Creativity in an economy of maintenance?
…how does that work?
The capitalist system is based on the ideas of growth and continuously increasing output. Link that to the idea of creativity and the common understanding that being creative usually means giving birth to something NEW.
Of course you can also be creative by re-thinking/re-doing “old” ideas & things but what I’m referring to here is creativity in the shaping, tangible sense, e.g. construction, architecture, fashion, art, lifestyle and the list goes on.
In my ideal world however, growth does not constitute the main pillar of our economic system, maintenance does.
In that world the economic system is built around the real & natural needs of human beings as opposed to forcing humans to adapt to the unreal & unnatural needs of the system. Consequentially, we would not focus on putting out more for the sake of bigger/faster/better but putting in more (into ourselves) for the sake of managing and improving what we’ve already got.
My question now is – how would our creative abilities be affected by this? In practice that means we’re not using say finite natural resources to create another “thing” just for the sake of creating, e.g. a modern-day building or a clothing design item.
How can we be/think/act creative in a world where we REALLY are limited by natural resources, i.e. the raw materials for tangible creation?
Is multifunctional/-use fashion enough? Are refitting buildings and recycling furniture going to satisfy the insatiable appetite of creative people?
I’m curious as to what tangible creation might look like if you ad real awareness and responsibility to it.
And from an intangible, parallel universe of creation comes this fresh and to-me-very-new-and-hot sound…human creativity is definitely reason enough to be alive!
‘Managing and improving what we’ve already got’ is exactly what drives growth! It is very difficult to separate maintenance from a need to grow. Economics aside, it seems me far more attractive to spend an afternoon learning new things than passing the same time trying to remember what I already know. Now, naturally, memories lapse and a refresher every once in a while is necessary hut the less time I have to spend clinging on to what I already know and the more time spent enjoying what I already know to widen my knowledge the more interesting the exercise. And if it is a concern about finite resources, then the need for creativity and productivity growth is surely even more acute. We face two alternatives: either we scale down our ambitions (this is not maintenance but contraction) or we come up with ways of using resources in more efficient ways. I’m an advocate of the latter. Nothing is as frustrating as lack of progress for an individual. Now imagine that frustration aggregated over 6 billion people.