The Creative Concord
By: O.G. Rose
Tags: Communism, Politics, Philosophy, Marx, Entrepreneurship

III

Creativity both creates and solves unemployment while driving up the standard of living through the technological achievements or entrepreneurships it invents (to solve the problems which previous technological achievements or successful entrepreneurships may have caused). A society high in freedom and creativity, then, is inherently self-motivated. A self-motivated person is the opposite of an alienated individual and possible in a free and creative society. Depression might be practically guaranteed in a nation that is free and wealthy but not creative, while a nation that lacks freedom fails to foster creativity. Leisure without vision can be as alienating as work without ownership.

The value of Capitalism seems determined by the degree it enables creativity, which is tied to sustained productivity and prosperity. The system is self-destructive, as Marx admonished, without it. To the degree Capitalism is successful then is to the degree it enables and educates a strong creative class. The stronger the artifex, the stronger the economy and happier the people. Once creativity wanes, since the material dialectic will still undergo creative destruction, freedom must eventually also be lost. There is little liberty where there is no economy; the weaker the economy becomes, the more liberty decreases. This is because there cannot be much liberty where individuals do not have the economic capabilities to rise above their circumstances. Though economic freedom is not the only freedom, it is a necessary part of a free society that is lost when the material dialectic implodes; the other freedoms tend to follow. Great nations fall once freedom is gone, and the reason they give up freedom, rarely if ever realizing it, is by devaluing creativity.⁸

Left to the material dialectic, without creativity, a society becomes reliant on growth through repairing damaged goods, distributing limited resources, credit creation, and/or living off the fruit of past generations, none of which are sustainable.⁹ ¹⁰ While living on that past fruit, it is very tempting to stop emphasizing creativity, for there seems to be no pressing need for it. If the present is good, it’s hard to think about the future or to care about the past. Ironically, creativity is at least partially what makes possible this entitlement mentality, the making of the “broken window fallacy,” and so on, via the increase in the standard of living which creativity causes. In this sense, creativity is risky.

The less creative a society, the more threatening creativity becomes, as shares of a company become more threatening (and yet more vital) to one’s livelihood the more money the individual has stored up in that one basket. Take how Google is both viewed as a great blessing and a monopolistic threat. Yet regardless of how threatening it may be, a society must tap into that creativity, for economic growth is driven by it. Knowing they are enslaved to this source, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat can become increasing uneasy with the artifex, with alienation gradually setting in. This tension eventually leads to violent or unjust forms of rebellion against the artifex when business owners, for example, recognize they aren’t creative enough to adapt to creative innovations, such as the internet, and when the proletariat consequently recognizes their jobs are at risk. As an increasing reduction in the availability and abundance of the means of production accelerates the self-destruction of the material dialectic, so a reduction of creativity accelerates the shrinking of the artifex. This being the case, once creativity begins to fade in a society, it is probable that it will continue to do so. With that eventually goes freedom, and for this reason, though the present may be good, America might be in a dire situation.

Risk management is the practice of diversifying risk in order to reduce loses and increase profit. The more creativity there is across a society (as influenced by the school system, system of resource distribution, family structure, and the like), the more that society has invested wisely and diversified the risk of creativity. Yet the more creative a society becomes, the more it risks high unemployment if that creativity ever screeches to a halt or slows down (due to regulation, a drop in abstract thinking, etc.). Creativity always entails risk, and risk is necessary for value creation. Creativity is a double-edged sword, but a nation will only be cut by it if it freely chooses to stop paying attention. In the self-destructive material dialectic, regardless of what one chooses, an individual inevitably ends up slain. If America is to recover, it must take a risk and reform its education system and society to incubate creativity. Otherwise, its freedom will decrease.

IV

Capitalism is driven by innovations that increase the standard of living, yet those innovations can make jobs obsolete, increasing unemployment. An innovation solves a problem, yet once that problem is solved, further creativity is needed to address the problem of unemployment caused by that innovation. Innovation both creates and destroys jobs — the question is does it do more of the former or the latter?

The material dialectic keeps problems involving material goods solved while often failing to address mental and personal problems. On the other hand, the creative concord solves and/or finds problems in the first place, while simultaneously liberating participants from alienation. Yet all classes need one another: if cars stopped being produced after Ford died, no one would be able to invent a new car that ran on alternative energy; rather, people would keep reinventing Ford’s original model. Though this may keep employment high, it would not raise the standard of living beyond what Ford already raised it.¹¹

Without creativity, the artifex disappears. Once that occurs, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat must clash and undergo creative destruction, for the material dialectic must work itself toward disappearing. This disappearance occurs fully, perhaps, during a draft, collapse, revolution, or in Marxism. In Marxism though, there is a new dialectic between the owner, worker, and the government. Though the problem Marx identified has changed form, I don’t believe it has been solved. Like the material dialectic, this “totalitarian dialectic” must also undergo a kind of creative destruction in which those who are forced into being both the owner of their labor and the laborer, feeling alienated by the government which forces them into this role, rebel against the governing class. The people do this to seize back the power to make an artifex class by choosing to be artifexian, rather than be forced into a similar but alienating non- or universal class. Though this society may be creative, lacking freedom, compensation, motivation, and/or resources, this society cannot readily will to be creative or maintain creativity, lacking a material dialectic to work in concert with, causing the artifex to vanish. Marxism fruitlessly tries to make citizens free by eliminating the classes of “worker” and “owner,” rather than enabling each to be a “worker/owner.” There is no true unemployment, so neither is there true employment: duty and altruism replace both. Consequently, neither employment nor unemployment can drive creativity and innovation, and though no jobs are lost by creativity, none are created by it either. Employment may be high, but the standard of living will likely be low.

In Marxism, bringing about a police state, the people rebel because there is no artifex that can create itself, but the same can occur in Capitalism. Once creativity dries up, so goes the artifex, and with that, the material dialectic self-destructs. Though Marxism can destroy the artifex by annulling freedom, the artifex’s existence is possible, but not necessarily present, in Capitalism. Capitalism does not inherently work, but it does have the potential to avoid creative destruction by maintaining a healthy and strong artifex. Unfortunately, the present American school system stifles creativity, as attested to by Ken Robinson, and many creative people are pressured by society to “enter the real world” of numerical chutes and corporate ladders. Self-destructively, this kind of peer pressure is a manifestation of the tension between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat against the artifex.¹²

As the proletariat is most likely to start the conflict between it and the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie is most likely to start the conflict between it and the artifex, though the bourgeoisie will only be successful if it can influence the proletariat to join it. Yet, unlike the proletariat, the bourgeoisie is not as likely to turn to violence and revolution to stop the artifex if creative individuals turn down their offers to be bought out or to sell their patents. The bourgeoisie is too comfortable, and though they may lose their businesses, they won’t lose their lives. In this regard, it is more likely that the material dialectic breaks down than the creative concord, though the creative concord is more difficult to achieve. Also, citizens can choose to keep the creative concord strong by choosing to join the artifex, while the material dialectic collapses inherently. All are alienated in the material dialectic, but in the creative concord, which comes into being by the choices of people, creative freedom can be exercised.

It is important to emphasize that the creative concord collapses when the artifex class vanishes, shrinks too much, or is greatly disabled, while the material dialectic breaks down because it is itself. The artifex class doesn’t have to collapse, but without it, the material dialectic must fall apart. It lacks a center. Therefore, the choice to give up the artifex is likely the choice to give up freedom and the society. With creativity goes everything.

V

To create is to revolt. To start a business is to create a thing to produce and a means by which to produce it. Revolution is always imminent: Marx was right. Schools decide if revolution is bloody or glorious. An analytical school system that stifles creativity in a Capitalist society is a strange, fatal paradox. Capitalism is failing today at least partially because the artifex is small and inhibited by regulation and guilt. Those who invent 3D printers put the lives of millions at risk who will be unemployed as a result of their genius. Realizing this potentially can put creators through an existential crisis when they should be receiving praise and gratitude. It is not the case that Capitalism must incubate the artifex: the system can work to turn Capitalism on the artifex and itself. In this circumstance, perhaps Socialism would be superior, but then Socialism must resist its own tendencies to shrink the artifex. No society is a machine that works on its own: we must work with it.

In our current socioeconomic order, once unemployed and robbed of creativity, a person is helpless. Enabled by school to be creative, upon losing their jobs, people would simply create new means of employment. In a creative society, unemployment stimulates technological advancement, because those who are unemployed are forced to create a new way for themselves. Unemployment results in numerous entrepreneurial start-ups, and seeing that small business drives the market, creativity would make unemployment healthy for the economy rather than terminal. By becoming an artifexian, each unemployed worker would stage a revolution and transcend alienation, social stigma, and the material dialectic. Sadly, by glossing over unpredictable, unmanageable, and organic creativity, schools have taught Americans how to revolt violently in trying to avoid the subject of revolution altogether.¹³

The “entrepreneur revolutionist” saves the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, and the society as a whole. The artifex enables social mobility, actual wealth creation, and a higher standard of living in economic, psychological, and personal terms. Making it easier to focus on the next project, artifexians don’t “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” Rather, they invent boots without straps.

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Notes

¹Allusion to Joseph Schumpeter.

²See The Meaning of the Creative Act by Nikolai Berdyaev.

³See Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.

⁴Allusion to “The Pretence of Knowledge” by Friedrich Hayek.

⁵See The Privileged Ones by Robert Coles.

