I will add a few other reasons creativity has died;
A. Everything now has rules or guidelines or formulas or rubrics or methodologies or specific layouts that you must follow, or else. They're all taught in schools or through courses, step-by-step, and it's been made "the only right way". Of course, these are all based off original works by creatives that didn't have (or had far fewer) rules or guidelines themselves, they just created something!
Now, we start with their foundations instead of finding our own, and are told we are wrong if they aren't followed. We need to go back to 0, and find our own way based on our own perspectives, intentions, and experiences.
Too much red tape, too many criteria to follow, too many pre-prescribed ways of doing things. Nobody thinking for themselves. Therefore, no original creative production.
B. Who has an original thought anymore? Between the news, social media, podcasts, and the opinion of others, most people just have the thoughts of the most predominant people they "follow". We live in echo chambers, regurgitating other peoples opinions and thoughts, who in turn are regurgitation the thoughts of others. We are far too "connected", and this continues to fortify the "left" vs "right" hive minds, for example, we see today.
C. AI will strip what's left. Why do I have to think for myself when I can plug a quick prompt into ChatGPT that will give me 100 ideas in under ten seconds? Why do I have to spend time writing a letter when Gemini can do it for me? Over time, we will rely on ChatGPT for everything that requires time or contemplation, as that step can be skipped and given to us freely.
People will argue that AI can also produce creativity, as it will give us ideas that we probably wouldn't have thought of. But, it's not the tactile ideas we should be worried about, it's the thought process that gets us to them, and what is required, such as patience, boredom, and so on.
Why think? I can take an idea from my echo chamber, plug it into ChatGPT, tell it to give me 10 variations, then pick one and tell it to build out a picture, or a business, or a novel, make a few edits, and bam, by the end of the day I have what I need.
Yes, mate. Weber called this 'disenchantment' and the iron cage of bureaucracy. You're quite right. (Aside from AI. I know a fucking cult when I see one!)
Excellent as ever. Talking of gin, you did mention gin, you may be dismayed to hear Slingsby Gin has gone into administration 😪 your cousin in Ripon may well be gutted too....
My eldest constantly writes stories in his free time, usually super hero fantasy stuff with a comedic edge. Great, funny stuff, and I was always writing as a kid. Seldom have time now, but intend to make the effort once retirement beckons. Probably horror stories I think.
Very pertinent as the ban on social media for under 16s is looming large - maybe gen alpha and Beta will save us from this cultural desert. Who knows.
The written world is awash with copycats. I gave that book about Achilles a go, that was a "retelling" of the myth. God it was boring. So boring. It takes a special kind of talent to render Greek mythology dull 🤣
Well, when you say WE in an article, to include the readership or the people of the world at large, you are doing what journalists do, often speaking for people who are represented by that categorical overview in your article. This is not however a truism in any respect. For instance, I do not live in a city, I live in a small house in the White Mountains of NH. I do not spend 6 minutes a day looking at my phone, let alone 6 hours. I spend an inordinate amount of time being creative - writing, playing music, thinking. I'm not part of the club, in other words, but I never have been. As far as reimagining literature, most Shakespeare plays are reimaginings of previous plays or stories or history. It's not the reimagining that's the problem, it's how well that reimagining is done. Ask Bob Dylan. To imagine another time in history where people in aggregate were independent minded as a whole is to imagine a fantasy. They killed Socrates, remember. We're hippies or kids of the 60's independent minded? I was there, and the answer is no. They were in the big club, that's all. There have always been leaders in the arts and thinking and then everybody else following. Salman Rushdie recently wrote a great novel. As did Murakami. Florence Knapp, and many others, great, probing fiction is being written right now. Every generation rails against the weak tea of the current one's creativity. Television is the greatest it's ever been, it's the Stage of today, with brilliant writing to be found in it. The 60's music is yet to be matched, this is true, but if you look beyond the corporate music makers and poke into the crevices and smaller rooms, music today is vibrant and bursting and alive with newness. The degree of corporate control over the arts is the villain, not lack of creativity. Take aim at the correct target. Creativity cannot be killed by anxiety, it flourishes on anxiety. Poe, Kafka, Lovecraft, Hemingway, Pynchon. I could of course populate this list with a hundred others. Pessoa. Creativity can't be killed period. Why? Because it lives at the heart of things, of people. The only way to kill creativity is to kill everyone.
