When Martin Heidegger wrote his gargantuan Magnus opus, Being and Time, he posited that it was Angst, the fundamental human condition, that brought us into the most authentic relationship with our selves and our surroundings.
Angst, for Heidegger, is caused by coming face-to-face with the inevitability of our own death and is life in the state of agitation, unease—it’s the condition in which we realize just how strange the world is. Apart from leading to the ever-passé existential crisis, Angst does something else: it motivates us. Not only is our time limited, but the world because extremely close; its intensity makes it real. What is the typical response? We fight back. In experiencing the world for what it really is, we are able to become more creative with our lives. We can be authentic.
Heidegger flip-flopped all over the place throughout his career but this connection between Angst and creativity remained. Of course this is nothing new, there are hundreds who have speculated on the depressed, struggling artist. But enough with the philosophical theories, you might say, let’s get some real science in here. Fine. Cue Jonah Lehrer. “Why does a melancholy mood turn us into a better artist?” he asks in this short Wired piece. “The answer returns us to the intertwined nature of emotion and cognition.”
Lehrer proceeds to cite a few psychologists and sociologists (the venerated scientists) who have all conducted studies revealing some correlation between states of anxiety and increased productivity. But he highlights an important fact: creativity is not simply a matter of diligence.
“There are two important lessons of this research. The first is that our fleeting feelings can change the way we think. While sadness makes us more focused and diligent — the spotlight of attention is sharpened — happiness seems to have the opposite effect, so that good moods make us 20 percent more likely to have a moment of insight. The second takeaway is that many of our creative challenges involve tasks that require diligence, persistence and focus. It’s not easy making a collage or writing a poem or solving a hard technical problem, which is why sometimes being a little miserable can improve our creative performance.”
Lehrer uses angst and sadness as if they were interchangeable and while I would posit that there is a difference between the two—being sad is a sorry state, a reaction to some kind of loss whereas Angst is misery in the face of something that is always there (like death or sexual preference)—both can certainly lead to a more acute perception of our lives. They are also both things you can’t force upon yourself. When you’re sad or anxious, use it, but don’t forget about those moments of insight either.