⁶Political, educational, social, and economic policy and enterprise that enables this tri-relationship between B, A, and P should be allowed, while policy that disables it should be removed. Both the Right and Left have operated off an axiom of a material dialectic, in one way or another, and hence both have fallen short of proper policy that enables the creative concord. Liberals tend to grasp that Capitalism is self-destructive due to the material dialectic but offer Socialism as a solution, while Conservatives defend freedom while not noticing the paradox of Capitalism. Neither grasp that creativity is the solution: they were not trained by the school system or family structure to be creative.

⁷If Louis Dumont is right in his Homo Hierarchicus and humanity is innately hierarchical, it is impossible for society to be classless, and Communism runs against human nature itself.

7.1 Note that an artifex society is not one without dentists, doctors, etc. or one in which no one works for anyone else: any occupation that exists in the material dialectic is one that can exist in the creative concord. As in the material dialectic, someone must simply choose to create it. In an artifex society, to make an example, a dentist is one who starts his own practice and employs others to be part of it. While they are employed, each employee is working to start or run his or her own practice or independent enterprise (perhaps a coffee shop, a novel, etc.). At the practices these employees shall start, each shall hire new employees, each which will work to start a practice or enterprise of their own, and so on. This spreads employment, decreases alienation, and raises the standard of living for all. As old dentists pass away, new dentists shall take their place, and with an artifexian mindset, they shall revamp the old practice for the present age, making it their own. When employees leave an enterprise, the owner, creative, will either come up with solutions that address this decline in labor or move on to something else. If the owner moves on, this will make space for an artifexian who wants to fill the space and/or result in new employment opportunities when the migrating artifexian creates a new enterprise. Artifexians can also upgrade and “reinvent” old practices, increasing creativity.

7.11 Also keep in mind that a potential artifexian can work for someone else: an artifex society is not one in which people never work for or with one another. The difference is that while working for another, an employee is working on or toward something of his or her making. In this way, this phase of being an employee is a stepping-stone, and in such a circumstance, both the bourgeoisie and proletariat are within the artifex. Though the material dialectic vanishes, within the artifex, the two classes are still present but in a new way, freer of alienation, dependency, and in a manner that doesn’t cause society to implode. In a sense, one could view an artifex society as a society that takes Viktor Frankl seriously.

That said, more clarification is in order: is someone an artifexian who works on a small business idea after he or she gets home from work at a corporation? The person is certainly a potential artifexian, but perhaps not a realized artifexian yet. This person is creative but perhaps not an artifexian: the person has generated a project but perhaps not a means of production. Until the person develops something that can be sold, distributed, amass employees, and/or the like, the individual is only creative, for the creativity is not fully applied. Granted, I do think a creative person is less likely to be alienated than someone who isn’t creative at all, but it is not the case that everyone with projects are artifexians. And indeed, the bourgeois can exploit the working class by making them so busy and tired that they can never develop their projects into means of production, thus solidifying the power of the bourgeois.

7.112 Freeing many of a common existential crisis, in an artifex society, moving from college to a job would not be a “final step” upon which making there would be nothing to look forward to doing or becoming. Today, once a person becomes an employee, that person can of course advance up the ranks within the category of employment, but after years of working toward new categories to change into, there ceases to be any change to which to look forward. This can be psychologically devastating. The person has entered “the real world” or “rat race,” as society calls it, and though the employee can get married, have children, and take up new hobbies, the person cannot, within their work, change categories. Perhaps a person in the category of proletariat can move into the bourgeoisie, but this kind of supposed advancement is only a shift within the material dialectic. This being the case, the individual will not readily find alleviation from alienation. On the other hand, an artifex society is one in which any position of employment or ownership is a “step” toward becoming an artifexian, rather than another shift in the “rat race.” Keep in mind also that an artifexian is a person for whom every accomplishment is a “step” toward another one, every creation practice for a greater one. The work of an artifexian is never finished yet always fulfilling. This being the case, the artifexian drives productivity far and above the participant in the material dialectic. One could say, in a sense, that the artifexian creates and works enterprises that continue to generate revenue constantly, even after the artifexian has died. The fact the productivity of the artifexian can transcend even death perhaps hints at why they are so valuable.

7.12 Though it is outside the scope of this paper to address fully, it should be noted that creativity is innately communal, diverse, and particular. All scientists stand on the shoulders of those who came before them, as all writers stand on the shoulders of prior artists. Creators stand on the shoulders of white, black, Chinese, etc. creators so that white, black, Chinese, etc. creators may stand on their shoulders. To create, while autonomous, is to be prepared for humility and open to diversity. It is also to be generous, for to create is to give to the world. For these reasons and more, an artifexian isn’t individualistic, nor one who loves humanity at the expense of individuals (to allude to Dostoyevsky). The artifexian loves both, recognizing how one enables the other.

7.2 Whether a fully artifex society is possible or merely an ideal to strive toward is dependent on the function of the word “perfect.” The term can be deceptive, for it implies a “state of being” rather than an “act of being,” yet perfection is something we do, not something we are: it is about growing more so than it is about finishing up. “Perfect societies,” in a Platonic sense, are impossible, for the word “perfect” in that context is meaningless, seeing that there is no clear standard of what the society is perfect in relation to. If the word is meaningful, to loosely allude to Aquinas, a “perfect society” is one that “does what it was made to do.” Perfection, in regard to humans, is hence tied to anthropology, and if humans are innately creative (which I think there is reason to believe), humans are “perfect” when creative. Since a society exists to increase the standard of living, a society is perfect when it raises the standard of living, which is always thanks to some form of creativity. Therefore, an artifexian society is a “perfect society” in the only way the term can be meaningful.

7.21 The “perfection always ahead” that drives the artifex is “idealistic perfection,” while the act of growing toward this ideal is “practically perfection” (in the sense that it is “a perfection that can be practiced”). In this regard, a society can “practice perfection,” as one can practice medicine, and whether it can be achieved isn’t a vital question. In this regard, the “ideal of War and Peace” comes into existence with the writing of its first page. The “ideal of perfection” emerges simultaneous with the “practice of perfection”: the existence of one necessitates the existence of the other, as the cessation of one is the end of both. The “practice of” and “ideal of” are two sides of the same coin. Therefore, the “ideal perfection” is valuable not because it can be achieved, but because it can orientate and motivate the direction of a practice, thus giving that practice something “it is made to do” and a framework in which to be “practically perfect” relative to. In this sense, to strive toward a fully artifex society is to be perfect, even though the ideal isn’t achieved. The practice is achievement.

7.22 In a way, the whole language of “achievable” or “unachievable” is as meaningless as asking whether being a poet is “achievable.” Of course, one can be a poet, but whether a person can “achieve” the status is simply to ask, in a strange way, whether a person can write poetry. As one writes, the person has “achieved” the status of poet, but once he or she finishes, has the person “fallen from perfection?” It depends on how a person defines “perfection,” and even if the poet has “fallen,” it doesn’t matter. One can still be a poet even though the person doesn’t write poetry constantly, as long as the person is always working to write poetry. Likewise, a society can be perfect even with imperfections as long it is always working for perfection.

7.23 Note that an artifex society is something that a society should constantly be moving toward since new people are constantly being born. In a sense, the only way to “be perfect” rather than “practice perfection” is to stop pregnancies. It is doubtful though that anyone would call a sexless world “perfect.”

7.24 It is better not to use the language of “a perfect society”; rather, it is better to say “a society practicing perfection.”

⁸This is why it was foolish for Plato to unjustly bar the poet from his Republic, for this made the decline of the artifex inevitable and the collapse of his Republic within the material dialectic probable. By barring the poet, he removed the artists who inspire inventors, artisans, and entrepreneurs to create wealth. Consequently, he made it only a matter of time before the whole artifex dissolved. A society cannot have inventors without poets or poets without inventors: all creators need all creators. This is why the artifex cannot be composed of “just novelists,” “just entrepreneurs,” etc.: it is not possible to have one without the others. The science fiction writer gives the scientist the idea for the spaceship which results in the inventor enabling humanity to go to the moon. Without the inventor, society wouldn’t be stable enough for the writer to have time to record his vision. Some inventors write or do art for a hobby, and if not allowed to carry out this practice, they will not have exercised their mind creatively enough to think up a new invention that will benefit humanity. Though the poet makes “shadows of shadows,” Plato did not recognize that some shadows are better than others, nor did he grasp that the “shadows of shadows” can enable “shadows” to come to life

8.1 People are told to “think for themselves,” but since they are unable to think for themselves, deprived of this capacity by the society, they are unable to understand what this means. The phrase is the answer to a question like “What are you supposed to learn in college?” but isn’t meaningful in of itself. Because others tell them so, people, obedient, know they are supposed to “think for themselves,” and so claim that they can, but unable to think for themselves, they are unable to recognize that they can’t. People are always able to convince themselves that they can “think for themselves,” but it is the artifexians who force them to critically ask of themselves “Can I really?” beyond their own definitions and standards. The stronger the artifex, the more the society probably actually will be able to think for itself, and the more a society can do this, the more it will prove able to transcend the material dialectic.

8.11 Since people (naturally) think they can think for themselves, by barring the artifex from his Republic, Plato made it impossible to determine who actually was a Philosopher King (for everyone naturally thinks they are a Philosopher King and that they are able to recognize one). Few think of their self as a mere mortal. Also, by kicking out the artifexian, Plato removed from his Republic the source of creative thinking that a Philosopher King must personify to rule the Republic justly. Without poets, there can be no Philosopher King. Lastly, to be free is to not be boxed in, and to be creative is to be able to think outside the box. Therefore, by removing creativity, Plato removed freedom from his Republic. For this reason, it is increasingly easy to find parallels between American and the Republic.

