BINOCULAR$
Though we live in a society of seeming abundance and wealth, a competitive and capitalistic society also creates scarcity. In such a society, the improvisation-over-creativity mentality has to be applied. Money is the currency used to provide finite resources in a world whose population is ever expanding. We improvise on this situation with our ‘first in, best dressed’ and ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality. We rush and compete against each other, no matter the cost, to get one of the ever-decreasing jobs. We try to come up with ways and schemes to make money just to survive and then feel compelled to horde as much of this resource as possible to supply the comfort of our tribe.
However, any smart person will realise that such means of making do are not fulfilling for everyone. Despite our self-interest, there will inevitably come a time when money can no longer provide all of us with a share of whatever resources the Earth has left. Any smart person may also be aware that a competitive and capitalistic society means that some people will have more advantages than others. Fairness and equality become little more than a topic for debate, resulting in a great deal of suffering, both for mankind and the environment.
Strangely, this does not concern us as greatly as it should because we in the West are not yet directly affected. ‘The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet,’ as the late Terence McKenna once said, ‘… and it’s only because we live in a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.’ The more sobering truth about us is that we will allow things to get to the point of disaster before we feel inclined to do anything about it. Only through the dense smog of disaster do we finally perceive the incentive for change but, in this case, it is diminished because most of us have never questioned this system to begin with – we have never been taught to imagine any alternative, much like disobedient children who have never been taught any self-discipline by their parents. When we are told that ‘we cannot change society, and we certainly can’t change the use of money’ the only agreement we could come to would be to confess that ‘we were never told that we could’.
We have been taught ways to chase money, but not ways to appreciate and maintain the true riches that Earth offers. We haven’t been taught to care, but simply to worry about ourselves in this ‘rat race’. Again, we are like the chef with the frying pan who doesn’t know how to cook anything. For man – equipped with a set of monetary binoculars – will see right through his predicament (if he even sees it at all) in his self-invested pursuit of money. If he is lucky enough to apply some creativity to his predicament, he will realise that it cannot extend beyond making money, because his monetary binoculars are not simply external, but internal as well.
As I have discussed so far in this book, much of our worldview and our approach to creativity and society is crumbling, if not already broken. The real problem is not necessarily a failing system but our inability to confront it and change our ways. I am not likely to make many friends by expressing my perspective in this book – most people won’t agree, won’t understand or simply won’t care. This comes as no surprise, as this is exactly what to expect from a society that is convinced that money comes before caring, a society so dependent on having rules and having things stay as they are, that it disregards the cost. Most of us still have to paint by numbers, rarely dreaming of colouring outside of the lines. Through fear or ignorance we sit back and let others provide the templates – after all, if we are not directly affected by this yet, why should we care?
We are kidding ourselves if we think this kind of behaviour is creative and we are certainly kidding ourselves if we consider there is any freedom involved.