You wouldn't think that the current political crunch over Wu Flu lockdowns and back-to-work has anything to do with poets and creativity. But of course it does. As David Cole says in a racist-sexist-homophobic piece on the innocence of joggers, that one of our fundamental modern beliefs is that
As you may know, I have developed a searing analysis of the creative artist belief system. I say that the notion of creativity as developed by our lefty friends is only half of the story. I say that lefty creativity celebrates Ego Heroism. It is all about the glorious creativity of the artist, poet, leading the rest of the world to glory and social justice -- as defined and enforced by the lefty.
But that, I argue, is a false god. True heroism is the heroism of the Sacrificial Hero, the hero that uses his creativity acquired on his Hero's journey into the unconscious to explore the border between Order and Chaos to benefit humankind.
He is, you might say, a "social" hero rather than an "ego" hero.
So when Karen Pelosi decrees that people should be free of work so that they can become creative hero she is missing the point. Nothing that any human does has any value unless it has social value, that is, value to other people. Whatever it is that people do, if it has value, it must have value to other people. And whatever people do, it is work.
Actually, even lefties understand that. They understand that the solitary genius is nothing until his creativity becomes manifest and celebrated by other people. But in their world that means celebrated by other lefties in some lefty coterie or echo chamber. Which is the way that Art World operates.
And it is the way that Art World has ruined art and music.
It makes sense that this cult of creativity should arise, at least in my reductive Three Peoples theory. If you are one of the People of the Creative Self you are nothing if you don't have a creative streak and a creative project and you have actually done something creative.
That, you will agree, is a pretty tall order. No wonder people try to take a shortcut and say that creativity is judged by you and your peers in your coterie rather than in the wide world itself.
Another way that this creative culture operates, as we see in the Wu Flu epidemic, is the "cult of expertise." All of our liberal friends are all-in on deferring to the experts, and incredulous that anyone should open up the economy without the say-so of the experts.
Well, yeah, I get it. Except that my Four Laws, item two, says that the Administrative state cannot work because it doesn't have the bandwidth. That is the same as saying that expertise doesn't have the answer to all problems. On the contrary, the market is a congress of both experts and ordinary folks, both dispensers and consumers of expertise. And it takes both to create a society. Experts propose and non-experts dispose.
And also, as we have seen, the experts have been wrong. Again and again. Why? Because life is not expertise, knowledge is not infallible. Knowledge is a rule of thumb that humans use to navigate the incredible complex moment-to-moment world by ignoring 99 percent of the information about the world and focusing only on the information that the human judges to be relevant.
Anyway, we can see that the lockdown culture is starting to fray at the edges as people judge that it is time to get back to work and wiving and thriving.
Because the liberal line about "if it saves just one life" is the usual liberal conceit. Every life is always in the balance and every human takes her life in her hands every time she crosses the street.
But if we all lived that way, what would the experts do then, poor things? And if we expected creative geniuses to be Sacrificial Heroes, what would the people that just knew that their idea could change the world do then, poor things?
given enough time, love, and charity, every human could write Shakespeare...
For my leftist friends, almost all of whom are in “the arts,” this belief in an innate and universal inner poet is the prime reason they don’t want the lockdowns to end (indeed, why they don’t understand why they should end). You may not recall this, but back in 2010, Nancy Pelosi told Americans that they need to be freed from the burden of having to work for a living so that they can “be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passions, your aspirations.” This wasn’t one of her drunken offhanded comments; it was a manifesto.That statement -- and why do people keep hinting that Karen Pelosi has a drinking problem? -- reminds us of the fundamental "meaning of life, the universe, and everything" for our lefty friends: it is creativity, artistic creativity.
As you may know, I have developed a searing analysis of the creative artist belief system. I say that the notion of creativity as developed by our lefty friends is only half of the story. I say that lefty creativity celebrates Ego Heroism. It is all about the glorious creativity of the artist, poet, leading the rest of the world to glory and social justice -- as defined and enforced by the lefty.
But that, I argue, is a false god. True heroism is the heroism of the Sacrificial Hero, the hero that uses his creativity acquired on his Hero's journey into the unconscious to explore the border between Order and Chaos to benefit humankind.
He is, you might say, a "social" hero rather than an "ego" hero.
So when Karen Pelosi decrees that people should be free of work so that they can become creative hero she is missing the point. Nothing that any human does has any value unless it has social value, that is, value to other people. Whatever it is that people do, if it has value, it must have value to other people. And whatever people do, it is work.
Actually, even lefties understand that. They understand that the solitary genius is nothing until his creativity becomes manifest and celebrated by other people. But in their world that means celebrated by other lefties in some lefty coterie or echo chamber. Which is the way that Art World operates.
And it is the way that Art World has ruined art and music.
It makes sense that this cult of creativity should arise, at least in my reductive Three Peoples theory. If you are one of the People of the Creative Self you are nothing if you don't have a creative streak and a creative project and you have actually done something creative.
That, you will agree, is a pretty tall order. No wonder people try to take a shortcut and say that creativity is judged by you and your peers in your coterie rather than in the wide world itself.
Another way that this creative culture operates, as we see in the Wu Flu epidemic, is the "cult of expertise." All of our liberal friends are all-in on deferring to the experts, and incredulous that anyone should open up the economy without the say-so of the experts.
Well, yeah, I get it. Except that my Four Laws, item two, says that the Administrative state cannot work because it doesn't have the bandwidth. That is the same as saying that expertise doesn't have the answer to all problems. On the contrary, the market is a congress of both experts and ordinary folks, both dispensers and consumers of expertise. And it takes both to create a society. Experts propose and non-experts dispose.
And also, as we have seen, the experts have been wrong. Again and again. Why? Because life is not expertise, knowledge is not infallible. Knowledge is a rule of thumb that humans use to navigate the incredible complex moment-to-moment world by ignoring 99 percent of the information about the world and focusing only on the information that the human judges to be relevant.
Anyway, we can see that the lockdown culture is starting to fray at the edges as people judge that it is time to get back to work and wiving and thriving.
Because the liberal line about "if it saves just one life" is the usual liberal conceit. Every life is always in the balance and every human takes her life in her hands every time she crosses the street.
But if we all lived that way, what would the experts do then, poor things? And if we expected creative geniuses to be Sacrificial Heroes, what would the people that just knew that their idea could change the world do then, poor things?
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