8.2 A person who can be bored isn’t free, for that individual is enslaved to an external source he or she requires for motivation. In this sense, the person who has nothing to do the moment the internet stops working is someone who is enslaved to the internet. A creative person avoids being enslaved to surrounding goods, and this is a reason why there is no freedom without creativity. Without creativity, a person must be a consumer, rather than a “recycler” who gives back through what he or she consumes.

8.21 Dallas Willard captured the relationship between creativity and freedom beautifully when he wrote: ‘If we want to see freedom, we don’t look at a kid jumping around with nothing to do. We see freedom when we see an accomplished artist sit down at a piano and play something so beautiful that we can hardly stay in our seat. That’s freedom.’

⁹See Frédéric Bastiat.

¹⁰See Richard Duncan.

¹¹It is a common and unfortunate mistake to conflate “high employment” with a “high standard of living” (there is no necessary relationship). It is also common to fail to recognize that only those who create wealth create jobs, while those who distribute wealth distribute jobs.

11.1 As it is possible to become an artifexian, it is also possible to stop being one. This being the case, a society that becomes an artifex society must work to keep itself that way, which can be when it is most tempting to think there’s no work left to be done. This is because there seems to be no pressing need for it, since it appears that the “perfect society” has been achieved, but what is achieved in one moment can be lost in the next. Whenever an artifexian ceases to be one, the standard of living decreases; whenever someone becomes an artifexian or re-becomes one, the standard increases. It can increase either by current artifexians creating something new or by someone who isn’t an artifexian becoming one. The same can be said regarding actual wealth.

11.2 The artifex class includes anyone who actually enables or enhances production, say with an original idea or philosophical construct, even if they themselves don’t actually produce anything. This kind of person is an “indirect artifexian” and is different from an intellectual, who’s only product is ideas that do not relate to production. Any intellectual becomes an indirect artifexian as soon as their ideas enhance or enable production, and stops being one as soon as this isn’t the case. An individual, in this regard, may have to start as an intellectual to become an artifexian. For this reason, intellectuals are good for society as long as they work to generate ideas that benefit production or creation — which can be everything from a blueprint to a short story that reminds a reader that life is worth living — rather than just produce ideas. Of course, it is nearly impossible to tell which artists and intellectuals are “indirect artifexians” and which aren’t, and which will become “indirect artifexians” in time. This is why the best policy is a hands-off approach that increases freedom. If artifexians, like a police state, were to begin removing intellectuals and artists who weren’t “indirect artifexians” in their eyes, they would be sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Ideally, in time, the “indirect artifexians” work to be direct ones themselves, which would increase wealth. One could say that “indirect” and “direct” are two tiers within the artifex class, as “worker” and “manager” are two tiers in the proletariat. The best artifex society is one in which every citizen is both a direct and indirect artifexian: while creating their own works, each artifexian also enables or enhances the production of others.

11.3 It may enhance clarity to replace Marx’s language of “the means of production” with “the means of creation.”

¹²The most devious of all the bourgeoisie’s tricks might be getting the proletariat to dishearten the artifex so that the bourgeoisie won’t have their enterprises undermined by artifexian creations. Successfully, it seems the bourgeoisie has convinced most parents to encourage their children to take risk-averse lifestyles rather than become artists and entrepreneurs.

12.1 If you study the arts or humanities, you won’t be able to get a job after college: you’ll be able to make one.

12.2 Like the gardener described in “The Pretence of Knowledge” by Friedrich Hayek, a school system that incubates creativity grows prosperity, while one that tries to fix children, like a mechanic fixes cars, stifles it. Since creativity is innate in everyone (as will be expanded upon), creativity cannot be readily taught, only incubated. Governments and organizations can only “teach” creativity insomuch as they give people the freedom to experiment without fear of failure or judgment. Institutions must take a passive role, which takes more discipline than does being active. In other words, organizations should resemble gardeners, not mechanics.

12.3 The death of the artifex is the death of culture. It is not by chance that poverty followed China after the Cultural Revolution, that Russia fell into catastrophe after it banished European artists and intellectuals, and that America has declined during the replacement of culture with entertaining consumerism. Likewise, it is not by chance that Europe thrived after the Enlightenment and Renaissance or that countries prosper when a true system of liberal education is established. Collapses are often preceded by an exile, excommunication, censorship, and/or genocide of the artifex, while prosperity is preceded by their acceptance. The death of culture is, in fact, the death of culture.

¹³The question of whether all people are creative is an anthropological one that cannot be confirmed either way or even assessed until an artifex society comes into existence, for a few generations, which can be compared with previous societies like America today. Personally, I believe all people are creative; however, I also believe few manage to stay creative. With respect to Stuart Brown, Daniel Pink, and Ken Robinson, a reason I believe everyone is creative is because children naturally play; a reason I believe few remain creative is because most are pressured to act like adults, to not be “childish.” I believe if the education system were to enable creativity, the world would be filled with child-like people of every age and color.

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Additions

1. Since unemployment stimulates productivity like employment, an artifex society doesn’t readily fear losing jobs to immigrants or technology. Considering Thomas Sowell’s The Economics and Politics of Race and how most immigrants are “unusual” in their drive and ingenuity, an artifexian society, in not being an anti-immigrant society, is a pro-productivity society.

2. Automation should be the goal of production, but it is often viewed as an enemy. Without creativity, at least subconsciously, society comes to fear what it should want.

3. ‘No one knows how to make a pencil’, claimed Leonard Read, but without an artifex, there might not be a pencil for anyone to worry about making. The artifexian doesn’t single-handedly produce a pencil, but the artifexian creates something (“a form”) for everyone to construct. This alludes to how the artifex needs the material dialectic and vice-versa, even though the artifex creates the material of the means of production, and how an artifexian society isn’t a society without a material dialectic at all (in the practical versus theoretical sense), but a society in which all who work and own the means of production are also artifexian in one way or another. In this way, the material dialectic is merged with the artifex, realizing “the creative concord.”

4. Many farmers and craftsmen are artifexians, for many both own and work their means of production. This alludes to the “Jeffersonian Ideal,” a society in which farmers read Ovid while plowing the fields (not that this ever existed)). Perhaps one of the great injustices of slavery, after the slave trade was annulled, was when plantation owners stopped also working their plantations, which ended the “Jefferson Ideal” and began a material dialectic. This made the institutions susceptible to the alienation Marx warned would inevitably lead to creative destruction, which Southerners ironically could see so clearly in Northerner factories but failed to see in themselves. Perhaps racism contributed to this blindness, for failing to consider blacks as human, Southerners didn’t recognize the alienation they proliferated. Perhaps all this suggests why it would be beneficial to understand the history of slavery in America through Marx.

5. People can be against studying what there seems to be no reason to study and to think that reading when there is no test is a waste of time. Furthermore, those who major in history, for example, are warned that they won’t be employable, even though it is common knowledge that history is important to study so that past mistakes aren’t repeated. Bent on being practical, society repeats past mistakes and shrinks the artifex, missing that history is always a practical study.

6. A wise and just bourgeoisie will balance investing resources in the proletariat and the artifex, causing a gradual and sustainable rise in both the standard of living and rate of employment until the society is unified in the artifex. This wisdom is found in the reality that investing in the artifex will provide more creative solutions, increasing the bourgeoisie’s profit, while investing in the proletariat will allow for the proletariat’s growth into the artifex. However, this requires a certain type of investment in the proletariat, an investment designed not to placate and satisfy (to avoid violent revolution, perhaps) (say through entertainment or welfare), but to advance, educate, and encourage the proletariat in its own creative endeavors. A bourgeoisie that understands the creative concord will understand that this focus will increase its wealth in every sense of the word.

7. To borrow from Thomas Sowell, life isn’t about problems and solutions; life is about trade-offs. Most decisions have both positive and negative dimensions to them, not just benefits or negatives. Often, if a country has a problem (say in healthcare), it looks for a solution to the problem versus the best trade-off. Consequently, it can refuse to accept any policy that entails any negative consequence, retarding development and prosperity. There will always be downsides: the question is, in the long run, what kind of policy can channel the negatives toward fueling positives. One could say that a nation prospers not to the degree it solves its problems, but to the degree it strategically manages trade-offs. This insight is also key to understanding the need for a redefining of what is meant by “perfect.”

7.1 In an artifex society, high in technology and robotics, there will be a shift of capital toward creative people. Individuals will then be pressured away from jobs like manufacturing toward being creative, threatened by a lack of capital otherwise. Today, people can be pressured away from being creative toward jobs like banking because creativity isn’t perceived as profitable. In an artifex society, this “problem of pressure” isn’t necessarily erased, but rather redirected to favor creativity.

8. Erich Fromm and Victor Frankl both make it clear that without purpose and creativity, a person cannot work at the level, efficiency, joy, and speed necessary to compete and thrive in the “idea economy.” Nor is it possible, without creativity, to integrate one’s social and work life together, which will continue to become increasingly necessary as global competition intensifies.

