Feeling free to write on another subject

I've decided to write on something that has been on my mind over these past few days. This kind of relates to what we have been discussing in class, and I've seen it pop up in a lot my classes lately. Mostly, it's the common man's search for truth.
In my class about the Beat generation, we are now currently reading Jack Keruoack's On the Road and discussing the ideas that Jack and his "beat" buddies were trying so hard to achieve. This took place in the time of the post-war turmoil about this search for truth, and people were trying to forget the values that were in place the generation before and establishing their own. Kerouac (sorry, this is his last name) and others were going on a journey in search of their own truth, cursing their society who believes in nuclear warfare. They didn't want to study the "classic" writing before them, so they decided to break all barriers to find their own writing. Sound familiar?
So what does this all mean? They wanted their own self-discovery so much that they defied everything they felt wasn't right or true. Kerouac believed in "spontaneous writing", the right to write that is your own and "write as deeply, fish as far as you want." I wonder if both Kerouac and Donald Murray had acid trips together, hmmm...
So my final thought to you is this: Are there two places for writing as we know and teach and "spontaneous prose"? Does all creative writing suck? How does our search for knowledge affect our writing? These are the questions that keep puzzling me.