It's funny...while reading this, I thought about how the Silicon Valley titans, far from being the engines of creativity they think they are, became the killers of creativity through the idea of "leverage." Basically, don't create a product people want...create a product people have to use. Microsoft under Bill Gates was the epitome of this (they never wrote an original piece of software); later companies like Google and Amazon followed his example, and even Apple has followed suit. Their motto seems to be "never spend time or money on anything unless you can guarantee the financial outcome," which they did by supressing or just buying out any competition.
I have to wonder whether this non-competetive attitude arose as a result of the same "guaranteed outcome" culture or was it part of the cause of it? Either way, it pervades more than just the arts.
The real challenge is getting these non-creative plagiarists to recognize they are not creative; all the institutions, artistic and otherwise, praise this behavior and particularly praise the creative re-writing of classics to invert the meaning (see "The Last Ringbearer" by Kirill Yeskov). They really see themselves as great thinkers and artistes.
The first really big plagiaism I remember hearing about was "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" which at least could be viewed as some sort of satire, but even so it served no purpose other than to capture a particular fanbase and make someone a lot of money.
Maybe everything will eventually become fan fiction and originality will be relegated to obscure on-line bulletin boards or sub-Reddits or, worse, obscure Substacks. What a gloomy thought.
Yes. Regarding the tech bros... I think it is resentment on their part. They've never left high school. Everything must burn because the popular kids didn't give them the time of day.
My wife is a novelist and our house is filled with galleys in search of a blurb (she can barely go outside without getting a blurb request), for both prose and poetry, so I might be able to add a few more factors to what's caused our sad, drab Age of Sterility.
Most of modern Lit (at least here in America) is written by the same cohort of postcollegiate young suburban women (with the occasional young gay man thrown in), all from good schools who often come with the imprimatur of an upscale magazine or MFA program, all written in the same glib, stilted style and afflicted with a stifling solipsism, always painfully presentist even if set in earlier times, and obsessively focused on the same issues. It's usually the story of a young woman coming to terms with her sexuality and gender awareness, often both boasting of promiscuity while also regretting some of it retroactively, with some career/dating twists and turns where our protagonist learns how shitty the world is, especially men and their cruel and stupid creation called "late-stage capitalism". The theme always seems to be some variation on the most powerful word of our age: TRAUMA.
Most of these books will be pulped and maybe one in a hundred will have real life and style in it, but the vast majority arrive stillborn on the page, with no more lasting value than a blog post. I think there are two reasons for our postliterate literature: first, most of these writers don't seem particularly well-read or that interested or in love with Literature, they're not only NOT grounded in any tradition they seem completely unaware of them, and they write such flat sentences that someone who's read a few thousand more pages of novels would blush to publish. They are much more rooted in pop culture and internet trends than in any lasting works or their authors.
And, second, they all seem to have led such spoiled and sheltered lives, they have limited awareness of the tragic elements of life that made the work of our ancestors so much richer: wars, depressions, real social strife and strictures, illness and death etc, all the various setbacks and sacrifices that provide vital experience in life and depth and tension on the page. They are simply callow children, with a child's biography, worldview and desires.
We're going to need some sort of cataclysm here in the American Empire if our art and artists are going to have anything vital to say and any desire to say it with style, flair and originality. Maybe the upcoming civil war will do it? Almost anything is worth living through if it breaks up our current era of moralistic stagnation where you can't tell a novelist or musician from an HR rep or campus dean.
Yes, I agree, any future compelling culture will have to be done samizdat, that is, outside the established channels and structures (as the kids say).
