It’s never been any different has it?

That may be your observation but you must admit there have been some changes. I can only appeal to common experience here.

Common experience would say the opposite. Today artists have greater independence in most fields and more flexibility in how they can sell their work. Of course a degree of business savvy, or large social network, gives someone a greater advantage - I don’t think that has ever been any different, except today it is much easier to make a basic living producing art of some reasonable standard.

I’ve mentioned all this already so don’t understand what your counter position is? Today there is arguably more ‘bland’ art out there due to the market being flooded and any slightly ‘new’ fashion/trend will seem greater than it actually is due to the superficial spectator I’d imagine whilst the real ground breakers will generally pop up from more ‘underground’ movements.

There's an interest in keeping the machine going the way it was going, which is why P2P file-sharing was fought against so much, for example.

It’s entirely possible for me as a creator to endow an artwork or software program with creativity and exhibit it to an audience without anyone’s assistance besides large web hosting middlemen. It could be a complete blast and it could stay within those pleasure constraints to maintain reason for continuing the project. In this sense I meant it is different from ‘work’ as selling my labour or time to a company in exchange for means of subsistence. Because then I would not have complete freedom only to enjoy the process. The idea is in agreeing to the power structure of essentially working for these companies we implicitly disallow work, or else become a sort of slave. That is, unless the act had some other significance like what we’ve been discussing. — kudos

This sounds about right to me.

Perhaps we can define a "free worker" in terms of freedom from the socioeconomic need to exchange one's own labor for other economic goods and services. I suppose one who may reasonably expect access to an adequate supply of economic goods for the remainder of his or her lifetime, without any formal obligation to exchange labor in return, is not subject to the same forces of coercion by economic means.

The receiver of said creative product comes to be blindsided by their social contract with the creator, who no longer has interest in upholding their part of the implicit social contract. The receiver is now coming to the table with the intention of paying to receive that media that the creator has only offered with an intention to subsist his/herself.

The receiver of said creative product comes to be blindsided by their social contract with the creator, who no longer has interest in upholding their part of the implicit social contract. The receiver is now coming to the table with the intention of paying to receive that media that the creator has only offered with an intention to subsist his/herself — kudos

I'm not sure I follow. What does it mean to say the receiver is blindsided?

How deep does this contract go? Isn't it only a contract for the seller to supply to the buyer a product for which there is some demand?

The contract itself does not specify the socioeconomic conditions in which this transaction takes place.

It could be one loves nothing better than the cottage manufacture of fine artisanal widgets. Now if I'm making them anyway, and people want to pay me for as many widgets as I see fit to part with, at prices I see fit to accept.... Doesn't this have the markings of a happy bargain?

So far as I can see, the problem is not with the generic logic of the transaction, but with the socioeconomic conditions in which the exchange is embedded.

Could be I'm sick of widgets, but don't see what other option I have, short of watching my family starve on the streets.

It could be one loves nothing better than the cottage manufacture of fine artisanal widgets. Now if I'm making them anyway, and people want to pay me for as many widgets as I see fit to part with, at prices I see fit to accept.... Doesn't this have the markings of a happy bargain?

Sorry at this point if it sounds disorganized. But I’m referring to the contract not at the social level but at the individual. It is the disassociated relation where the creator and receiver depend on one another symbolically without real physical dependence. I suppose a sort of cultural contract would be better fit to describe it. That for my experience as a viewer going to, say, an art gallery expecting to find certain works of a certain type I maintain that expectation with another type, and this goes for whether or not the work is ‘received.’

I’m sorry if this sounds muddled. I’m trying to be clear.

maybe an example may help?

I visit a music festival and purchase a vinyl disc. This musician might take this as a symbol that this type of music has pleased me, and produce more like it, where in reality it was the cultural act of buying the record itself that was of value for me the receiver, and wasn’t dependent on my buying his record or even any record at all. These two perspectives fall out of alignment.

where in reality it was the cultural act of buying the record itself that was of value for me the receiver, — kudos

You mean that you might buy an album of an artist you saw at a festival despite not liking the music you heard?

Yes. I might and that might has some significance aside from my desires and those of the creator.

Just curious why you'd do that.

Why would it matter to anyone but myself? If there were nobody to measure it’s probability or allow it to affect the outcome, it would have the same meaning to the creator before the result took place. And this discongruity in time is an ugly fact that comes to bear on the type of creativity in the creation.

