Of course, I do not mean that their physical life is hard, but that the agenda of each person that desires to be creative is daunting.
We can show that by comparison with the others of the Three Peoples. If you are a Subordinate then all you have to do is suck up to your lord, and if things go wrong it is his fault. If you are a Responsible then all you have to do is follow the rules, go to work, and obey the law. In both cases you go along to get along, presuming that is the way to survive and prosper.
But the essence of the life of the Creative person is to create something new. This is hard, very hard. We know, from the experience of artists and of people that start new businesses, that almost all creative endeavors fail.
What do humans do when facing failure? We tend to cheat. So if you are a Subordinate you probably steal from your lord or your employer. If you are a Responsible you don't always follow the rules or work as hard as you might.
Whatabout the Creatives? In this case, you might fake up some routine project as creative. Or you force your creativity on the rest of mankind.
In the fake department I like to use the example of LGBT. Everyone is interested in sex. So almost anyone can think up some lame way to be creative about sex. But the real program of sex is to bond with a person of the opposite sex and create children and a family and a home and stick to it through thick and thin. Anything else is really just faking it, taking the easy way out.
So a lot of what we call "creative" is not really creative at all, but people playing at being creative.
But then there is the other way, to force your creative project on the rest of mankind. Here's trivial example, how the educated class has mucked around with the regulation of automobiles: first it was gas mileage, then it was crash protection, then it was ethanol, then it was ASS, automated engine start/stop. But ethanol makes engines run hotter, which uses up old cars faster.
Then you could be a health-science professional and order people around with creative ideas about how to fight epidemics.
Or you could be an environmental scientist and order people around with creative ideas about how to save the planet.
My point is that the regulation of cars and fuels, and the regulation of health care -- and the whole environmental game -- is all about the educated class having a creative project to work on. And it has to be backed by force, otherwise failed ideas would never get implemented or, if implemented, soon discarded. And then the educated gentry in question wouldn't feel creative.
To me, the whole project of the left suffers from this problem, going back at least to Marx. Hey, the fathers have been screwing things up since forever. So now we educated youth have a new idea, to end centuries of oppression and domination. And we demand the right to impose this idea on the rest of you, by force.
Put that way, it looks absurd. But it never occurs to the young sprouts full of rage.
Hey Uncle Joe! How yer doin', pal?
Now, it is my contention that most of the glorious moral and political advances of history are not glorious and moral at all, but just an adjustment responding to the fact that the old way just does not pay.
For instance, the change from sacrificing the first-born to sacrificing a goat. From sacrificing domestic animals to sacrificing the Son of God so the rest of us don't have to. Not moral; just practical.
Changing from the rule of the fathers and the conflict of the tribes to the state with its monopoly of violence, encoded in our time with police forces. Not a moral advance, just practical common sense.
Switching from slave labor and from serfdom to free labor. Not moral, but practical because free labor is more profitable to all concerned.
Emancipation of women. Not moral but practical because women aren't needed to birth lots of kids and spend their lives preparing and preserving food. They could do other things.
The next thing, I think, is the reduction of the administrative state and the rule of the educated gentry that makes them creative and important. Not because the administrative state is immoral and the educated gentry have a conflict of interest but because, first, the administrative state does not pay. And the educated gentry could be doing more productive things than ordering us all around in a pandemic. and sending their children to mostly peacefully protest about issues that were decided half a century ago.
But, but! What would the educated gentry do then, poor things?
Exactly, they would have to face up to the real challenge of all creative endeavor, that they are probably not creative enough, and not courageous and not persevering enough to get much beyond having a creative idea or two that they fail to develop and bring to fruition.
And then there is my bigger theory, that we are in the twilight of the political era, die Politischedämmerung, because, with our market economy and its trust culture, we really don't need much policing and administrating, except for the few people that haven't yet got with the program. And for them we need a few of Dickens' Inspector Buckets to tap their noses and straighten out the thugs and malingerers.
But whenever humans enter a new era we seem to have to go through a period of transition where some reactionary movement falls in love with the past and pushes the pedal to the metal trying to revive the old days. Like our lefty friends and their Great Reaction.
Like right now.
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