The Death of Creativity

[Mole]

Bless them, the New Age tells us we are all gifted and we are all creative, but if we are all creative, no one is creative. So we see today everyone and their dog is creative. Creativity has become visible. Creativity has become fashionable. And creativity is now cool.

Who doesn't want to be creative? Fortunately every parent has a creative child. And every advertisement is creative. Every university course is creative. We even have creative therapy. And our relationships are creative. We have creative accounting, and creative politics. Creativity has finally arrived on the world stage.

We are witness to the death of the creative, we have loved it to death. And pitifully we signal our virtue by being creative.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

I'm the least creative creative person I know, and I also have no inner child. I've never once considered myself terribly imaginative, despite my ability to imagine. Even my imaginings are grounded in reality. I would go so far as to say I am fairly boring outside of intellectual ramblings and humor. I am capable of creating and do on rare occasions, but generally fail myself or sabotage my efforts.

I have no illusions that it's anything other than a hole I could fill if I grabbed a mound of clay and started filling and sculpting, filling and sculpting.

Other people sometimes tell me I am creative. I really don't see it much. Creating oneself is not the same as being creative.

 

[The Cat]

I'm the least creative creative person I know, and I also have no inner child. I've never once considered myself terribly imaginative, despite my ability to imagine. Even my imaginings are grounded in reality. I would go so far as to say I am fairly boring outside of intellectual ramblings and humor. I am capable of creating and do on rare occasions, but generally fail myself or sabotage my efforts.

I have no illusions that it's anything other than a hole I could fill if I grabbed a mound of clay and started filling and sculpting, filling and sculpting.

Other people sometimes tell me I am creative. I really don't see it much. Creating oneself is not the same as being creative.

If a lie is told in the forest and there's no one around with a concrete sense of identity...Is it still a lie?

 

[Mole]

In my traditional hotel are dining rooms lined with book cases, wooden from floor to ceiling, and full of large, important books.

Wow, I thought, until I picked one up, and found it was a beautifully produced cardboard box to look like a book. All these books, in bookcases after bookcase, in room after room, were the carcasses of books, this is where books came to die.

Finding this inexplicable I consulted my guru, Marshall McLuhan, and he explained that when one medium is replaced by the next, the first medium rises in status. And in my traditional hotel the medium of the book had been replaced by the medium of TV, on large screens in every room. And so the book has risen in status, and become a status symbol.

So these dead books lining every wall were status symbols, symbols of status.

So I became a witness to the death of the book, just as I had become a witness to the death of creativity.

Natural Selection proceeds by death, leaving room for new life. So what new life lies in front of us?

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Everything has been done in some iteration or other. There’s nothing truly new. I’m a monist. Anything new is actually the same.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

In my traditional hotel are dining rooms lined with book cases, wooden from floor to ceiling, and full of large, important books.

Wow, I thought, until I picked one up, and found it was a beautifully produced cardboard box to look like a book. All these books, in bookcases after bookcase, in room after room, were the carcasses of books, this is where books came to die.

Finding this inexplicable I consulted my guru, Marshall McLuhan, and he explained that when one medium is replaced by the next, the first medium rises in status. And in my traditional hotel the medium of the book had been replaced by the medium of TV, on large screens in every room. And so the book has risen in status, and become a status symbol.

So these dead books lining every wall were status symbols, symbols of status.

So I became a witness to the death of the book, just as I had become a witness to the death of creativity.

Natural Selection proceeds by death, leaving room for new life. So what new life lies in front of us?

In the Fallout games, TVs are kept around as decorations even though they no longer function, there are no more broadcasts.

I wonder if we’ll see a day when the violence of life replaces TV as a primary form of entertainment, with old TV sets kept around as decorations or status symbols?

 

[Mole]

In the Fallout games, TVs are kept around as decorations even though they no longer function, there are no more broadcasts.

I wonder if we’ll see a day when the violence of life replaces TV as a primary form of entertainment, with old TV sets kept around as decorations or status symbols?

The manuscript was replaced by the book, and the manuscript became the content of the book, and so the manuscript rose in status, the movie replaced the stage, and the stage became the content of the movie, and the stage rose in status, bricks were replaced by reinforced concrete, and bricks are used for decoration in concrete buildings, and so bricks have risen in status, and it is likely TV will meet the same fate.