Chaos, Creative Play & Making a New World
“We are suddenly threatened with a liberation that taxes our inner resources of self-employment and imaginative participation in society. This would seem to be a fate that calls individuals to the role of artist in Society.” -- Marshall McLuhan (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964)
What Artists Know
I once had a conversation with a friend who admitted that the reason she stopped pursuing a writing career was because “I got tired of the constant rejection.” This is applicable to any artistic pursuit or “career”. Rejection, in the form of denied grant applications, non-selected works for exhibition (paintings, films, etc.), rejected query letters (to publishers or editors), or non-winning writing competition submissions (that you were so sure you’d win), are indeed a common occurrence in any creative person’s life -- especially if you are compelled (like most artists) to “put yourself out there”, and expose your work for (critical) public or professional judgment.
So why do some keep at it, while others give up? Are "real" artists really just true masochists?
I will not deny that much artistic striving and creative endeavor appears to be masochistic, at times. But this pathological mentality is not the true, underlying mentality (or motivating psychological state) that drives the artist. What drives the artist to continue pursuing her/his art is simply this: creative work -- even unrecognized work -- is empowering to the artist, and creates a very real sense of accomplishment and self-efficacy. Some artists are just more addicted to this empowering state/experience (so, maybe there is some degree of pathology operating here). And sure, from this may come a certain degree of status within the artistic community that one is a member of (which serves as a positive incentive), but this only happens indirectly, as a by-product of individual artistic striving and productivity.
Indeed, this is borne out by recent fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) studies involving brain responses to rewards (such as monetary rewards) which showed that the brain’s “reward pathway” (the one fueled by dopamine) becomes excited when receiving a monetary award (as one might expect) but the same pathway becomes more excited, and maintains its excitation state longer, when one is experiencing social recognition and an increase in one’s social status (achieved through some type of recognized accomplishment, etc.). This perhaps offers scientific validity to my previous claims about what artists “know” (if only unconsciously) and explains, on a neuro-chemical level, what keeps them going despite long periods of little monetary success.
An artist tends to view her work as something special and unique (some even relish keeping it hidden from the world, having less of a desire for recognition, and more for self-accomplishment). The artist’s body of work is her “secret garden” or “treasure” that will be bequeathed to society someday, in some form. Despite this, there are few if any such creative types that would genuinely accept a life of no recognition. Most artists want to find their audience and be accepted and acknowledged by this audience (and thus achieve the recognition and status that most humans desire). That said, I have met many artists who accept that their contribution to society (and recognition for it) may not come until sometime after they are dead. It is not defeatism, but simply an expression of a fundamental understanding of the artistic sphere of existence. That too being said, artist types are regularly putting on colorful shows and/or outrageous exhibitions and throwing art parties or holding “salons”. So, some recognition here-and-now would be just fine, but in either case, some fun along the way is desirable.
Just as physical exercise is effective in alleviating mental depression, so too is mental (creative) exercise effective in alleviating certain “psycho-emotional” or “spiritual” depressions brought on by a general lack of efficacy in one’s life, or a deficit in one’s sense of accomplishment and self-esteem, induced by an uncaring world or diminished social status. It's a form of 'self-medicating'...some just need more medication than others.
As hard as life can get, we are none-the-less “spoiled”. Modern, post-industrialized life is vastly more comfortable, safe, and relatively “easy” than at any time in human history. We only need review the ancient (and not so ancient) histories of various civilizations to see that, for most people, for most of human history, life was hard, really hard. But contrary to the first item in Shaw’s classic “solitary, nasty, brutish and short” description, early human existence was seldom solitary. Indeed, it was our communal bonds -- expressed through a myriad of religious and tribal forms -- that served to protect human populations (of any size) from the ravages and risks of everyday, nasty, brutish living. True, they lived shorter lives way back then, but few suffered from alienation, isolation, and depression.
Today, however, we have different stressors. Those who live in a modern, capitalistic society have to contend with all manner of competing, obstructing, fragmenting and/or demeaning forces and collective and individual bad actions. We are judged by our value in the market place, that is, by how much our abilities and talents and skills can be exchanged for currency, wages/salaries, options, or “bonuses”. In this society, millions of people with creative abilities and talents go for years or maybe lifetimes under-appreciated and under-utilized (or totally unutilized) for the betterment, the enrichment, of society. Wasted human potential is obscenely pervasive in this and nearly every other ‘advanced’ or ‘developing’ culture and society.