9. There is indeed an “invisible hand,” as Adam Smith noted, but it isn’t inherently benevolent. In a Banktocracy, Creditism, mixed market, etc., the “emergent order” can work a society toward collapse. Overall, the invisible hand is amoral, and it seems to me that its benevolence is dependent on the degree a society is artifexian. For one, in that society, the majority isn’t consciously or subconsciously depressed, apathetic, thoughtless, or suicidal. In a depressed society, the invisible hand constructs bombs; in a driven one, it uplifts the improvised. It’s up to the people, seeing that the invisible hand belongs to them: the invisible hand simply increases the effectiveness of whatever is occurring: it maintains and accelerates, but doesn’t choose, trajectory.

10. America’s system of Intellectual Property Rights needs revamping: it seems to be one of the prime culprits for the failure of society to incubate a strong artifex. Like the unfortunate ability of banks to “make money off of money,” the current ability of companies or people to use patens as a way to make money, rather than using patens to protect profitable goods, is detrimental for a nation to allow. The practice can make those seeking to become artifexians afraid they are breaking the law in creating, shrinks the artifex, and renders a nation susceptible to the self-destruction of the material dialectic. How exactly the system is to be revamped to efface “patent trolls” or “patent troll”-like activities (for which companies from Apple to Intellectual Ventures are guilty) is outside the scope of this paper, but a start would be to make it so that people couldn’t own a patent for a product that they haven’t first produced, nor allow a company or individual to own a patent for more than a year or so without making clear efforts to create what they’ve patented. A patent that a person doesn’t use should be revoked in favor of someone who will use it. What exactly would define “use” is outside the scope of this paper, but perhaps “making a thing buyable by average citizens” is a good place to start. Also, if an associational thinker desires to create an invention that brings together all the parts of different inventions, he or she should be allowed to do so easily, as T.S. Eliot could bring together numerous thinkers and references to construct The Waste Land: the creator should be responsible for simply referencing where he or she got the parts. Current laws may ruin associational inventors.

10.1 The fact that an oil company can own patents on alternative energy to keep that alternative energy from being produced is a threat to national security, considering the threat the material dialectic poises to a country without a strong and growing artifex. Patents are used now by companies to keep out superior competitors, threatening the market system. Current patent laws may break the arm of the invisible hand.

10.2 Perhaps as grounds for change, it could be the case that current patent and copyright laws infringe upon freedom of speech, especially of the “corporate persons” of startups. If individuals don’t believe that startups are corporate persons (that they aren’t big enough to achieve the status), this strikes me as discriminatory. If current intellectual property laws keep startups from beginning, yet those startups have no realistic way in which to know whether their ideas have already been patented by a company like Intellectual Ventures, then the current system of laws restricts their rights of expression.

10.3 All that said, unless the society emphasizes creativity, creativity will continue to be a threat (as already touched on), and the current system of Intellectual Property Rights will likely remain (faulty philosophies necessitate faulty systems). The current patent system keeps new technologies (like 3D printing) from being released on a mass scale and raising unemployment until it can be delayed no longer, which seems problematically necessary in an uncreative society. In a way, the current system of intellectual rights is needed to maintain the status quo for a society that lacks the vision and/or capacity to move forward. It preserves comfort, but comfort is lost as soon as it is made a goal in of itself. Both the education and patent system should be changed simultaneously, for both need the other rightly ordered to beneficially grow the artifex.

10.4 If a company in the 80s had patented scrollbars, where would computers be now?

11. As discussed by PlasticPills in “Marx: Alienation in Capitalism,” if I make a song, even if you buy it, we still understand that it is “my song.” But if I produce a Nike shoe, we consider it “the company’s shoe” — isn’t this strange? We seem to have a double standard when it comes to intellectual property, and this suggests that perhaps Marx was right that workers always “own” their labor. If a song always belongs to the audience, why shouldn’t a Nike shoe always belong to the producer?

Marx’s error is to believe that it is the “product” a person always owns, when actually it’s “the idea embodied in the product.” If I produce the idea for a song, then even if you buy my song, the idea still belongs to me. Now, if you let someone borrow your CD with my song on it, then that is “your CD” that the person owes you back — it is not “my CD” even if the songs on it are “my songs.”

It is ideas that always belong to the person who generated them, not products, and if I produce a product that doesn’t embody any of my ideas, then I don’t own the product. I am paid for “my labor,” but I am not paid for “my idea.”

Items are usually a mixture of ideas and products: it’s usually difficult to draw a line between the two. A table I buy at Walmart is probably just “a table,” but a table made by a master craftsman is probably “a Smith table,” per se. Both are tables that have similar functions and are products in terms of their functionality, but the Walmart table is “more of a product than a work of art,” while the Smith table is “more of a work of art than a product.” When a product is more a work of art than a product, the blurry distinction between “creation” and “product” is embodied in our language: we tend to name it according to the maker.

The fact that what always belongs to me is “my ideas” versus “may labor” can also shed light on why Marx was wrong to conflate the artifex and proletariat (if he indeed did so). An artifexian creates “an idea” that is embodied in a product, while a proletarian only makes a product (and yes, these two classes can mix). Perhaps a good test for determining if someone is an artifexian is to ask if it feel’s right to say that their product “is a Smith table” or if we can only say “it’s a table.” Perhaps the more “it feels right” to christen the product with the name of the creator, the more reason we have to think the creator was indeed an artifexian.

12. On autonomy: ‘The true opposite of obedience is not disobedience but independence. The true opposite of order is not disorder but freedom. The true opposite of control is not chaos but self-control’.A Keep in mind that autonomy is not the same as selfishness; in fact, a lack of autonomy can cause a rise in selfishness. The autonomous individual recognizes the autonomy of his or her neighbors and so becomes selfless. Furthermore, I think that it is between autonomous individuals that the strongest relationships can be found: the dependent individual fails to recognize the autonomy of others and consequently can become selfish. While the autonomous person controls his freedom, the selfish one can be controlled by it.

AQuote from Jay Griffiths

12.1 There is potentially a correlation between the degree children are allowed to roam outdoors and their degree of creativity. One of the great causes of the decrease in the artifex may be the loss of free and open spaces like farms and cities children can explore.

12.2 Overbearing and overprotective parents may restrict the growth of the artifex. Creativity requires risk and a free spirit, but as Hara Marano warns in “A Nation of Wimps” and Jay Griffiths reports in “Why Parents Should Leave Their Kids Alone,” modern parents seeming to emphasize safety and comfort at the expense of creativity and personal development. The burdensome concern of parents could be making the youth mentally, physically, and psychologically fragile, setting them up for depression in college (where administrations, out of guilt, may use grade inflation as a means to help students cope, not wanting the psychological state of the student body to bring down the university). The benefits of play seem to have been replaced with the benefits of concern, experimentation with schedule, self-regulation with collecting experiences, and drive with desire. Fueling these problems, the cell phone enables parents, in love, to make sure that their children “do what’s best for them” twenty-four hours a day. If children cannot make decisions, caused by love, anxiety will rise.

12.3 In a creative nation, parents wouldn’t have to worry so much that their children must earn straight As in order to receive a good career with benefits. If helicopter parenting decreases creativity, perhaps one of the causes of over-protective parenting is an increase in the stakes of doing well in school, which incentives more over-productive parenting.

Today, failure in school can seem like the same as failure in life. In a creative society, like unemployment, failure in school would drive productivity, and though grades would define the difference between life courses, they would cease feeling like they were a matter of life and death. This being the case, in a creative society, parents would likely be more willing to let their children fail, recognizing that failure isn’t irredeemable. Stress would be reduced for all parties, increasing freedom and creativity.

12.4 Creativity may help end “endless adolescence,” so a growth in the artifex may help save marriage and restore the family. If strong families help incubate creativity, the growth of the artifex helps itself grow. On the flipside, if the loss of creativity hurts families, and hurt families decrease creativity, then the reverse is also true. Thanks to the invisible hand, both trajectories seem self-fueling.

13. I believe the potential for a strong artifex is increasing, but it is perhaps the case that the increase of this potential, through technology, innovation, and so on, to the degree left unrealized, is to the degree the fabric of society decays. In an age of increasing potential, it seems to be the case that those who “get it right,” really get it right, but those who “get it wrong,” really get it wrong. Since the potential for a large artifex seem that they must increase (for technology and knowledge must inherently compound through time), it is not an option to restrict the artifex. The only option is the development of character and creative capacities; failure to do this seems like it will inevitably cause social decline.

14. In a society lacking creativity, freedom can manifest as “rebellion,” for it must be this way to gain the creativity it needs to be “constructively” free. To be peaceful and beneficial, freedom and creativity require one another. The loss of one could be the loss of the other.

15. All investment is spending, but not all spending is investment. It is human nature though to want all spending to be investment, for this premise gives humans a sense of control over the economy (especially with a central bank). Any premise that humans want to be true, will be true (seemingly), for humans choose the lens through which they interpret evidence. It is also the case that there will be less opportunities for investment than spending in a society lacking creativity, making it easier to (want to) believe the noted premise (a premise which also makes creativity seem secondary to consumption).

16. René Girard describes Jesus Christ as someone who rejects the scapegoat mechanism precisely in making it visible. The scapegoat mechanism is what René Girard described as a “sacred violence” on which societies were founded on until Christ, the belief that an individual can be sacrificed to save the group and it be just. This is a key point: the scapegoat mechanism only works if it is invisible, and it is by believing the scapegoat deserves to die, that the execution is just, that the scapegoat mechanism maintains invisibility. Jesus Christ is visibly a scapegoat and denies that his crucifixion is just; Jesus “takes on the sins of the world” in the open and refuses the “sacred violence” on which societies can found themselves. Girard does not deny that scapegoats can indeed unify people and hold societies together, but Jesus denies this option.

