(Nimue)
All too often, creativity gets treated as a privilege and a luxury most people are encouraged to believe they cannot afford. To be creative is to be human. Creativity allows us to express ourselves, is good for our mental health and also gives us problem solving skills. Creative people have a lot more options than people who can only buy solutions. It's also essential for business, for science and for any other human endeavour you care to name.
Capitalism locks us into being users, consumers and workers. Life would be very different if we all saw ourselves as creators, helpers and givers. We could live that way, and a great many people are already invested in trying to shift us all in this direction. Check out Transition Towns movements, and people campaigning for Universal Basic Income, if you don't know where to start.
As it stands, very few people in creative industries earn enough to live on. It's normal to work other jobs, and that's been the size of it for me for most of my adult life. Many people can only afford to be creative once they've retired. A significant percentage are able to be creative because someone else pays the bills. There should be no shame in any of this when it comes to how individuals get by. There should be considerable shame in the way big corporations extract profit and don't pay creators properly.
We should all have the time to learn, practice, study and grow in whatever ways we want to. That should be true regardless of whether we're making money out of doing those things. Adults should be able to go to music, theatre, art and dance classes if they want to. Everyone should have the time to explore subjects that interest them, and to develop skills – not with a view to having ever more side-hustles, but so as to be able to live a rich and interesting life.
This is why I support ideas like Universal Basic Income and four day working weeks. We have the resources to allow everyone to live well while causing far less harm to the planet. That we don't is a political choice based on the belief that the rich getting richer is a good thing. We should all have the time and resources to live well without causing a great deal of harm. The scope to live more fulfilling lives would really help us all to reduce consumption and to reimagine what human life can be.
Stephen Palmer (author and musician) has some further insights on his substack, which I strongly recommend reading in full - https://open.substack.com/pub/stephenpalmer/p/art?r=22oodm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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