On Creativity and Political Economy
Okay, deep
breath.
My friend Tom Artis is
still in an ICU and may never come
out.
I have this strong impulse to
lie around and watch old movies and despair with a dull
anger.
But I can't. Something else
tells me I've got to learn from this, something, somehow. I've thought of this
as the perpetual war between my Russian side and my Swiss side.
Very well, then, my Swiss
side has got me thinking about creativity and its place in our society; more
specifically, in our economy. (In revenge, my Russian side has given this the
dullest post title imaginable. You see how much fun it s being
me.)
Ages ago, George Gilder
said that creativity is the only source of wealth. It made me go "Yes!" when I
heard it, even though it's not completely true. Extracting stuff out of the
environment also generates wealth, but the impact of Gilder's aphorism was to
point out that, as freewheeling extraction becomes more and more difficult (and
problematic), that strange thing creativity is increasingly the one well we have
to go back to. I add to that an even older saying by the fantasist Lord Dunsany:
"We live on this planet Earth. We cannot add or subtract from it a pound. all we
can do is bring it
fancies."
Well, that's no
longer strictly true either, but still mostly
so.
Of course, most
Victorian and mechanical optimists will proudly and bluffly assert that it is
the creative power of the human mind that propelled us to the top of the
evolutionary ladder and will eventually take us to the stars where we shall sit,
enthroned like gods. And we very well
might.
But here's the thing
that bothers me, and which is the real germ of this essay: The figures that are
set on these thrones--the leaders in this glorious climb--don't really resemble
the creative or brilliantly reasoning ones themselves. Instead, they look like
the generals and kings and captains of industry rather than the scientists and
artists and glassblowers. Even though they loudly trumpet the fact that
Creativity and its handmaid Reason are the distinguishing marks of Godlike
Humanity, what's being deified is something else: namely
Will.
Yep, that old
Nietzschean debbil Will to Power. Nothing new there, and if cynicism was all I
was after, I might as well have stopped before I began.Yes, it's dreadful to
realize that there are still Social Darwinists out there, and giving them some
additional slams is not actually a bad idea, but that's not what I'm after
here.
There's also the
disconnect that gets ignored in most discussions of, shall we say, dynamic
economics. Karl Marx was a pretty savvy analyst of the brutal zero-sum game of
19th century capitalism, but fell down, as all sorts of folks happily point out,
on the idea that technological innovation can make the pie higher--er, bigger.
So the Commies fall behind on technological innovation and Capitalists surge
ahead, using Engine of Progress to destroy Stupid Mutualist Crimethinker regime.
Tear down wall, initials on screen, happily ever after, right? Capitalism good,
communism bad.
It's an
emotionally compelling argument, especially to those on the winning side. But
let's phrase that argument more precisely:
Capitalism is superior to Communism
because it more successfully takes advantage of human
creativity.
Why is that,
though?
Well, because
capitalism offers rewards for human creativity, while communism offers none.
Right? From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Communism takes creativity as a given, and assumes that the creative person will
work to the utmost of their ability and not profit by it. Pretty stupid.
Whereas, if you're creative in a capitalist society, you can profit from it.
Q.E.D.
Except:
As
my best of friends Tom Artis's life shows, creativity continues to show up
whether you're rewarded for ir or not. As with so many other pieces of human
concepts, you can walk a certain distance on our island, and soon find yourself
at an edge. Human life and consciousness arise out of nothing; mathematical
ratios become passionate music; ideas fall into one's head; and sparks that
change the world ignite in the uneducated, the ignored, the unhandsome, the
oppressed.
The problem with
the link between creativity and capitalism is that it's contingent and partial.
To be sure, if a spark provides an answer to a problem someone with capital has
recognized, well, then Bob's your uncle. But needing a solution does not cause
creativity to solve it, or else we'd have a method to turn lead into gold, and a
cure for the common cold, and faster-than-light space
travel.
And on the other
side, lack of economic profit does not prevent a communist society from
rewarding creativity--and not with Heroes of the Soviet Union medals, either. An
innovator could have fame, flowers strewn at their feet, names inscribed on
plaques, and beautiful naked women or men as the case may be having sex with
them. Between that and the satisfaction of seeing one's inspiration fulfilled,
it could be pretty
satisfying.
Here's the crux
of it: evolution, and human experience, is not a ladder, it's a web. It's not
even that: it looks like a web after the fact. An amoeba is just as 'evolved' as
a human being: it's just responded to evolutionary pressures in a different way.
Likewise, the enrichment of human life is not like climbing a ladder to the
stars; it's like casting a net over infinity, and catching the stars within it,
along with much else.
Will
likes a ladder, though. Will wants a goal. And Will coupled with Intelligence
will seek out creativity and use it to climb that ladder if the creativity is
useful to the climbing. But that's true whether you're talking about an
entrepreneur or a socialist
bureaucrat.
There's nothing
inherent in fascism that caused Hitler to expel thousands of scientists,
writers, artists, and philosophers out of Germany; there's nothing inherent in
communism that caused Lenin and Stalin to purge intellectuals and
artists--except one: the narrowness of The
Will.
America is not a
superior utilizer of creativity because it is capitalist: it is a superior
utilizer of creativity because it is
open to
change.
This is the
thing that makes creativity perilous to both capitalism and communism:
creativity can change the will
itself.
Creativity can show
you a whole new way to manufacture bicycles--but it can also steal in in a
Mozart symphony and say that wealth is dross, that only the soaring arc of
sound in the night is where happiness dwells. Creativity can build an
empire--and make it
meaningless.
The critics of
communism heaped scorn on on the 'command economy'--and it's hard to argue with
that. Powerful men of Will moving a vast nation in a rigid predetermined route,
crushing and killing every force that could change its course? The height of
human folly--and evil. But that argument works as well against a huge
corporation. Should they then be
praised?
Tom Artis might
have flourished magnificently in a communist state--if some person of Will had
seen his work and be caught by the magic of it. Capitalism certainly didn't do
that well by him.
That may
sound like plain bitterness, but no, it's complex
bitterness.
A society in
which it's easy for the sparks of creativity to be seen and shared, in which the
connections between people do not require the approval of the powerful--that's a
society that will triumph be letting creativity do as it will. The closer we get
to that ideal, the bigger we become, and the vaster and more dazzling our
net.
And the operative
quality of such a society is a free society. A democratic society. Not a
capitalist one or a socialist one: one in which men's narrow visions do not
restrict the reality of the
rest.
I've saved my third
quote for last. It's from Jimmy
Carter.
"Some say America is
free because it is rich; No, America is rich because it is
free."
Posted: Tuesday - June 20, 2006 at 04:45 PM