There are great books somewhere out there being written, there always are, but they might not surface until they are discovered, translated (if nec) and disseminated. (There were many gems from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc that weren't discovered for decades after being written.)
But Western ideological rot is so deep and pervasive, I will still insist that our age of almost total intellectual and cultural conformity is unprecedented (or at least shocking) because it is top-down, with our supposed educated classes being much duller and more allergic to independent thought than any normal person you happen to chat with. (My working-class friends have much spicier takes and perspectives than the people I know who've been processed by prestigious institutions.)
We've seen the best minds of this generation destroyed by social media, social justice and all the raging moralism that they shoot straight into the amygdala...
It’s not just you - sometimes in the final sentence of a comment only the upper half of the letters are visible - or perhaps it’s not the last sentence after all, who knows? I’ve noticed this frequently in the past week or so.
There’s plenty creativity still - although the old adage of ‘nothing new under the sun’ is perennially true - there’s plenty of new ways to express reality, explore the issues that trouble us and explain the trials which hinder us - it’s just that the guardians and influencers of present day society suppress it!
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I’ve reached the conclusion that in general, you’re right. In my experience there’s such a widespread apathy - such indolence, such a reluctance to try and fail and try again! Perhaps society was always like this but the endless distraction of social media has surely sunk it to new depths! Silver linings though - without social media we wouldn’t have discovered Oxford Sour!
Sure. I've noticed this with my nephew. He's a talented darts player, tipped to go pro one day. But he cannot tolerate anything below perfection. That can be healthy. But this is maladaptive. We seem to think that failure is permanent. It is necessary! The self esteem movement turned generations into anxious wrecks.
Yes! Let's go back to when the internet was a thing one enjoyed not endured.
Holy shit, I thought you were kidding about the re-imagined Moby Dick book. But alas, that shit is real. Maybe Jonathan Haidt was onto something with his "Anxious Generation". Is this just the manifestation of that anxiety on arts, politics, and culture? O cursed spite, can your generation make this right?
The only solace is that if the author sticks to the same basic plot Ishmaelle or whoever will end up deceased along with the rest of the crew save the original narrator.
Plagiarise? The word you seek is vandalize. They vandalize original works.
I can offer you conclusive proof of the death of creativity in Hollywood. When I was a youngster in the 80s, there was a cartoon that came out called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was as if someone had randomly selected some adjectives and nouns, and using them for inspiration, created a whole fictional fantasy world around them.
I didn't actually like TMNT, mind you, but to me its existence symbolized the limitlessness of human creativity. Anyone could pull words out of a sock stuffed full of them, and create a story at least as good as that one. What a simple formula, I thought. And so, I looked forward to the creation of other whole new worlds (much better ones) that would be created ex-nihilo by more talented artists and storytellers than the creators of TMNT.
The first set of movies based on the animated series was released in 1990. At the time I thought, a movie adaptation of this cartoon is absurd. A crap product. But, surely such a thing will never be made again, as there are infinitely superior ideas and worlds to create.
But then, the first set of film remakes were created in 2007. I thought: what the hell is going on? Has humanity run entirely out of ideas?
A second set of movie remakes began in 2014.
A THIRD SET OF REMAKES in 2023!
Three entire sets of movies based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?!! Chris! Humanity HAS RUN OUT OF IDEAS!! For the love of God, please, help us make sense of it!
Brilliant, as always.
I will add a few other reasons creativity has died;
A. Everything now has rules or guidelines or formulas or rubrics or methodologies or specific layouts that you must follow, or else. They're all taught in schools or through courses, step-by-step, and it's been made "the only right way". Of course, these are all based off original works by creatives that didn't have (or had far fewer) rules or guidelines themselves, they just created something!
Now, we start with their foundations instead of finding our own, and are told we are wrong if they aren't followed. We need to go back to 0, and find our own way based on our own perspectives, intentions, and experiences.
Too much red tape, too many criteria to follow, too many pre-prescribed ways of doing things. Nobody thinking for themselves. Therefore, no original creative production.
