How Do Independence, Creativity, and Consciousness Take Shape and Develop?

Independence, creativity and consciousness take shape and develop socially and historically.

Kim Jong Il said:

Independence, creativity and consciousness are man’s social qualities which take shape and develop socially and historically.

This means that they are not inborn attributes.

Of course man has a developed organism. However, his developed physical organs and their special functions are natural and biological bases which enable man to have independence, creativity, and consciousness. But they do not play decisive role in making independence, creativity, and consciousness take shape.

In the 60s of the 20th century people found a boy who was grown up with animals in the forest in India. The boy roared instead of speaking and crept instead of upright walking. In other words, his body is man’s body but his behavior is as same as that of animals. This tells categorically that the essential characteristics of man are never granted by nature.

Essential attributes of man take shape in the process in which people live and act in a society and develop historically.

Independence, creativity and consciousness are the attributes that man has when he lives in a society.

Independence, creativity and consciousness take shape in the process in which man lives and conducts activity in a social relationship. By living and conducting activity man stopped to be a simple biological being that acts blindly according to its instinct and became a special being who transforms nature and society purposefully and socially with social attributes such as independence, creativity, and consciousness, and accordingly he entered a new stage of living and developing not biologically but socially. This tells that he can be free from the world of nature to have social attributes and become human only when he lives in a social relationship.

Independence, creativity, and consciousness are the attributes that take shape and develop through social education and practice.

Social education is an important medium which makes people’s independence, creativity, and consciousness take shape and develop. Man acquires and develops advanced idea and scientific and technological knowledge achieved by the humankind through education such as family education, school education and social education. In addition, man acquires and consolidates consciousness of independence through social practice and examines and judges the acquired scientific and technological knowledge and enriches it through education.

Like this, independence, creativity, and consciousness of man become the social attributes that take shape and develop in the process of living and developing in a social relationship and in particular, through social education and practice.