Why would it matter to anyone but myself? — kudos

I'm curious why people do things. I'm just curious why you might buy an album of music you don't like.

Why would they make an album I wouldn’t like?

The op brought up the ‘the creative animal’, not ‘the artistic animal’. They’re two distinct beings to me.

Someone mentioned my anthropological view. I’d go along with that. The creative act is a human instinct: to fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits, stuff we all do. It’s also observed in the form of tool making in some animals, more commonly in apes. This has nothing to do with art. Art is something made visible by using the creative act as a tool, it’s not just the creative act. Art is a metaphor. First there’s the idea, then the visible metaphor. The creative act gives form to the metaphor.

Art for mankind runs along different lines than does the creative act. Evolutionary the creative act has made us what we are, it’s our great advantage. Once there were great acts, radical and life changing for everyone who new of it. Today those acts are far removed from their origins. As I said, today they appears as modifications. Modern society seems to get by on this, but getting by may not be good enough in the long term. So the ‘creative animal’ still exists, but only like an animal in the zoo.

Somehow the art world took ownership of the word creativity and gave it some purified, priestly meaning: us and them. Art equally is now like an animal in the zoo. Once, in a village, a boy may have been frightened walking past a carving of some animal or part human form attached to a tree. Maybe he thought some spirit lived in that mask, or the mask was the spirit. The person who made that mask was the artist and he wasn’t painting flowers.

Today, most, artists pretend to be this man. They try to make art have some sociological meaning, but it’s not really there unless they say so. No one’s scared of a sculpture anymore. And of course today it’s importance is valued in dollars. Artists try to imbue their work with some spirit, but it doesn’t work in our world like that anymore. Like everything else ‘the creative animal and ‘the art animal’ serve Mammon. That’s just where we are on the evolutionary curve. The creative act and the art act don’t die, they can’t, but they remain with us, a bit like the human appendix. Maybe they’re just sleeping, waiting for their moment.

Don’t you think that a massive coorporation that makes money off artists caught in this cycle of despair would have interests in preserving it in such a state? Their profits are made from masses of content and subscribers engaging interactively in their frameworks. They are making money from these people being unsuccessful. — kudos

What cycle of despair? What unsuccessful people? If you take a job at the beginning of a career your wage is low, as you develop more skills your income improves. The quality of your skills moves you into a higher income.

If someone takes a design job to support himself while he works on his own art form then that’s his choice. He could if he wants, if it defiles him that much, work in a factory.

My experience is that people in design get much better wages than those who work in factories, or an office, or drive a taxi.

Evolutionary the creative act has made us what we are, it’s our great advantage. Once there were great acts, radical and life changing for everyone who new of it. Today those acts are far removed from their origins. As I said, today they appears as modifications. Modern society seems to get by on this, but getting by may not be good enough in the long term. So the ‘creative animal’ still exists, but only like an animal in the zoo. — Brett

Once, when we were very young children, everything was a great event: radical and life changing. Today most events appear as only modifications on previous events. We’re no longer particularly surprised by life.

So is it the events that have become objectively less ‘great’, or that the novelty - the amount of new information - is gained from each event in a smaller proportion than when we were children? Does this mean there is objectively less new information available for us in the universe now, or only in our perspective of it?

The more we do the same things, the less we learn, and the less capacity we believe we have.

An interesting point. I’m going to think about it. Maybe it’s also possible we don’t like contemporary big ideas and ignore them, or purposely reduce them in importance, make them go away, so to speak.

Why would they make an album I wouldn’t like? — kudos

You said you might buy an album after hearing the music (live) and not liking it. I was curious why you might do that.

Don’t remeber saying anything about liking the music could you find a quote?

You said: "I visit a music festival and purchase a vinyl disc. This musician might take this as a symbol that this type of music has pleased me, and produce more like it, where in reality it was the cultural act of buying the record itself that was of value for me the receiver,"

So we have:

(a) you visited the music festival, after which
(b) you purchased an album from one of the artists at the festival, and
(c) the musician might take this as a symbol that the music pleased you, BUT you point out that
(d) in reality, this isn't why you purchased the album.

Which implies that the music didn't please you. Yet you purchased the album after hearing the music.

In reality, by the way, speaking as a musician who has been on lots of albums, it's not at all as simple as us thinking, "If the album was sold, that's a person who likes us/who finds the music pleasing," so that we're basically thinking "We sold 500k copies of this. That's 500k people who like it."

