Creation euphoria – The Binding Chaos Lexicon

The euphoria obtained from the act of creation. This can be stored in a euphoric object.

Expanded explanation

Two claims sit in one short definition. The first is about where the euphoria comes from, which is the act itself rather than the reception, the sale or the recognition afterwards. Creation appears on Marsh's list of primary anima sources beside experience of nature, art, ideas, music, dance and beauty, and she singles out creation using skill or artistic expression. Because it is primary rather than secondary, it is produced by the maker rather than taken from anyone, which is what distinguishes it from euphoria obtained through the destruction or draining of something else. The second claim is that the euphoria does not end when the act does. It can be stored in a euphoric object, which is the capacitor mechanism working at the smallest scale, a cluster of interactions in the form of an object holding an excess of anima that can be accessed in other times and places. This is why a made thing carries something for its maker and later for others, and why connection nihilism, the denial that objects gain anything from the bonds invested in them, is incompatible with the rest of the framework. The point of vulnerability is the career endogroup, since the creation-self is the circle most often trapped there. An arrangement that takes the product and returns a wage has taken the euphoria with it and handed back a token.

In Heather Marsh’s words

Marsh places creation among the primary anima sources, which makes the euphoria produced rather than extracted.

“Creation, especially when using skill or artistic expression”
Abstracting Divinity

Examples

In the act, not the reception: The euphoria arrives during the making, so recognition and sale are separate transactions that can be taken without touching it.
Stored in the object: A made thing holds an excess of anima that can be drawn on later, which is the capacitor working at small scale.
Interception through employment: Where the product is exchanged for a wage the euphoria goes with it, which is what makes the career endogroup the trap for the creation-self.

How others use it

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow describes the absorbed state of skilled activity and locates its reward in the doing, which is close to the first half of Marsh's definition, and self-determination theory makes much the same case for intrinsic motivation. Neither has anything corresponding to the second half. Storage is where Marsh departs from psychology entirely, since flow is a state of a person and cannot be deposited in an object. Material culture studies and anthropology of art come nearer, particularly Alfred Gell's account of artworks as extensions of agency and Marcel Mauss on the part of the giver that remains in a gift, both of which treat objects as carrying something of the people involved with them.