B. Who has an original thought anymore? Between the news, social media, podcasts, and the opinion of others, most people just have the thoughts of the most predominant people they "follow". We live in echo chambers, regurgitating other peoples opinions and thoughts, who in turn are regurgitation the thoughts of others. We are far too "connected", and this continues to fortify the "left" vs "right" hive minds, for example, we see today.
C. AI will strip what's left. Why do I have to think for myself when I can plug a quick prompt into ChatGPT that will give me 100 ideas in under ten seconds? Why do I have to spend time writing a letter when Gemini can do it for me? Over time, we will rely on ChatGPT for everything that requires time or contemplation, as that step can be skipped and given to us freely.
People will argue that AI can also produce creativity, as it will give us ideas that we probably wouldn't have thought of. But, it's not the tactile ideas we should be worried about, it's the thought process that gets us to them, and what is required, such as patience, boredom, and so on.
Why think? I can take an idea from my echo chamber, plug it into ChatGPT, tell it to give me 10 variations, then pick one and tell it to build out a picture, or a business, or a novel, make a few edits, and bam, by the end of the day I have what I need.
I digress...
Much love, Gage!
Yes, mate. Weber called this 'disenchantment' and the iron cage of bureaucracy. You're quite right. (Aside from AI. I know a fucking cult when I see one!)
Excellent as ever. Talking of gin, you did mention gin, you may be dismayed to hear Slingsby Gin has gone into administration 😪 your cousin in Ripon may well be gutted too....
My eldest constantly writes stories in his free time, usually super hero fantasy stuff with a comedic edge. Great, funny stuff, and I was always writing as a kid. Seldom have time now, but intend to make the effort once retirement beckons. Probably horror stories I think.
Very pertinent as the ban on social media for under 16s is looming large - maybe gen alpha and Beta will save us from this cultural desert. Who knows.
The written world is awash with copycats. I gave that book about Achilles a go, that was a "retelling" of the myth. God it was boring. So boring. It takes a special kind of talent to render Greek mythology dull 🤣
I will endevaour to pull them out of admin.
I think the Zoomers are fine. They're nothing like Millennials! I have high hopes for the Zoomers.
Me too. Many of them quite like Nigel Farage despite the best efforts of their lefty teachers 🤣
Hang onto any unopened bottles of Slingsby - you never know how much it might be worth in a few years time 😪
Excellent read, CG. Thank you.
Cheers, MW.
Well, when you say WE in an article, to include the readership or the people of the world at large, you are doing what journalists do, often speaking for people who are represented by that categorical overview in your article. This is not however a truism in any respect. For instance, I do not live in a city, I live in a small house in the White Mountains of NH. I do not spend 6 minutes a day looking at my phone, let alone 6 hours. I spend an inordinate amount of time being creative - writing, playing music, thinking. I'm not part of the club, in other words, but I never have been. As far as reimagining literature, most Shakespeare plays are reimaginings of previous plays or stories or history. It's not the reimagining that's the problem, it's how well that reimagining is done. Ask Bob Dylan. To imagine another time in history where people in aggregate were independent minded as a whole is to imagine a fantasy. They killed Socrates, remember. We're hippies or kids of the 60's independent minded? I was there, and the answer is no. They were in the big club, that's all. There have always been leaders in the arts and thinking and then everybody else following. Salman Rushdie recently wrote a great novel. As did Murakami. Florence Knapp, and many others, great, probing fiction is being written right now. Every generation rails against the weak tea of the current one's creativity. Television is the greatest it's ever been, it's the Stage of today, with brilliant writing to be found in it. The 60's music is yet to be matched, this is true, but if you look beyond the corporate music makers and poke into the crevices and smaller rooms, music today is vibrant and bursting and alive with newness. The degree of corporate control over the arts is the villain, not lack of creativity. Take aim at the correct target. Creativity cannot be killed by anxiety, it flourishes on anxiety. Poe, Kafka, Lovecraft, Hemingway, Pynchon. I could of course populate this list with a hundred others. Pessoa. Creativity can't be killed period. Why? Because it lives at the heart of things, of people. The only way to kill creativity is to kill everyone.