Because we know that for example, some people could have bought it on a whim, or because they heard of us and they're taking a chance on it, but then it turns out that they don't like it.

Or, for example, someone who likes it bought a copy to try to interest someone else in it. But maybe the gift-receiver turns out to not like it.

Etc--although this sort of thing was more of a factor prior to the last 10-15 years. The Internet and streaming have changed things a lot. The number of people who buy albums on a whim without ever sampling any of the music is pretty negligible at this point.

At any rate, if we're selling 500k copies of a relase, we can be pretty sure that some of the people who bought it liked it, but we don't know just how many, just what percentage, we don't know just how much they like it aside from what people might say in reviews we might see, how they feel about it compared to other albums we released (ditto the last parenthetical), whether they'd rather we did more similar music or not, etc.

To a large extent it's always a shot in the dark. You know that there's some correlation to the gigs you're doing, the media mentions and airplay you're getting, the advertising you're doing, stylistic development you're undergoing, the amount of appreciation you're getting from fans, etc. and sales, but it's very difficult to ever directly attribute sales shifts to particular things, or to common opinions of the music--unless, for the latter, there's a major consensus about something considered monumentally good or horrible, so that everyone is talking about it. And at any rate, if you have the degree of fame required to know the latter, you can keep sales/a career going pretty indefinitely no matter what you're releasing, because you're popular enough, and had at least past work considered significant enough, that you can just keep riding the coattails of that.

The point is that the thing you’re doing when you create or be creative is something, the same way we consider our thoughts to be something. If it weren’t it would just be a bunch of guys on guitars playing with a drummer as opposed to a band. We might still appreciate it, but its identity as a rock show has character traits indepedendent of the faculties of the ‘creator’ and ‘receiver.’ Not necessarily independent of mind altogether. Apologies for these lacking terms but there’s no noun available for this.

Did the creator make it something, or the receiver? Should we start accrediting our work to others? I dont believe so. But it seems clear that creativity is somehow engaged with this power even before the creative act takes place. So thereby when the creator says ‘I upload my paintings to photobucket because I love to paint and to have someone view it,’ and the receiver says ‘I love to view paintings in this form please make more.’ This doesn’t imply we have a closed conservative system where one entity simply transfers creative energy to a product that is then received and transferred back in the form of demand.

Someone mentioned my anthropological view. I’d go along with that. The creative act is a human instinct: to fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits, stuff we all do. It’s also observed in the form of tool making in some animals, more commonly in apes.

It seems like your answer is right but the reasoning of your arguement isn’t totally firm. It goes a) fiddling, mixing, fitting are behaviours observed in animals and thus likely instinctually derived. b) Creativity involves these. c) Therefore creativity must be instinctually derived.

The issue is that it can be applied like this: a) running and jumping involve mostly legwork b) basketball involves running and jumping. c) therefore basketball must be mostly legwork.

I’m not saying that you’re wrong, in fact there is a lot of truth to this, but it seems something is being held back that is crucial to the connection you’re making between creativity and instinct.

It seems like your answer is right but the reasoning of your arguement isn’t totally firm. It goes a) fiddling, mixing, fitting are behaviours observed in animals and thus likely instinctually derived. b) Creativity involves these. c) Therefore creativity must be instinctually derived. — kudos

That’s not quite what said.

This what I said:

“The creative act is a human instinct: to fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits, stuff we all do. It’s also observed in the form of tool making in some animals, more commonly in apes.”

I believe it’s a human instinct. I’m happy to hear any theories you might have about it’s origins.

And I said our fiddling and mixing of things is evidence of the creative drive in us.

Then I said (because I’m not sure if it’s a human activity only) that apes may also do it, which seemed relevant because of our evolutionary connection,

Nothing is being held back except the serious work required to prove or support my theory.

These posts suggest we’re living in a new age that has broken with the past.

The creative acts today and the ‘creative animal’ no longer resemble what they were in the past. It does suggest there are no longer free agents, because everything is tied into the economic society. So in that sense our personal creative acts are so small and without effect that they may as well not exist. Art may offer a sense of achievement, an outlet, but really it’s an act without true meaning, a re-enactment, a relic of the past.

The desire to act creatively, a basic human instinct, still exists but in a tamed form, because it’s only in the economic society that the ‘creative animal’ can act.

Originally the creative act created advantages to survival, if it was the right act then there was a payoff. The product of the successful creative act is a benefit. The only benefit of any value today is in money. If a creative act produces nothing tangible it dies.