In denying sacred violence, Jesus upholds the dignity of the individual, and makes it clear that if a society can hold itself together through sacrificing individuals, alternative means will have to be discovered. Sacrifice is no longer an option, which if people can’t handle, Girard notes we could end up in a worse situation than before Jesus.

Regarding to artifex, the point I want to make is that if we are no longer allowed to solve our problems by sacrificing our problem-causes, perhaps Christ’s rejection of the sacred violence forces societies to be more creative? If we must learn how to get along, and if we cannot kill individuals to solve problems for the sake of the group, then we cannot run from our problems. If we believe we can sacrifice a person to make it rain, there is no need to invent irrigation systems to keep crops watered. If we believe we can imprison and exile minorities who destabilize our social order, there is no need for us to understand them or find common humanity.

Please don’t mistake me as saying that Christians have always rejected sacred violence and exhibited incredible problem-solving capacities, but I do wonder if a rejection of sacred violence and emphasis on “loving our enemy” helps a society develop a culture of creativity. If this is so, Christianity or at least Christian values could be advantageous for the development of the artifex.

17. Education should enable students to make jobs, not just get them. Perhaps high schools, or “different kinds of colleges,” should focus on “getting,” while college could focus on “making,” which means colleges wouldn’t be able to promise anything. Perhaps in this world, people really would be able to believe they weren’t necessarily better off for going to college: the kids who didn’t attend college might end up better off more often. More importantly, if college kids did create wealth, the value of college wouldn’t be so easy to question.

17.1 Ironically, when the goal of college is to give people jobs, college seems fail; when the goal is to foster humanity, college enables individuals to make and acquire jobs. If first things come first, seconds thing follow (to allude to C.S. Lewis). It should be noted that as creativity dries up and jobs with it, there is a high likelihood that people and institutions will panic and so start stressing the need to “get jobs” at the expense of creativity. This increases the likelihood that the trajectory will stay the same (if not accelerate). Furthermore, as Peter Turchin discusses, when colleges produce creativity, they can fight their tendency to contribute to “elite overproduction.”

18. A benefit to creative destruction is that it naturally irons out monopolies: large companies are regularly undermined by new technologies and entrepreneurships. This is perhaps why many companies today buy up as many intellectual property rights as they can (and why a broken system of intellectual rights is such a threat). With market mechanisms thrown off, antitrust laws must be created to atone for the failure of other laws. Ironically, such laws tend to inhibit the free market and creative destruction which address monopolies, cartels, and various forms of price-fixing, which results in evidence that antitrust laws are needed (and where creativity is low and intellectual property rights broken, they are).

19. To allude to Hayek, if a thousand people are looking at a text in Arabic, and one person knows the language, everyone can know what the text says. Cumulative knowledge always exceeds individual knowledge. Thanks to the internet, if one person discovers something, humanity can discover it too. The freedom of each individual can benefit every individual.

19.1 In a society where individuals are free to learn what they want and how they want, there is a much higher probability that creative solutions will be achieved to unforeseen problems. If everyone is forced to learn the same material, say through standardized tests, fewer unpredictable problems will be overcome. Creativity is the opposite of standardization; by emphasizing creativity, schools would enable students to contribute to the whole of cumulative knowledge, rather than just take from it. Any school that doesn’t enable students to solve problems that its administrators don’t even know exist doesn’t prepare its students for the future, and arguably there is no other way to prepare for unknown problems then with creativity.

20. The “desire to know” is a threat to freedom and enabler of it. The desire can be one of control or growth, but without creativity, it goes in the direction of the former more so than the latter. If toward control, the desire works to make complexities (like people) understandable and predictable (when those complexities may function most profitably when left alone). The desire can also be directed toward making people all the same, which inherently limits individual freedom (because freedom is ultimately always individual: there is “group freedom” only insomuch as group activity enables individual liberty).

20.1 The “desire to know” can also manifest in the form of deterministic philosophies (rightly or wrongly), and Marx, to some extent, committed this error. Perhaps history is deterministic insomuch as people believe history is deterministic and live out their presuppositions into history, and perhaps it is always tempting to believe such a view, as a sense of control is always a temptation. For this reason, it is also tempting to devalue creativity, for creativity is unpredictable.

20.2 In line with “Concerning Epistemology”, when the “desire to know” does rear an ugly head, it tends to manifest through arguments for “safety” and hypothetical situations. For example, in regard to putting up a large “warning sign” where a crosswalk is located: “What if a child gets hit by a car? Isn’t it better to spend the money on a sign and make the street a little less aesthetically pleasing than risk a child’s life?” To this point, no argument can readily stand. Consider also similar arguments that have been made in support of laws for seatbelts, alcohol, food codes, healthcare, drugs, etc., and how so much of “the lawsuit industry” seems to find its lifeblood from safety concerns or attempts to keep dreadful things from happening. Once a concern for safety or wellbeing is raised (usually through “what if” arguments), it is nearly impossible to put the concern back down — it always has an emotional advantage. This sort of argument is a manifestation of the “desire to know” that a given “dreaded thing” won’t happen, and the more safety measures that are taken, the more an individual is able to feel that he or she “knows” something bad will not occur. It’s always loving to sacrifice freedom to safety, yet similarly fatal.

20.3 The “desire to know” can be virtuous when directed toward the right end — liberty. Liberty is necessary so that what can’t be predicted can be prepared for and occur. Though humans aren’t omniscient, freedom overcomes fallibility.

21. Marx seems to have believed that as prices inevitably fell, consequence of the overproduction necessary to give everyone a job, the income stream to the working class would dry up and revolution would happen. If people weren’t given jobs and prices stayed high, revolution would also occur, because people would still lack income and be unable to purchase the overpriced goods. Revolution being inescapable, Marx figured it was best to go on and get it over with.

Despite this deterministic prediction (that perhaps stimulates revolutions to make the prediction accurate), it is important to note that in more Capitalistic nations, where Marx predicted revolution would occur, revolution hasn’t happened. Rather, revolution has tended to occur in impoverished nations like Cuba, China, and Russia, where Capitalism has lacked vibrancy. Worse yet, adding insult to injury, Marx was wrong that the State would fade away once the universal class was achieved. Rather, the State tends to refuse to give up power (though nations like Singapore have proven that it is possible for a nation to have a benevolent dictator, at least for a time). Revolution doesn’t occur in industrial societies nearly as much as it happens in pre-Capitalist nations. Nonviolent revolution through creativity, on the other hand, is prevalent where Capitalism is successful. Though Marx was wrong about the inevitability of revolution, revolution seems inevitable where creativity is lacking. However, it’s not inevitable that creativity ceases to flourish, which makes revolution non-deterministic.

The very fact that revolution seems so rarely destined suggests that people are naturally creative. It’s also evidence that the internet has made it the case that once creative person can make up for the lack of creativity of a million others, which decreases the likelihood of military conflict significantly. As creativity enables “nonviolent revolution,” so it enables “nonviolent wars.”

22. It is not Industrial Capitalism that may cause revolution but Industrial Revolution education.

23. ‘You have nothing to lose but your chains’ applies regarding why people should be creative: “you have nothing to lose but your boredom.”

24. According to Feuerbach, because humanity is alienated, humanity creates God to save it. Though Karl Barth addressed this critique theologically, it should be noted that “disembodied religions’ or “escapist doctrines” alienate an individual like circumstances. Creativity is a “projection of divinity” not out of the world but into it, making the world more “godly.”

25. In school, if a child fails math, society tells the child to study more, because the system believes that all should be “rounded out.” In the “real world” though, when someone isn’t good at something, society tells that person to do something else, recognizing that “people are different.” This causes neurosis. On top of that, the system tends to fill students’ time with classes they will never use at the expense of opportunities for play and creativity. Yet, if a student fails to do well in all areas, that student is denied access into a college where he or she will be allowed to pursue his or her passions. It doesn’t seem sensible that a genius should be denied a chance to study literature at Oxford due to a C in high school math.

26. Without new possibilities or problems, the standard of living flat-lines, and alienation can set in (“is this all there is?”). Since new issues must constantly be identified, utopia as a “state” is not possible on earth, because fulfillment is found at least partially in finding problems and figuring out possibilities to fix them. Once there are no more problems, there are no more possibilities. Therefore, the creative concord isn’t a “miracle elixir” for a problem-free world, but a system by which problems can be individually overcome with the human mind and creativity: it’s a way to manage an unstable situation. It doesn’t mean hurdles won’t come, but it does mean the mind will be ready.

26.1 If meaningful, the word “utopia” refers not to “perfection” but “a movement toward perfection” (a process). Any policy, hence, that stops “movement” (or artifexian growth) could be anti-utopian. Ironically, when people seek to create a state of utopia, they can lose utopia; when they seek only to move toward utopia, they can achieve it.

27. Someone who identifies problems is pessimistic only to the degree that individual isn’t creative. Creativity helps negate pessimism.

28. There is such thing as “disembodied creativity,” which occurs (for example) when an individual forces another to make art by threatening to give that person a bad grade. If a person is forced to be creative, that individual can be alienated in the same way he or she is when lacking creativity altogether. To be true, creativity requires freedom. I would also argue that “forced creativity” is a contradiction and will inevitably dry up, while free creativity keeps growing freely. Creativity occurs in incubators versus under controllers.

