創造

Creation or creativity. 創造. 창조. From whence does it come? Being of a Western background, but ironically a bit more well versed in the historical flow and emotion of Eastern culture (read: 文化）I shall venture fore in an attempt at thinking creation through by following the lithographical representation that stands before us today. Even a cursory glance at the two characters that comprise the Chinese characters that have come to be seen in translation as creation, read chuangzao in modern mandarin chinese - and as i see - seem to sound an echo of not only the etymological roots of the idea conveyed, but point us towards both a culmination and beginning in the course of humanity that many have turned a blind eye to or more accurately a dead ear towards. 

Anyone who lives in Korea will be familiar with the two characters written above from having confronted them during the course of memorizing the required 2000 character familiarization program proscribed to students through their primary and secondary educations. 創 would have been memorized as meaning 비롯하다 or 'the beginning' or 'to begin with' etc... While 造 will be thought of as 짓다 or 'to build/construct' coinciding with modernity and it's emphasis upon material creation. Already, thinking creation as 'an original or starting building' speaks towards something more than our common conception of creation. However, when looking at the second character and thought through as the combination of it's radicals it becomes defined as a 'going conveying' or as a 'coming conveyance'; it no longer says anything about a purely physical constructing (although it doesn't say anything about the disavowal of constructing as such).  

The first character is more complex and can be viewed in a few more or less obscuring cloaks of shadow. The conspicuous two lines on the right side denote a knife, or a sharp object designed for carving and when those lines are removed the character left standing speaks something of a 창고 or 'a closet' or 'a place to serve as a holder of' or simply put a 곳집 or 'a place home' when translated literally. What is left, 君 jun, is read as sage denoting a wiseman. This character, however can be deconstructed further into 尹 (yin) with a myriad of connotations including a family surname, but the meaning dating from the warring states period conveying 다스림 or control is coincidentally the dominant meaning associated with the character when memorizing it today. This character can be viewed as the construction as the composition of still another radical and line, but as the association between that particular radical and the character at hand is a tenuous one that at this time is not apparent we shall pass over it to the character 口 (kou) meaning mouth. The literal interpretation then, of the character denoting a sage disembarks from the Western conception of a mystical sage down to the most humane idea of an individual who controls or has learned to 'master one's words'. Creation then, may be thought as 'words, whence mastered and stored (committed either to memory or other verbal form) or etched (in writing), that either go and convey or appear as a coming conveyance.  

Creation thus denotes the very moment (thought of as 'everything all at once as one' as opposed to a single snapshot of time with a singular focal point excluding everything else) of civilizations' emergence in tandem with its subsequent elliptically effecting existence that continuously and spontaneously gives rise to civilizing forces at any given moment. 一日不讀書口中生荊棘 is a phrase conveying the thought that should one day pass without reading (words generally seen in the broad sense as "creative words") thorns will grow in one's mouth. Read: thorns will form upon the words themselves obscuring the full extent of their original living import. A dead civilization will still leave behind relics and vestiges of it's former existence, an existence, mind you, that once flourished and was alive in the fullest sense, however, such times are usually obscured by the overgrowth of vines that often enough bear thorns.  

Thus these words speak of words and the living relationship that was set in elliptical motion from the first time that man began to master his words into a going conveyance to whomever via either spoken word or (as the latter addition signified by the two lines meaning either knife or etching) into written word, and every instance of such 'creation' since then. Creation constantly creates civilization that civilizes man constantly. This speaks to what creation, and in the particular the form it has taken in Chinese and Korea, has both conveyed to us up until today and continually conveys to those who listen to the living word by those who have mastered words in their own time and by cutting away thorns from the those words that thrived in a different time in terms of what they have been saying and what they are capable of saying.