The economic society owns all creative acts because it owns the benefits on offer. As a consequence all other ‘useless’ (having no economic value) creative acts fall away

“The creative act is a human instinct: to fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits, stuff we all do. It’s also observed in the form of tool making in some animals, more commonly in apes.”

I believe it’s a human instinct. I’m happy to hear any theories you might have about it’s origins. — Brett

My theory is that its origins run much deeper than instinct. Human creativity comes from a gradually developed capacity for awareness, enabling us to integrate new information, but I believe the drive to seek new information in the first place is inherent in all matter - and is limited by our evolutionary focus on productivity and survival, not enhanced by it.

For most animals this limitation is unconscious - the majority of physiological systems are necessarily limited in focus towards productivity and survival, so most of each organism’s energy is applied towards these aims. For these animals, the organism IS the infinite universe.

But then there are those of us who develop awareness of the organism as an ‘entity’ operating in a broader infinite ‘universe’. We develop the capacity to attribute abstract value and meaning (as additional dimension) to all interactions, and so we rationalise this application of energy to mean a priority for the organism, even as we recognise that other entities have different priorities, and that a broader ‘value’ system (objectivity) operates within the universe.

The development of the human creative animal began with this initial awareness of ‘self’, which opened up our capacity and unlocked an inherent desire to interact with an infinite universe on a new level, and see it as not just consisting of stimuli in time and space, but of entities, value and meaning. Acutely aware now of our physical vulnerability, those who survived found sufficient safety to “fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits”, determining a network of relationships between these entities, values and meanings with which we must inevitably interact. For us, the physical world then became the ‘infinite’ universe. Meanwhile, for other animals, their capacity to grasp abstract concepts of value and meaning has been limited by their inability (or refusal) to recognise the organism as a ‘subject’ within a broader universe rather than the ‘objective’ universe itself.

Our current area of human creativity, then, is in developing awareness of the myriad of alternate value systems and how they interrelate within the broader universe, including an understanding of the ‘cosmos’ as a finite physical entity within an infinite ‘universal’ concept. But much of this current work lacks the courage to step outside the systems of ‘value’ or ‘meaning’ as a subjective dimension in how we interact. We try to conceptually relate an ‘objective’ physical universe to ‘the infinite’ without first acknowledging the subjectivity of the ‘physical’ world itself - just as we had to recognise the subjectivity of the ‘self’ before we could fully grasp the concept of an ‘infinite’ physical universe.

But I disagree that creative acts today are either tamed or stillborn - it’s only that most aren’t valued or meaningful within what we consider to be the ‘real world’. If you want to find genuine creative acts today, I suggest you look at those moments where a ‘creative genius’ seems to ‘lose touch’ with their audience (or with ‘reality’) and pursue a more ‘personal’ project, or take a look at what they started to produce as they went ‘off the rails’. The creativity will be in what they’re attempting (and probably failing) to actualise here, not in the quality or value of the work as determined by the industry, genre or medium, or in our ability to find meaning in it. Likewise, our creativity continues to develop and advance through interaction with any and all ‘failed’ attempts to produce valuable or meaningful works - from STEM and philosophy to art and politics.

But to see the attempt in the failure, one must understand it as creative process, not as a single act - just as we’re beginning to understand the universe and everything in it as an unfolding of interrelated processes rather than entities.

Human creativity comes from a gradually developed capacity for awareness, enabling us to integrate new information, — Possibility

The development of the human creative animal began with this initial awareness of ‘self’, — Possibility

What is this ‘awareness’? You seem to be saying that in the beginning was awareness, then came creativity.

Your quote states that “Human creativity comes from a gradually developed capacity for awareness”.

What does this gradual development stem from?
And without tools for survival how would the organism, us, survive, enough to develop awareness?

I have no idea how it happened but somehow man learned to make a fire, create fire from nothing. That must have come before awareness, otherwise he would have died and with it awareness.

And how is awareness passed on?

but I believe the drive to seek new information in the first place is inherent in all matter - — Possibility

This is the source you mean? Awareness and seeking the source are the same, and its inherent?

But why did we, and not other life forms, not have a “focus towards productivity and survival”?

What was the break? What was behind it?

Edit: your posts seems to have the influence of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin about them.

Creativity is a social thing. The sharing of ideas and imitation causes creativity to blossom and flourish. I write therefore I am.