Creativity in the arts and real science worked on the basis, now gone, that the objective will impose itself on the subjective. But nowadays, the mainstream view is that there is no objective; and even if there was it would not impose itself upon the subjective.
(The only modern objectivity is in subversion and destruction of the objective - because the realm of objectivity is oppression, is evil. Hence modernity is strategically destructive - has no long-term creative goal.)
Tradition says that the good/ true/ objective is imposed upon us - eg. by symbol, logic, ritual, or sacred institutions (of which there used to be many).
Such symbolism (what Rudolf Steiner termed the Intellectual Soul state - running approx. from the Classical Era dwindling to the end of the Middle Ages, after which there was a mere residuum) is what we used to point our consicousness back at the primal world of Original Participation - to put us into that trance state of lowered and lessened but immersed-in-creation consciousness.
But that has become all but impossible; infrequent and unsatisfying. Those days of symbols are gone. True (world class, powerful, motivating) art and science are dead.
Final Participation is good/ true/ objective - but each person must have it by subjective experience. It does not impose; it must be chosen - and by deliberate and active choice. This can only come by loving participation in the divine work of creation.
For this one must love creation, that is - love God.
Because it is God's creation that is good/ true/ objective - and we are a part of that creation; so it is the only possible source of the GTO.
The creation we must love is God's; and it is this love that enables us to participate-in creation.
Not to love God (and goodness, and creation, and the objective) is - like nearly all modern people (including artists and scientists) to be self-excluded from genuine creation. Instead there is the fake-creativity of mere-novelty, extrapoliation, selection and combination - plus dishonest hype (i.e. dead bureaucracy plus the mass media).
So there is indeed some-thing other than, better than, the arts and real science - which supersedes those 'symbolic' forms of creation; and that is Final Participation.
9 comments:
To be creative in this life, have and raise children, and grow and tend a garden.
Good things (esepcially family - gardening is a recent innovation - c 15,000 years - and doesn't suit all that many people) - but for some individuals, creativity (of the kind that used to be characteristic of genius in the arts and sciences) is different. Indeed, powerful artistic and scientific creativity (to some extent) takes from the same spring as family; as evidenced by the large proportion of celibate, unmarried and childless geniuses.
If the arts and sciences are corrupted, then creating the next generation to carry the torch for when circumstances change is the creative act. Don't let your genius genes die with you.
Well, even the most valid life rules can only apply to most people, most of the time. Genius is very rare (or non-existent in some societies) and each genius is a one-off.
In my book The Genius Famine http://geniusfamine.blogspot.com/ we concluded that because geniuses have such low fertility (averaging probably less than one child, when minimum replacement is above two) it is likely that in some way genius is 'group selected' (or else something like a direct divine intervention, on behalf of the community).
Not all of us are suited to having children. Historically in England, about 20% of people never did.
If it's not a good idea to reproduce (for example, physical or mental health issues that render you incapable of fulfilling the duties of parenthood), then don't, and use your energy in a different productive way. Particularly if it means your close relatives can have a lot more children...
@C - Historically (broad generalisation) most women had children - about 90 percent. A much higher proportion of men did not - which varied between societies (according to how much the high ststus men monopolised reproduction).
But among the poorest peasants (the majority), a high proportion of people had no *surviving* children; since average child mortality rates were very high indeed, well above half.
But survival was much greater among the upper than the lower classes (partly due to environment - differential wealth etc, but also due to greater concentration of genetic problems among the lower classes).
That 90% is a very broad generalisation. In England, and other parts of Europe on the same side of the Hajnal line, it was around 80%. Other areas, closer to 95%. With women who do have them averaging 5+ kids, population growth is still strong.
In any case, if the bottom 10% of a highly heritable trait don't reproduce, there's quite a significant upward pressure on that trait over the generations. We've had that form of soft eugenics for quite a long time. IQ wise, it's enough to gain an entire standard deviation over a couple of centuries.
This largely sounds like the same spiritual errors that most religions have adopted about the afterlife: that it must be unlike Earthly experiences, free of the limitations of corporeality and matter, reduced to a purely spiritual reality of which prior things are figurative, etc.
I don't think there's any truth in defining something by what it "shouldn't" be.
- Carter Craft
@Carter - I agree. This fetish about wallowing in not being able to know God is something that derives from pre-Christian, pagan philosophy (probably mostly neo-Platonism). The teaching and example of Jesus should tell us a great deal about the nature of God the Father, if only this is noticed and taken seriously.
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