Okay, no immigrants. .

I do remember serious conversations in the media years ago about what people would do with all their ‘leisure time’, partly as a result of job sharing and the wealth of the future.

Did that happen? People are busy today, but is it only with work or is just to be ‘busy’? But, assuming there is more ‘leisure time’, then it needs to be filled with something ‘meaningful’. So far work seems to have been the only activity to fill this void on the scale required. The only effective alternative I see is drugs.

Edit: I forgot human intrigue as distraction.

Well, I think everyone will become an artist, we’re on the way to that anyway, art being impossible to define, and the idea that ‘you can be anything you want’. There’s evidence to me on Instagram, for instance, that you can even be a small business, even if you don’t actually make money, because ‘that’s not what it’s about’.

You can become a ‘life-peformer’, someone who enacts dreams and hopes of those who dream about becoming ‘someone’.

So you can chose to be whatever you want, even gender and race. This will mean committing yourself to a particular identity group that has managed to get funds from government. It’s not important, for instance, that you create art, you just need to identify as an artist. From that you find your support group, or your tribe.

Income is earned by appearances online and contributions you receive. These are not jobs. Jobs are slave labour. Real work is done by immigrants, who have been given ‘opportunities’, the chance to ‘grow’.

I get a bit tangled up with this question.

If I change ‘free will’ to ‘kidney’, then the answer is to survive. But history proves that you can survive without free will. You just won’t be free. So to say we need free will to be free I have know what free is? Is it free will?

My descriptions of this ‘drive’ are my own understanding of it, not a definition as such - which I’m not sure is possible — Possibility

Of course. I understand that. I'm testing my own thoughts here.

The evolution of the human being demonstrates an abandoning of survival features in favour of developing the capacity for increasing awareness, interconnectedness and collaborative achievement: from the brain and sensory organs to child-rearing, communicative ability and social structure. — Possibility

I would find it difficult to view these as anything but survival features.

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.

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?

Well, who cares?
— Brett

Gays, women, and all others who are discriminated against without a just cause. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I wasn’t saying who cares if the supernatural exists, I said who cares about your subjective view on religion. What it amounts to is nothing more than a belief?

should we not seek a human leader or spiritual guide — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I can’t help thinking that in the past this has led to some pretty tragic situations.

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

A young child looking at a painting of a women grieving might easily assume the woman could be laughing.

Which is that, as an example, a painting of a weeping women does express grief. That the ‘proposition’ is not necessary?

I'll posit that what Magritte said wouldn't make any sense if we didn't understand what it means for a person to express his or her thoughts. But how does that work? — frank

I have to rewrite this as “Magritte statement makes sense because we understand what it means for a person to express his thoughts.”

This is the contemporary meaning of ‘proposition’.

You’re asking for the ‘propositionless’ version of this. Is that correct? does the ‘propositionless’ version mean its not necessary to understand what it means for a person to express his thoughts to believe the painting expresses grief?

I've noticed from time to time that some posters on this forum misunderstand that the contemporary meaning of "proposition" is not Bob's speech. It's that thing that Jim grasped after aligning himself with Bob's frame of reference. — frank

This seems to me to be similar to the idea that a painting isn’t complete and have meaning until it has an observer: the painting being Bob and the observer being Jim.

The tax exempt and tax breaks that religion enjoy is in the 80 billon a year range in the U.S alone.

What they save and keep has to be made up by the general public otherwise that 80 odd billion would cause a deficit.

You and I are members of the general public and like it or not, we are both subsidizing religions though/with our tax cash. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Your using religious institutions as a way to disparage the idea of the supernatural.

So your position seems to be not just that you wonder if belief in the supernatural is an intelligent persons game, but that it’s something you dislike, or don’t believe in. So now it’s not about whether it’s intelligent to believe in the supernatural but about your subjective opinion on religion. Well, who cares?

Believer or not, you are paying for lying clergy to continue lying. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Tax exemption is not the same as me paying for “lying clergy”. How am I paying if there was no money in the first place. That’s like saying those in the top tax bracket stole millions because the government didn’t increase their tax rate. And once again your referring to institutions not individuals. Obviously institutions have taken advantage of people, but all institutions tend to do that, that seems to be the nature of institutions. Your idea seems to be that institutions came first then came belief.

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.

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.

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.

I'm impressed by those who actually read these posts enough to give valid responses.

I’d be interested in knowing how you feel from chatting here. Has it been beneficial in any way?

If there is no supernatural god, should we not seek a human leader or spiritual guide instead of idolizing imaginary supernatural gods that are demonstrably less moral than humans? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

No supernatural gods, no evidence, nothing, but they are ‘demonstrably’ less moral than humans?

Their belief is costing you your hard earned dollars.
Do you like to pay for someone else's fantasy? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

You’ll need to explain that to me.