29. Though both creative acts, a distinction can be drawn between the terms “innovation” and “creation” (not that I personally always hold this distinction). Innovation increases the capacity of a preexisting entity to achieve its end, while creation gives rise to an entirely new entity with an entirely new end. In a way, innovation improves upon what exists while creativity adds to what exists. Innovation is also, in some ways, less creative than creation (but that doesn’t mean it isn’t as valuable; in fact, it can be more valuable). This is because innovation is not as tied to “personal expression” as is creation: a true act of creation cannot be done by anyone but the individual who does it, while an innovative act is one that anyone can do. The exact way that innovation occurs, though, will have personal touches that only the particular innovator could have added. In Aristotelian terms, the innovator personalizes the accidents of a substance, while a creator personalizes both the accidents and the substance. Of course, a given innovation can actually be a creation, regardless the term prescribed to it, as a given creation can actually be an innovation.

29.1 Every individual needs to do something that he or she feels is truly “mine,” and the more personalized the activity, the more that act will overcome alienation. Therefore, it’s better to be a creator than an innovator, yet any given innovator might be a creator. Only they can know.

29.2 An invention is both an innovation and a creation or one or the other: it depends on the particular invention. The same can be said of artwork.

30. Whether a given creative act is detrimental or constructive for a society is a subjective value judgment. One person will believe the invention of the gun has increased the standard of living, while another will believe the opposite. Creativity can be good or bad, and what one person finds wonderful, another may find awful. For every person who believes Starbucks has been a blessing, another finds it a tragedy. Regardless the subjective value assessment, creativity drives growth through the artifex, and in that way is good, but it’s another question to ask if it’s (in a given instance) a moral good. It doesn’t seem every creative act can be said to be good, for there is no clear standard by which to determine good in a moralistic sense.

30.1 The more creativity there is, the more it seems there will be a kind of “creative competition” (like free market competition) that will increase the good over the bad. This is why it is especially tragic for creativity to be limited, for in this state, there is a higher likelihood of low-quality or detrimental creativity, for there is a lack of competition to kick out the bad. Creativity then is directed toward making new weapons of wars, for example, rather than toward solving the problems that lead to wars (like food shortages, poverty caused by a decrease in creativity, a lack of clean water, etc.). In seeing this, it will be harder for the people to believe in the value and importance of creativity, for all empirical evidence can suggest the opposite. Consequently, it will be difficult for creativity to grow and to keep the system from undergoing collapse in the material dialectic. The same seems to occur regarding the free market: the more limited it is, the less it works, which makes it harder for people to believe it will work if left to its own devices.

30.2 Though most startups fail, as do most artists, all creative acts contribute to creating the environment of “creative competition” that helps generate excellence, and if out of a million people, one creates something that succeeds, everyone can benefit. Excellence occurs where there is competition and pressure in the right direction, and it is needed in the market as much as it is needed in the drawing-room. Unfortunately, competition can direct focus in the wrong direction (such as when children compete to see who can make the craziest YouTube video, which seems creativity but suggests a lack of it), but creativity can help guide competition to be “non-zero-sum” versus “zero-sum.” Again, the “invisible hand” isn’t inherently benevolent, but it can lift us up.

30.3 Quitting, not failure, is more likely to be bad. Failure sweetens and enables success, while quitting makes success impossible.

30.4 Thanks to the internet, the creative genius of one individual will make up for the lack of countless others. If one person comes up with a new idea, everyone practically does. As a result, it can seem as if creativity is prevalent when it’s not, for it can seem that the million came up with the idea just like the one. Likewise, because of a few successful businessmen, it can seem like the entire economy is doing well. However, neither might be the case — the economy could be struggling as creativity could be drying up.

30.5 Further evidence that people are naturally creative is YouTube: it is bursting with videos of all kinds.

31. To expand on what it means that creativity becomes a “sin” in an uncreative society: when the minority, creative individuals are made to feel guilty for seeking creativity opportunities (seeing that it, for example, denies their parents the opportunity to tell neighbors that “John is working for Goldman Sachs”), for not taking life seriously, for wanting to play instead of work, for doing what doesn’t easily fit into an explainable box, and so on.

32. If we do not have the skill to build a house, we are, in a way, enslaved to the man who has that ability. If we learn this skill, we regain our freedom. In this sense, skills are liberties. Likewise, if we aren’t creative, we are enslaved to the individual who can create: if we can’t create wealth, we are dependent on those who can. Government policies that restrict creativity react against the government’s lack of liberty by taking liberty from others. In this transaction, no liberty is gained; liberty is lessened. In the free market, skills, abilities, etc. — “liberties” — are exchanged for one another. A person who lacks one “liberty” can gain it by exchanging the “liberty” he or she has with someone who needs it. Yet as “liberties” can be gained through free exchange, they can also be learned. Since all individuals have the capacity to learn (even though people have varying material “liberties”), all people have the capacity to be free. Keep in mind that no one is free in the same way, for no one has the same exact set of skills.

33. Freedom, as a whole (versus types or dimensions of freedom), is not easy to define; it’s easier to recognize.

33.1 Freedom entails a capacity to transcend alienation. Achieving freedom requires government, economic, educational, and social consent to individual liberty. Though a poor nation may have a Democratic Republic, the people will not be readily free, for they will not have the ability to rise above their circumstances, nor may they care that they are free (to some extent). In a dictatorship, the people are not free to rise above a government they disagree with; in schools that don’t teach students to think for themselves, the students will be enslaved to the commands of superiors. Economic strength tends to make way for all liberties as economic weakness tends to limit them; that said, a strong economy doesn’t mean that there is total freedom, only a trajectory toward it. Freedom, like utopia, must be reached toward perpetually (which sounds like we’re not free to stop reaching).

33.2 Freedom entails doing what an individual is made to do, not just what an individual wants to do. A boat is not free when used on the street: it is misused. What a given person is made to do is up to that person, but only wants within the framework of that purpose will be acts of liberty. Without purpose, nothing readily defines a free act from a mere act: a meaning of life seems the prerequisite for a liberated life. Making a purpose entails creativity, and if it is the case that humans are anthropologically creative, then it is by being creative that a human does what he or she was born to do.

33.3 Freedom is like success and a person feels free as he or she approaches success. The possibility for success entails being part of a system, game, mission, etc. where failure is possible, and what entails success is up to the individual striving for it. It is only by having a purpose in life that one can have a standard by which to determine success or failure in life. This is not to say an individual can’t have successes without purpose, only that a person can’t have success. Freedom is possible only where failure is possible, and there can be failure only where there is purpose. Thus, freedom requires risk and facing fear.

33.4 Freedom is seeking what is sought.

34. It is easy to inflate the success of an individual Capitalistic with Capitalism as a whole. Though many succeed, many also fail. Many suffer, as many suffer in any system. Capitalism isn’t a perfect system, only perhaps the most perfect system. Capitalism doesn’t make everyone successful, but it may tend to increase success. Of course, those who have been successful are those most likely to point this out, while those who have been unsuccessful are most likely to disagree. This is why the question becomes whether the system is, in fact, the best. Hopefully, this paper has made it clear that Capitalism is the superior system only to the degree that creativity occurs within it.

‘Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried,’ claimed Winston Churchill. Likewise, Capitalism I think has a claim to be the best-of-the-rest economic model. Yet, as Democracy only achieves this state of superiority if people vote and work to be informed, so Capitalism achieves its apex only when people are creative.

35. Herbert Marcuse, a renowned supporter and critic of Marx, recognized that the Enlightenment project, which arguably occurred to make humanity more rational and fearless of the unknown, resulted in humanity being more afraid and more dogmatic than ever before: IT led to the theatre of the absurd. Marcuse recognized that a society full of rational individuals is overall irrational. This seems to be a point that obliterates Hayek; however, it must be recognized that there is a distinction between a rational society and a free society. Hayek doesn’t propose that every individual needs to be rational, but rather claims that the net product of free individuals is superior to the genius of any single person or group.

Whether a society is full of rational individuals is irrelevant if that society isn’t free, for then it isn’t possible for there to be a net collection of knowledge that guides the development of the society organically. Marcuse is right to identify that an increase in rationalism leads to irrationalism (for, in line with “Concerning Epistemology,” it is natural that rationalism leads to a restriction of freedom and central planning). As rationalism increases, freedom can decrease, even though rationalism could empower freedom. It is the decrease in freedom then, as a consequence of the rise of rationalism, which can lead to overall irrationalism in the way Marcuse warns. In the end, Marcuse’s findings can actually serve as evidence for Hayek’s proposals.

The more intelligent one becomes, the more one can come to believe that intelligent people should make decisions over those less intelligent (and the individual mostly likely has plenty of experiential evidence to support this belief). Also, as one increases in intelligence, it becomes harder to believe that the net sum of others is intellectually superior to oneself. Accepting this requires a faith and humility that the individual has little reason to assent to, and seeing that the person has been taught to question and doubt everything in being taught to be rational, accepting Hayek’s findings may go against what that person has been taught is right. Therefore, as a society becomes more rational, it may become more unlikely that the society will be Hayekian. Consequently, it is increasingly probable that the society be irrational in its total workings, even though it be rational on an individual basis.

