What makes us such creative beings ?

There's a term that I really like called the adrenaline hack. And that's this idea that we have co-opted biological systems--in this case, alarm systems-- and then used them towards cultural ends. So, for example, we get an adrenaline rush when our over-active amygdala responds to a perceived danger and has to decide whether to fight, neutralize, or flight and run away to survive. It's a biological alarm system inducing anxiety and fear so that we get out of a dangerous situation. 

But the fact that, as modern cultural beings now that inhabit landscapes of imagination, we've created systems, rhetorical technologies that co-opt these biological alarm systems and place them in safe contexts so that we can experience our bio-chemical signature or the surging multiplicity of emotions to which we are privy to in a safe setting. 

For example, watching a scary movie, going on a rollercoaster ride, skydiving. Your brain is telling you, danger.  

The adrenaline rush is the one of impending doom and yet, the fact that you know that you're in a safe space, allows you, on a mental level, to be aware that you're not going to die and therefore enjoy the wonder and amazement and the hardly bearable ecstasy of direct energy exploding from your nerve endings, as Timothy Leary would say - So, think about that the next time you skydive, or you're at a scary movie, and you're like, all right, let me experience the full spectrum of human emotion in a safe setting. 

It's unbelievable. And it's the adrenaline hack and it's what makes us such creative beings.