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.

it just seems like lots and lots of work is being produced and received by the public and there isn’t really any clear modern concept of why anyone is really doing it. — kudos

I agree with this. This is why I ascribe so little value to it, and why I look on it as the remains of something that had reason to exist and was born from the strongest of instincts, that being creation, and why what is produced today is the ghost of this instinct, as opposed to acts of creation that actually have an effect on us and our world, even though, as I’ve said, they seem to be only modifications. And also, as I said, these acts of creation are now owned by professionals, so that the ordinary person views acts of creation as an act of a specific group: medicine, research, science, infrastructure, virtually everything about our societies. So these creative acts that thrived in these fields in the past are now being slowly strangled through corporate objectives.

But I wasn’t referring to you, unless you made that comment elsewhere.

Hubris: The idea that the artist can steer people towards seeing where adjustments need to be made in life, being or society. What adjustments, whose adjustments, for what purpose?

In this way, an artist can produce something that helps their audience to see where our broader projects such as life, being or society may need adjustment, where what we considered pivotal to these projects is nothing more than meaningless distraction - but can only be revealed once we interact with this perspective reflected back to us as a material object. — Possibility

Now I realise that the word I was looking for was not subjectivity but hubris.

“ .. an artist can produce something that helps their audience to see where our broader projects such as life, being or society may need adjustment ...”

Even so, I think it’s hard to know when you’re being influenced versus when you are being impeded. — TogetherTurtle

I just read this. Yes that’s true.

I'd like to take the opportunity here to discuss . . . what constitutes the creative animal, as it were, of todays modern age . . .. — kudos

There seems to be the suggestion here that ‘the creative animal of today’ is the person who creates purely for the act of creating, without purpose except for the pleasure, and who is against monetisation and slavery. Yes?

It is subjective - necessarily so. The creative process is highly subjective - it will always derive from your subjective view, — Possibility

I’m wasn’t referring to the creative process when I mentioned subjective.
What I was viewing as subjective was your idea of results. But now I’m not sure of what exactly I was getting at there.

else-ists — SophistiCat

Love it.

I think it requires an open mind and a certain amount of courage (or perhaps a sense of security) to consider the possibility that what your mind actually sees is not what is but a version of what it could be, and it only takes you seeing it differently and interacting with it as such to change that. — Possibility

This strikes me as being incredibly subjective. Change it to what, something you think should be?
Edit: Unless of course you mean to make change only in your own life?

There seems to be some continued confusion between being creative and being productive. — Possibility

Creating something is an act, an action. In its most basic form it might be described as producing something that did not exist before that point. Someone might create an idea in their head and let it remain there, so there would be no evidence of it existing, but nor would it have any effect on the world. So there cannot be a creative act without the result, what it produces.

Maybe your using the term productive in the sense that a factory is productive.

so. And to create only to the benefit of industrialists would be a type of mild slavery. — kudos

You really do load these sentences: industrialists, slavery.

It’s an agreed transaction between two entities. There’s a contract, payment, agreement. Designers are hardly victims in the workplace, they can expect reasonable remuneration if employed and if self employed set their fee against their value. Hardly even mild slavery.

we are most creative when things like survival, productivity and physical existence are not threatened - — Possibility

I hate be contrary, but I would argue that’s when we are most creative. History would probably back me up.

What you seem to be referring to is some state of mind, some higher existence that can be achieved through art.

This inherent instinct for creating has died away in most people, starved by social structures, perhaps. Nowadays creating is carried out by professionals. Being professionals they have their own language, their own terms: they have ownership of the creative act. Their terms rule out anything that doesn’t fit. So creativity as a human activity is dying.

I can see why some might see art as the last bastion against this state of things. But it’s not, it’s just the same.

So your view is essentially the same as Brett’s, that it goes no further than a problem-solution — kudos

This suggests that I think creation is problem solving, that someone perceives a problem and uses creativity to solve it. This is not accurate.

My feeling is that the creative act was (emphasis) a spontaneous and random act. Call it discovery, maybe even invention, though I would (warily) favour discovery? Some of those acts benefited the tribe or community in a big way, others fell away because of their irrelevance at the time and may even have been forgotten about.

I see the arts as valuable, reassuring in their lack of use-value. — Possibility

This I agree with. It’s probably reassuring to a lot of people. But it also strikes me as being the luxury of a society that can afford such things, which is why I sometimes use the word ‘indulgence’.

I think art once had an essential part to play in communities, which I’ve discussed in another post, but, like creativity, it’s become a watered down version of its origins.

“To say that the work of a theoretical theorist is not valued for the actual product, i.e. a result, is ridiculous. Neither he nor his employer would believe that.”

I should modify this statement a little. For the artist or physicist there is obviously pleasure in the process, it’s what they love. But the idea that it’s not done for a result doesn’t work.

It is when we ignore these values or are set free from their constraints that our true creative capacity is unleashed, for better or worse. — Possibility

Our true creative capacity is unleashed. To do what? What is the result? Is it personal or universal?