a creative thinker or a creative artist. You can be a thinker who digests the works of others and the writings of the ages only to transcribe them…high end on the thinking, low end on the creativity. Or it could be a thinker who wants to find new ways, new answers, new perspectives. This thinker would peruse the same materials but with an eye to discovering a new truth, a link not before seen, a pattern for a new way of looking at things. The creativity rather than the thinking is their driving force.

Likewise there are artists who, while gifted artistically, aren’t’ really that creative. They replicate or imitate rather than bringing something fresh from their imagination.

So, you can have ‘creative’ in a vast assortment of people…it will express itself differently but it is always that blend of imagination and striving for something new. A creative cook, homemaker, gardener, thinker, teacher, pastor, artist, salesman, activist, blogger, leader, therapist, scientist, musician, entertainer, etc.

I tend to agree that gay people, as a whole, tend to be more creative than straights. But, I have absolutely no idea which came first! Do the pressures of raising a family squelch the creativity of many? No time or energy left to create? Do gays simply want to hold onto seemingly ‘childish imaginations’ or do many see a real value of an imagination both as a stress reducer and a way of inventing new things. (The latter is my defense! My humor has been judged ‘certifiable’…goofily cerebral. And if growing up means I have to let that playful side go, then I wanna crow “I’ll never grow up”.)

Off the wall: Today we got a memo from the company president’s assistant announcing a Holiday Luncheon next week where we will have the opportunity ‘to enter special drawings’. I purposely misinterpreted her wording and, a few hours later, handed her a ‘special drawing’ saying I’d like to ‘enter it’. It was a very rough sketch of a cabin in a woods next to a pond. I am very creative but I am not an artist by any means. The combination of the word play and the child-like drawing sent her and two others into hysterics. Soon, we were imagining dozens of ‘special drawings’ covering the 6 refrigerators in our break rooms. As she headed for the door laughing, I quipped “Think nothing of it; that’s why they call me ‘Special Ed’.”

(BTW: It’s not my style to chum-up to higher ups but Betty and I see eye to eye…she’s just over 5′ tall, like me. There tends to be an instant bond between people who are ‘super short’.)