True, but that doesn't mean creativity hasn't declined.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/tracking-wonder/202210/is-our-always-on-culture-choking-creativity
It's funny...while reading this, I thought about how the Silicon Valley titans, far from being the engines of creativity they think they are, became the killers of creativity through the idea of "leverage." Basically, don't create a product people want...create a product people have to use. Microsoft under Bill Gates was the epitome of this (they never wrote an original piece of software); later companies like Google and Amazon followed his example, and even Apple has followed suit. Their motto seems to be "never spend time or money on anything unless you can guarantee the financial outcome," which they did by supressing or just buying out any competition.
I have to wonder whether this non-competetive attitude arose as a result of the same "guaranteed outcome" culture or was it part of the cause of it? Either way, it pervades more than just the arts.
The real challenge is getting these non-creative plagiarists to recognize they are not creative; all the institutions, artistic and otherwise, praise this behavior and particularly praise the creative re-writing of classics to invert the meaning (see "The Last Ringbearer" by Kirill Yeskov). They really see themselves as great thinkers and artistes.
The first really big plagiaism I remember hearing about was "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" which at least could be viewed as some sort of satire, but even so it served no purpose other than to capture a particular fanbase and make someone a lot of money.
Maybe everything will eventually become fan fiction and originality will be relegated to obscure on-line bulletin boards or sub-Reddits or, worse, obscure Substacks. What a gloomy thought.
Yes. Regarding the tech bros... I think it is resentment on their part. They've never left high school. Everything must burn because the popular kids didn't give them the time of day.
Fair point!😂
One of the reasons I like 19th century literature is that it's written for people with an attention span.
Reading this in my iPhone made me feel wrong.
You're excused, Brother Salazar.
My wife is a novelist and our house is filled with galleys in search of a blurb (she can barely go outside without getting a blurb request), for both prose and poetry, so I might be able to add a few more factors to what's caused our sad, drab Age of Sterility.
Most of modern Lit (at least here in America) is written by the same cohort of postcollegiate young suburban women (with the occasional young gay man thrown in), all from good schools who often come with the imprimatur of an upscale magazine or MFA program, all written in the same glib, stilted style and afflicted with a stifling solipsism, always painfully presentist even if set in earlier times, and obsessively focused on the same issues. It's usually the story of a young woman coming to terms with her sexuality and gender awareness, often both boasting of promiscuity while also regretting some of it retroactively, with some career/dating twists and turns where our protagonist learns how shitty the world is, especially men and their cruel and stupid creation called "late-stage capitalism". The theme always seems to be some variation on the most powerful word of our age: TRAUMA.
Most of these books will be pulped and maybe one in a hundred will have real life and style in it, but the vast majority arrive stillborn on the page, with no more lasting value than a blog post. I think there are two reasons for our postliterate literature: first, most of these writers don't seem particularly well-read or that interested or in love with Literature, they're not only NOT grounded in any tradition they seem completely unaware of them, and they write such flat sentences that someone who's read a few thousand more pages of novels would blush to publish. They are much more rooted in pop culture and internet trends than in any lasting works or their authors.
And, second, they all seem to have led such spoiled and sheltered lives, they have limited awareness of the tragic elements of life that made the work of our ancestors so much richer: wars, depressions, real social strife and strictures, illness and death etc, all the various setbacks and sacrifices that provide vital experience in life and depth and tension on the page. They are simply callow children, with a child's biography, worldview and desires.
We're going to need some sort of cataclysm here in the American Empire if our art and artists are going to have anything vital to say and any desire to say it with style, flair and originality. Maybe the upcoming civil war will do it? Almost anything is worth living through if it breaks up our current era of moralistic stagnation where you can't tell a novelist or musician from an HR rep or campus dean.
All praise to Oxford Sour!
A comment below makes the point. Plenty of talented people exist. We just need to prise culture from the mediocrities and vengeful dorks.
