Everyday Creativity as a Mechanism of Social Self-Transformation: The Concept of Cultural Energy

Abstract

The article examines the philosophical status of everyday creativity, presented as one of the mechanisms of social self-transformation, and substantiates the concept of cultural energy as a condition for its historical productivity. The initial problem is the transition from the local production of novelty in everyday practices to culturally and historically significant change. The methodological framework of the research consists of a com-parative-philosophical reconstruction, supplemented by a problem-oriented and categorical comparison of sacred, evolutionary, systemic, anthropological, and existential models of cultural novelty. The article substanti-ates the distinction between “creativity” as an activity-based capacity to produce and appropriate novelty, “fluc-tuation” as a possible mode of the emergence of local differences, and “creation” as an event that changes the horizon of the possible. It is shown that the historical productivity of everyday creativity is determined not by the quantity or quality of innovations; rather, their generation stems from the openness of the socio-cultural system to meaning-making, free action, collective appropriation, recognition, and the institutional consolidation of the new. The cultural energy is interpreted as an integral property of social reality that enables the transformation of local differences into stable forms of cultural and social self-transformation. The article concludes that creativity is not a self-sufficient source of historical change and does not directly produce meaning but can serve as a space for the actualization of cultural novelty, meaning-making, and self-transcendence.