It is also important to note that just because a person is rational doesn’t mean the person is wise in determining which framework to exercise his or her rationality within. If one, for example, decides that only that which can be observed is real, one has created a problematic framework in which to exercise rationality, making rationality an expression of that problem. It may also be the case that the more rational a society becomes, the more it fails to recognize the existence of various frameworks or the necessity of thinking about which framework is best.

36. Another way to determine if everyone is creative is to make everyone try Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

37. The loss of the artifex is perhaps at least partially due to the alienation of the introvert, as written about by Susan Cain.

38. It’s not possible for businesses to predict innovations like the internet, so creativity is necessary to respond to unpredictability. In this sense, creativity is practical like a fire alarm: it’s often not needed, but when it is, it can be deadly not to have.

39. Society needs doctors, for example, but society may not need to emphasize its need for doctors. Society needs artists, engineers, scientists, etc. — no occupation is readily more valuable than any other. Without doctors, we lack the health to embrace creativity, but without creativity, life loses its liveliness (and the economy slips into the material dialectic). It is common today to emphasize the need for scientists, doctors, and engineers, but it is this very declaration that causes a shift of focus from occupations that generate the happiness and creativity necessary for a society to thrive. When there isn’t creativity, society may need more engineers in order to maintain the economy via “broken window fallacies”; when there isn’t happiness, there may need to be more doctors in order to address the increase in depression and stress. The very emphasis on doctors can generate the need for more of them, as the very declaration for needing more scientists and engineers can be what causes the society to lose innovation and so leaves no one else to turn to for economic sustainability. When artists are lost, depression can increase, and this functions as proof that society, indeed, does need more doctors, fashioning a self-justifying “loop” (a paradox touched on in both “Emotional Judgment” and “Self-Delusion, the Toward-ness of Evidence, and the Paradox of Judgment”). This is another reason for why when the artifex class shrinks it is probable that it will continue to shrink.

40. America is the ‘place where people do new things,’ according to Peter Thiel, yet the moralizing of “getting a stable job” could threaten “the nation of artifexians.” Passion results in mastery and creativity, but in a nation which labels the passionate as irresponsible (and even immoral dreamers), mastery and creativity may dry up. Creative thinking is hard enough in itself, let along without the pressures of a society that dismisses creativity as childish. Society tends to do this in the name of “practicality,” but it is creativity and wealth creation which makes it possible for a nation to have practical avenues at all. “Practicality” can impractically bite the hand that feeds it.

41. Since unemployment drives economic growth in a creative nation like employment, creativity grows the economy more than employment or unemployment.

42. It has been argued that technology contributes to inequality, because new technologies tend to creatively destroy the jobs of the less educated and lower classes while increasing the opportunities of the more educated and upper classes. If this is the case, won’t a growing artifex worsen the material dialectic and increase the likelihood of class struggle?

If the artifex is growing, then there are more people who are part of the artifex and outside of the material dialectic, but perhaps the intensity of the material dialectic will increase “along the edges” of the artifex? Though the probability of the material dialectic erupting within the artifex will be less, perhaps the probability might be higher outside or around the artifex? Perhaps, but even so, the size of the class revolution will be increasingly smaller the more the artifex expands.

Do note that the solution to the displacement caused by technology is education, for this increases the capacity of everyday people to work more advanced jobs. As the artifex grows, so too will expand educational opportunities, for a keyway the artifex grows seems to me to be through education. If the growth of the artifex matches the expansion of education, then the growth of the artifex will in a sense be the expansion of education, which can be a mechanism of reducing job displacement. Hence, it will be unlikely that the growing artifex will contribute to class tension, though certainly a stagnate artifex could, which again suggests why education is so important.

43. Creativity generates resources for economies to allocate. When creativity is low, the environment must suffer. The material dialectic will devour something, even itself. However, anarchy doesn’t necessitate the protection of the environment; in creativity, a technology for saving nature could be found.

44. Colin Woodard, author of American Nations, claims that America isn’t a Union, but eleven nations with cultures that have always been segmented (to some degree), a division which has only intensified with time. Today, more and more people are moving into communities with like-minded people, avoiding discomforting differences. Perhaps immigration in the past helped mitigate some of this problem, but that is no longer the case. Not only does this not bode well for democracy, but it may also be a problem for creativity and wealth creation. According to Randal Collins, author of A Global Theory of Intellectual Change, creative, philosophical, and innovative thought emerges along the border where two groups of opposing thought meet (it is in the space between Aquinas and Averroes where genius emerges, per se). In a divided nation, creativity dries up, the artifex shrinks, and the economy implodes.

44.1 To know we aren’t bipartisan, we have to be bipartisan; to know we aren’t a critical thinker, we have to think critically; to know we aren’t creative, we have to be creative. This paradox results in societies thinking they are brilliant when in fact they are foolish. In a society lacking cross-pollination, where the truly creative can encounter the noncreative (and so forth), the noncreative will likely never have any reason to think that they lack artifexian capabilities. Consequently, the people will think they are artifexians, and yet the society will reflect otherwise.

45. A problem with Capitalism is its tendency to gravitate toward a world in which consumers can choose to only be presented with options they want to see. Creativity is often a result of stumbling upon ideas as a result of encountering phenomena that are outside a person’s current scope. When consumers can choose to not confront that which makes them uncomfortable (or when the system caters options to personal histories), it is likely that creativity dries up.

Individuals with opposing political perspectives are starting to move away from one another, and Google is beginning to customize search findings relative to browsing history. Furthermore, citizens can watch stations and read newspapers that will confirm what they already believe, and colleges and businesses are gravitating increasingly toward specialization. This doesn’t bode well for the artifex class and may lead to an impulsion of the material dialectic.

45.1 A person with options isn’t necessarily a person who’s free.

45.2 A person with choices isn’t necessarily a person with different kinds of choices. Every framework contains its own set of options. Freedom is movement between frameworks, not simply between choices.

46. A society without a freedom of speech is a society that will lack creativity. The First Amendment, more so than individual expression, guarantees the right to an environment in which one can express themselves freely without fear. “Pub culture,” in a sense, is what the First Amendment protects. Considering the work of Randal Collins, without this freedom, it is going to be difficult for a nation to innovate and grow the artifex class. Furthermore, a culture that lacks conversational skills will also struggle. Perhaps this is another reason why television culture, as Neil Postman writes on, is so devastating to society: the television robs culture of the capacity to overcome the material dialectic.

46.1 Since conversation incubates creativity, we should be graceful to the people we speak with. The freer they feel around us, the higher the likelihood they will exercise creativity.

47. Creativity might gravitate toward producing nonsense. What is nonsensical can be filled with the imagination and mean whatever viewers want it to mean. Furthermore, it is enjoyable to participate in a collective joke. Take Gangnam Style: eventually, the line between where the joke begins and seriousness ends fades (perhaps a similar point could be made about Capitalism’s tendency to blur holidays).

Creativity may also gravitate toward vulgarity because popularity can feel better than greatness. Vulgarity feeds natural, animalistic tendencies, while art might feed less natural dimensions of human beings.

Absurd and vulgar expressions of creativity (especially in a society lacking in character) might be more popular than creativity that expands the artifex class. Consequently, demand can shift toward fueling creativity that doesn’t keep the economy from self-imploding (via the material dialectic). Once such creativity becomes popular, it may be impossible to shift demand the other way again before economic collapse.

(These thoughts will be expanded upon in “Should We Get Rid of the Internet?”)

48. What Money Can’t Buy by Michael J. Sandel warns that market societies (defined from market economies) are growing, which are societies that are willing to value everything through market terms (even at the expense of other values). Sandel warns that for a thing or action to be given a market value transforms how humans perceive and interact with that phenomenon. Money changes the meaning of goods, and this can be for the good or the bad. The moment I try to pay children to read, they may view reading not as a good in itself, but as a means to an end. Though money often incentivizes, Sandel notes, it doesn’t necessarily incentivize toward the end an “employer” has in mind. When I begin giving children $2 for every book they read, this may incentivize them not to become better readers but to read shorter and easier books.

Monetary values aren’t always bad, but they aren’t always good either. Money shouldn’t be involved in areas that will corrupt rather than improve (which areas are which requires discernment and character to determine). Professor Sandel points out that money can crowd out civic duty and self-motivation. Since self-motivation, in line with the thought of Daniel Pink, is the engine of right brain and creative thinking, a failure to keep market economies from expanding into market societies can result in a dwindling of the artifexian class, the impulsion of the material dialectic, and collapse of the market economy.

Creativity can cultivate the capacity to discern values other than monetary values, for creative individuals must have vision and drive toward the end of their creation long before money is involved. A creative person has to value what he or she envisions for his or her self: though it may generate revenue eventually, this internal value has to come first. Creativity cultivates character, and it is through character that people can discern values other than market ones. Creativity also forces individuals to stand by what they believe in, and so to take their beliefs very seriously.

48.1 Rampant marketization may be a result of a society’s desire to escape “the big questions,” perhaps evident by the loss of public discourse and democrat debate. Marketization most certainly (like our technological distractions) helps us avoid angst and existential crises, for when the markets decide our values, we don’t have to decide them for ourselves. If we did decide them, we would have to pick standards of value by which to make these decisions, and this would cause anxiety and be an additional hardship to add to our already-oversized pile of responsibilities.