Yes, I agree, any future compelling culture will have to be done samizdat, that is, outside the established channels and structures (as the kids say).
There are great books somewhere out there being written, there always are, but they might not surface until they are discovered, translated (if nec) and disseminated. (There were many gems from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc that weren't discovered for decades after being written.)
But Western ideological rot is so deep and pervasive, I will still insist that our age of almost total intellectual and cultural conformity is unprecedented (or at least shocking) because it is top-down, with our supposed educated classes being much duller and more allergic to independent thought than any normal person you happen to chat with. (My working-class friends have much spicier takes and perspectives than the people I know who've been processed by prestigious institutions.)
We've seen the best minds of this generation destroyed by social media, social justice and all the raging moralism that they shoot straight into the amygdala...
Cheers!
Oh give me a decent crime novel over that crap every time. Over here it's known as Chick Lit. I can't read it or understand it's appeal.
...simply what?! I must know!
....callow children, with a child's biography, worldview and desires.
!!!
what the hell!? Substack keeps cutting off my comments...
Must be trying to tell me something
It’s not just you - sometimes in the final sentence of a comment only the upper half of the letters are visible - or perhaps it’s not the last sentence after all, who knows? I’ve noticed this frequently in the past week or so.
There’s plenty creativity still - although the old adage of ‘nothing new under the sun’ is perennially true - there’s plenty of new ways to express reality, explore the issues that trouble us and explain the trials which hinder us - it’s just that the guardians and influencers of present day society suppress it!
Yes. Excellent point. Thank you.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I’ve reached the conclusion that in general, you’re right. In my experience there’s such a widespread apathy - such indolence, such a reluctance to try and fail and try again! Perhaps society was always like this but the endless distraction of social media has surely sunk it to new depths! Silver linings though - without social media we wouldn’t have discovered Oxford Sour!
Sure. I've noticed this with my nephew. He's a talented darts player, tipped to go pro one day. But he cannot tolerate anything below perfection. That can be healthy. But this is maladaptive. We seem to think that failure is permanent. It is necessary! The self esteem movement turned generations into anxious wrecks.
Yes! Let's go back to when the internet was a thing one enjoyed not endured.
Brilliant.
Holy shit, I thought you were kidding about the re-imagined Moby Dick book. But alas, that shit is real. Maybe Jonathan Haidt was onto something with his "Anxious Generation". Is this just the manifestation of that anxiety on arts, politics, and culture? O cursed spite, can your generation make this right?
Excellent point. Yes, it's the anxiety. Same with the upspeak and vocal fry. The self esteem movement has a lot to answer for.
The only solace is that if the author sticks to the same basic plot Ishmaelle or whoever will end up deceased along with the rest of the crew save the original narrator.
Plagiarise? The word you seek is vandalize. They vandalize original works.
I can offer you conclusive proof of the death of creativity in Hollywood. When I was a youngster in the 80s, there was a cartoon that came out called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was as if someone had randomly selected some adjectives and nouns, and using them for inspiration, created a whole fictional fantasy world around them.
I didn't actually like TMNT, mind you, but to me its existence symbolized the limitlessness of human creativity. Anyone could pull words out of a sock stuffed full of them, and create a story at least as good as that one. What a simple formula, I thought. And so, I looked forward to the creation of other whole new worlds (much better ones) that would be created ex-nihilo by more talented artists and storytellers than the creators of TMNT.
The first set of movies based on the animated series was released in 1990. At the time I thought, a movie adaptation of this cartoon is absurd. A crap product. But, surely such a thing will never be made again, as there are infinitely superior ideas and worlds to create.
But then, the first set of film remakes were created in 2007. I thought: what the hell is going on? Has humanity run entirely out of ideas?
A second set of movie remakes began in 2014.
A THIRD SET OF REMAKES in 2023!
Three entire sets of movies based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?!! Chris! Humanity HAS RUN OUT OF IDEAS!! For the love of God, please, help us make sense of it!
Vandalise is a much more apt word. Yes!