Creation for Creators

Creation for Creators

Consumption Converts Creators

I don’t create for consumers. Consumers are rarely drawn to what I offer. Any consumer who is will also be a close friends, or else an associate of one; it is this relationship that opens the door for their appreciation.

I’m not trying to demean or pass judgement on consumers. I would assign virtually everyone that I love to the consumer end of the spectrum. Anyway, NOTHING that lives, lives free of consumption; we are all consumers to a greater or lesser extent. Furthermore, we exist in a civilization and an economy built on consumption. So we can expect society to work overtime, with laser focus, to either manufacture consumers wholesale, or convert otherwise creative humans into them. Thus, consumers compose the bulk of our global civilization.

While I imagine some section of consumers must be living lives of genuine fulfillment and contentment, I credit our consumptive lifestyle for the deep unhappiness in our society.

A Challenge to Consumers

If society works to convert creators into consumers. What I hope to offer is the inspiration to create, and to identity as a creator.

Creation for Creators

A Challenge to Creators

To creators I offer this challenge for consideration: It is the consumer impulse that draws our attention upwards to the lofty spectacles of societally-decreed “greatness.” There can be some value in this – if it offers us a genuine opportunity for personal growth as creators.

But I propose that we refrain from endorsing any whom society has already decreed as “great.” Let the consumer horde elevate them. They already receive far more support than is justified. The godlike status we have afforded them undermines the very humanity of the rest of us.

So I invite you to consider –

Starving the Giants

What if we committed ourselves to satisfying our appetite for entertainment with only the products from our own strata (an ecosystem teeming with creators)?

If we do, we can’t look for perfection, because we won’t find it. What we experience as perfection is supercrack, engineered and refined at enormous costs, and sold to addicted consumers by those figures whom society has identified as “great.”

Creation for Creators

The Crisis of Palatability

We cannot even look for total palatability. [Certainly don’t look for total palatability here!]

Understand that our tastes have been overly-refined to respond only to products conforming to (unbelievably destructive) current consumer standards. But I believe it is possible to recalibrate our senses to savor the wholehearted offerings of commonplace human beings.

We can also work to cultivate the beginner’s mind. There is always something for us to learn or re-learn, even at the most basic level. And remember that the naïve, beginning creator walks the same path we once trod. We wouldn’t be where we are today if we hadn’t once stood in their place. It is absurd for an artist to disdain the beginner’s lack of skill. I encourage you to look for opportunities to provide beginners with the encouragement and guidance you once needed.

I also encourage you to try to satisfy your appetites with the less-palatable products of the novice you consider beneath you. Try to look past the defects of the beginner’s performance for those overshadowed sparks of unique talent. Treasure them for yourself, and nurture them in the other. And never forget that even the beginner can offer a profound lesson to aid us in our own personal development.

When we source our entertainment from fountains of “greatness,” it is a one-way experience. It’s just watching TV – a pretty inert way to beam pleasure into our tired brains. As someone who has spent most of his life yoked to the capitalist millstone, I fully understand why we want, even need these avenues for escape. The problem is, they offer only the illusion of escape. I propose that you consider actual escape.

The Daily Stone

Creation for Creators