Creativity, on the other hand, can force an individual to take on “the big questions.” An artifexian must ask, “Why am I doing this?” “What if this doesn’t work out?” “What will other people think?” etc., questions which ultimately lead to questions like “Who am I?” “What matters to me?” “Why am I here?” etc. It is not by chance that the loss of creativity and dwindling of the artifex class has coincided with a loss of philosophy and political discourse.

48.2 Unless they perhaps educate themselves out of it, humans cannot avoid wanting purpose and asking, “What’s the point?” Creativity enables an individual to synthesis all experiences and phenomena in one’s life into a produced whole, hence making it possible to give everything in one’s life “a point.” Nothing in a creative life ever must be pointless: an artifexian can direct anything and everything “toward” a point of his or her making. Nothing lacks the potential for value.

The movement toward market societies and the monetization of everything is perhaps an effort to fill the void left by the loss of the individual capacity to add creative values to life. Since people have lost the capacity to add values, people require the market to add it for them. This line of thought will be expanded upon in “On Materialism, Purpose, and Discernment” by O.G. Rose.

48.3 The creative individual has a standard by which to determine what he or she should consume (“What contributes to my project?”). In this sense, creativity equips an individual with “Creative Judgment,” which has a teleological basis. Through creativity, an individual can determine which things “fit” the ends of his or her making. Also, what is consumed by a creative individual is usually directed toward a project and so “recycled” into it. A noncreative individual, on the other hand, may decide what to consume through emotions (which can lead to problems expounded upon in “Emotional Judgment” by O.G. Rose), or may use reason, but without creating wealth to replace what is consumed.

(These points might shed like on why many creative individuals are involved with environmental and sustainability movements.)

48.4 Monetary incentives, in a society lacking creativity, will incentivize not creativity and so market sustainability, but materialism and market self-implosion. If incentives only direct individuals to produce or consume, rather than create and recycle, wealth will be distributed until it runs out versus created and multiplied. Capitalism requires not only incentives to produce and consume, but also incentives to create and creatively recycle. Creative incentives tend to be self-created, so a free environment that encourages and cultivates self-motivation is necessary for a Capitalistic system (versus the socioeconomic environment of America today that labels the creative as reckless, insensitive, and impractical). Social constraints can be as damaging as governmental restrictions.

48.5 Creative incentives can usurp monetary incentives. Monetary incentives work when they contribute to a person’s sense of purpose and creative end, but not when they replace purpose and creativity. The woman who takes care of children because she believes it is her purpose in life perhaps will be insulated by monetary compensation (unless she needs it to keep taking care of children), while a woman who needs money to paint will be motivated by it. Every situation is different.

48.6 There is no perfect system through which to allocate resources. However, creativity can perfect the imperfect, or at least build it toward something better. What enables creativity should be the standard used to determine which system of allocation and/or incentives to use relative to a given phenomenon.

48.7 Monetary incentives to get children to read, for example, only jumpstart their love of learning if the incentives intentionally guide the children to a state where they can cultivate creativity and purpose for themselves.

48.8 As money changes our “toward-ness,” so may licensing.

48.9 It is possible that the introduction of money to an artist for his or her work may transform the artist’s “toward-ness.” Consequently, it may become more difficult for the artist to enter the “flow” state (as expounded upon by Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi), which may negatively affect creativity. Expanding this thought out, it is possible that once artifexians begin creating wealth, the artifex class will become less “artifexian.” Ironically, the profitability of the artifex may ruin it. That said, the artifex class is still the only way to keep the material dialectic from collapsing the entire system; therefore, the cultivation of character and self-motivation are of the utmost importance. It is one of the greatest challenges to develop individuals who are not negatively transformed by money, but this is paradoxically necessary in order for wealth creation to continue and expand.

49. According to Sugata Mitra, mastermind behind “Hole in the Wall” experiments, education is a self-organizing system. This means that a structure of education arises without any intentional organization and that learning is an emergent phenomenon. Teachers do not need to make it happen; they need to let it happen. According to Mitra, if students are equipped with the ability to find answers (which is globally possible now thanks to Google and the internet) and presented interesting questions, children will do the rest. All a teacher must do is encourage and inquire. On their own, children learn, master divergent thinking, and cultivate creativity, which are all necessary for the growth of the artifex class and avoiding economic collapse.

49.1 As price mechanisms, when left alone, provide the guidance for participants to self-organize the economy (according to Hayek), so encouragement and questions from teachers guide students to self-organize education. Considering that this might be all a teacher needs to do, it is fair to question if unions and bureaucracy are needed.

49.2 The internet and Google have made it unnecessary for people to use large parts of their brains to store up facts, leaving large parts of it empty. If these parts are not directed toward creative endeavors, children will slip into boredom and depression. Considering rising depression medication and Adderall prescriptions, there is evidence that this is already happening.

49.3 The very nature of standardized testing forces schools to be managerial. If Mitra is right, this is the exact opposite of what education needs. It is perhaps the case that government is inherently managerial and antagonistic of any self-organizing system.

49.4 It is possible that teachers who are themselves not very creative or in need of management (perhaps after being brought up through a managerial school system that stifled their autonomy), will not value and even discourage creativity and autonomy, which will stifle the self-organization of education and creativity (to the determent of the artifex class and society as a whole).

49.5 If education is self-organizing, it is evidence that humans are anthropologically and inherently creative.

49.6 Mitra’s work, I believe, provides evidence for reconsidering the value and role of Employment Testing, which will be expanded on in future work. For now, it can be said that schools are Employment Tests in disguise (though everyone seems to know it, because the main reason people encourage children to go to college is in order to “get a good job”). If, on the other hand, it was less legally risky for businesses to offer these tests, schools and colleges could focus on creating an environment where children taught themselves rather than focus on building resumes. Concerns about tests ruin education as do concerns about resumes. Considering this and Mitra’s work, a college that functions also as an Employment Test seems to be a terrible paradox.

49.7 The political theory of “liberty,” which America is founded on, is a theoretical construct for government similar to Mitra’s theory for education and Hayek’s theory for economics, all of which seem reminiscent of the work of Mandelbrot.

49.8 Considering “On Thinking and Perceiving” by O.G. Rose, the act of thinking can be a threat to all self-organizing systems, such as the economy according to Hayek and education according to Mitra, because a self-organizing system, by definition, cannot be fully comprehended. The very act of thinking about such a system is that which creates a perspective and framework in which management and central planning can be “proven” necessary. If we think about children teaching themselves alone in a classroom, we will likely envision chaos and errors more so than success (in line with thought expanded on in “Concerning Epistemology” and “Self-Delusion, the Toward-ness of Evidence, and the Paradox of Judgment”). Since it involves children, we are also primed for “emotional judgment” and fears that arise from “what if” concerns (“What if the children don’t learn?” “What if this doesn’t work?” “What if something bad happens?” etc.). The very act of teachers confirming that children are learning (even if the teachers are truly neutral and bipartisan) can create evidence that “proves” education isn’t self-organizing (say by giving a test after a period of self-organization, which scares the children and turns off their brains). Therefore, teachers must be careful before trying to be “scientific” about their classrooms. When it comes to education, rather than think about what’s best for children, it’s best for teachers to simply guide and watch children do what’s best for themselves.

50. Considering “Don’t Send Your Kids to the Ivy Leagues” by William Deresiewicz, it is possible that civilization has wired the best and brightest brains of the generation to be unable to join the artifex.

51. When a society is lacking in creativity (and especially when colleges have a monopoly on credentials, as discussed in “Innovating Credentials” by O.G. Rose), it is probable that programs like Affirmative Action will be controversial. This is because when a society lacks creativity, much of its hopes for succeeding rest in succeeding in college and/or following the prescribed course set by the society, and when people feel as if they are denied access to college because of their race, they can become resentful. With creativity though, as it is with unemployment, the denied individual — not that it is necessarily easy — adapts and makes his or her own way.

52. America, at least in the past, has been the most creative nation in history. Yet Americans aren’t smarter than other peoples; in fact, they might be stupider. The difference is that America creates an environment in which creativity and the artifex class can flourish. Immigrants who come to America who “weren’t creative” in their home countries can suddenly become business leaders in America. It is not their intelligence that changes, but their environment: they come to a place of liberty where they can self-organize.

52.1 Following Deirdre McCloskey, the rate that the standard of living has increased for the entire world over the last three centuries outpaces every period that came before it. Computers, cars, airplanes, etc. all were invented in America and then distributed to the rest of the world, benefiting the globe. Before America, thousands of years passed with only moderate technological advancement. This isn’t to say there weren’t major inventions, only not as many or as frequently. America has single-handedly raised the quality of life for the world because its societal structure incubates an artifex class. However, in such an environment, we must keep in mind the warnings of men like Neil Postman: not everything technology does is good.

52.2 Errors in Capitalism are contained and solutions distributed, while both errors and solutions in Central Planning are dispersed. Through time, therefore, it is probable that Capitalism prevails. Perhaps Central Planning may leap ahead of Capitalism, like the hare racing the tortoise, in the end, the tortoise still wins.

53. If it is true that, anthropologically, humans are creative, a teleological, social ethic, as Aristotle would have it, can be established. Since government and law cannot decree that people be creative or how they should do so, and since creativity thrives in freedom, it is then just for government and society to increase freedom as much as possible. A truly free society, then, is a just one. Also, if human nature is creative, then it is human nature to define the purpose of this creativity. Consequently, humans aren’t bound by their natures, and the nature of humanity is liberty from nature. This being the case, if humanity is anthropologically and ontologically creative, liberal morality and teleological