Social Institutions and Creativity
We live in a strange world of disturbing paradoxes:
· We have no education or training in creativity, yet we have media that touts our great creativity.
· We have a great engine of mis-creativity and we often think this is creativity. (Mis-creativity is false creativity that is trivial, addictive, manipulative etc.)
· We have commercial institutions which suppress creativity in culture by suppressing invention. These same firms then try to steal the creativity of others.
· We now have the electronic tools for incredible creative uses, yet we do not know what primary creativity is and do not promote respect for the primary creator, thus, we cannot use these tools properly.
· We also have the situation in technology where primary creators develop fundamental devices and techniques. Then firms as secondary creators copy and exploit these inventions and advances for practical and monetary purposes. The work of this secondary wave is mainly derivative, for the greatest creative brainwork has been done but oddly enough the primary creators get little credit and reward.
Mis-creativity, theft of creativity, lack of respect for a primary creator, and lack of skill in the use of modern technologies are the consequences of confusing the relationship between primary creativity and secondary creativity, between innovation and imitation.
Reforming our culture
This leads one to lay out a simple, brief plan to reform our culture:
· Teach creativity in schools, and in adult education. Creativity should be as mandatory as analysis, math and grammar. It is as fundamental as these, and like them supersedes history, sociology, economics etc. because creativity is an essential brain perception and technique. And because creativity overlaps with psychology and emotions and identity, we are compelled also to bring these issues into the curriculum.
· Reform business culture. When simple profit is the prime goal of a company, then the inevitable result will be the greatest mass production as possible of a single product. This lowers standards to the lowest possible level in a market to maximize sales. This in turn creates a culture of dismal standards and the long term dynamic of dummying down. The way to correct this dynamic is to add new goals to a corporation, have companies rated according to the quality of their products and their rate of innovation. Create industrial groups that would set goals and standards that would drive creativity ahead in industries. These new metrics and operating targets would lead to a new kind of economy. Human beings do have the power to overcome the institutions they have created, they can give them new charters and missions. A Genio economy, a truly creative economy can be created.
· Reform political culture. Politicians and Parties do not want creativity for that upsets their control, it means people from the bottom can become leaders and take power away from them. This kind of situation can only be changed with a direct democracy where the people have access to information, where there is instant recall and referendum democracy practiced, where money is kept out of politics, and fundamentally where politicians are now seen as functionaries that help the people participate in developing legislation.
· Use media and entertainment to motivate people to be creative. Inspire individuals with real creativity and then encourage them to learn about creativity.
· Develop a new kind of leadership: The arts of Indirect Leadership and Social Creativity. This kind of leadership promotes individuality, free thinking, creativity, competition, disorder, new types of organization and more , all of these toward a unitary social goal. These methods orient creativity, which is fundamentally individual, toward working in social groups for collective ends, and these methods do not violate the sanctity of personal expression and recognition.
· Turn everyone into a Genio and establish the Geniotariat, the creative social group that recreates all of society and redirects history