Humans have been around for 50,000 years. And yet agriculture is only 10,000 years old. Thus, for 80 percent of our existence we were unaware of the benefits of planting and tending crops as a means of feeding ourselves. The late Julian Simon never tired of reminding us that the human mind is the ultimate resource. All the nonhuman things that we call resources are useful and valuable only because human creativity made them that way.
Human creativity is the only input to our prosperity that is indispensable.
If tomorrow all crude oil dissolves, all computer software is erased by a virus, and all trees turn to stone, human creativity will find substitutes for these things. The short-run hardship might be real, but it would be neither permanent nor devastating. Not so if human creativity abruptly stops. The reason is that creativity is necessary for us to handle change and ignorance. Because tomorrow will be a bit different from today, and because we cannot fully anticipate all that we will encounter, creativity is necessary to deal with these surprises.