Despite the appearance of democratic institutions and norms, much of becoming “successful” in this society (as defined by the corporate molders, academic elites and the higher echelon folks in commercial media) is the result of one’s connection to various status networks, membership in an exclusive community (like the IV League), who you know (or are related to), one’s ability to over-look or suppress charitable and compassionate instincts towards others, and, of course, money. The relentless pursuit of money (or capital) is perhaps the greatest example of a self-reinforcing condition: the more money you make, the more “status” you gain, the more opportunities you get, the more money, the more status, etc. etc...And thus do we become all the more dependent on the perpetuation of this cycle for our self-worth.
I would like to reprint here a couple of sentences from an earlier section of this book:
Our economy is not simply in severe recession, it is in a state of flux, a state of transformation. As we struggle to develop a new economy, many millions of folks will be forced into an adaptive mode -- some successfully, some marginally, and many, sadly, not so successfully.
We, as a culture, society, and economy, are in transition. In physics, a transition state, or “phase transition” (i.e., of a system’s passing from one state into another) is typically accompanied by, or preceded by, a disorderly or unstable period of activity. And so it is with human social systems. Although "chaos" in the scientific sense of the world does not mean exactly what it means in the social or linguistic sense (chaos actually has pattern and even stability to it); nevertheless, “chaos” is something that people feel, as much as they perceive or note intellectually, and, their reactions to it (however exaggerated) are often anxiety and fear. This is to be expected in a society which, every moment of every day, stifles “imaginative participation in society” (as McLuhan says) and quashes creativity.
Forced to be dependent upon government, corporations, religions, etc. for our main sustenance in life, we can easily find ourselves in a daze of confusion, or gripped by fear and panic, when these institutions fail us, or abandon us. It need not be this way at all.
It is not that artists don’t recognize the chaos (or even, at times, become anxious over it). Rather, it is that chaos and disorder are not viewed by these types as necessarily, or entirely, bad. They know that chaos is the source or well-spring of creative action. It is something that needs to be harnessed, not prevented (which, in reality, is not possible). They understand that chaos can be destructive and creative (simultaneously), and what makes the difference here is one’s fundamental view of (and thus reaction towards) chaos (and thus Nature as a whole). Artists tend not to be as “traditional” as most (but they often start and have their own traditions). Do artists really want a life of utter chaos and instability? No, of course not...They want a life of creative efficacy. But to have this, to do this, one must also accept change and impermanence as natural, and this in order to channel chaos creatively -- a state of mind I once labeled 'playing with chaos' -- which is always analogous to bringing a new world into existence. It is when we resist this change that destruction often follows. One can love the old world, even as you say goodbye to it (as Jonathan Richman sings).
I once interviewed the Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine (Chemistry, 1978), author of the seminal book Order Out of Chaos. In the book, Prigogine goes to great lengths (with lots of neat charts and data) to explain that “chaos” in complex systems serves as a “possibility generating mechanism”. Now, even though he was speaking of chemical, molecular and biological systems, it is natural to extrapolate and apply Prigogine’s theories to human-scale systems—like cultures and whole societies (but I can still hear the good Professor, RIP, saying: “I accept NO responsibility for any of it!”). Prigogine’s theory of dissipative structures (which earned him the Nobel) described certain real-world systems that, when shocked or perturbed upon reaching a far-from-equilibrium point, spontaneously “escape to a higher order”. The dissipative phenomenon represents a powerful and natural capacity …and also a powerful concept that one reflexively adapts to the development of societies and cultures – and perhaps even to human minds and personalities.
Will we, as a society, “escape to a higher order”? It is a question that must be asked and the answer(s) to it weighed well. The archives of archeological museums are drowning in artifacts from cultures and societies that, for this or that reason, did not survive. The fact that we look to these ancient, “extinct” societies to somehow prophesy our future is telling.
In his wonderful book of philosophy -- Finite & Infinite Games – A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility -- author James P. Carse writes: ‘Chaos is nature refusing to obey my expectations’. We are conditioned by our politco-socio-economic structures to expect the chaos and instability of transitional times to leave us anxious, uncertain, “endangered”...and at the mercy of forces beyond our control... but the creative personality -- the creative spirit in all humans -- rejects this; it refuses to conform to a culture of fear. It is master to Itself. It builds its own world.
Chaos is an invitation to a new state of being.
It’s a crazy world out there, at times...but also, a world of infinite possibilities.
Keep your mind sharp and your spirit up.
Stay creative.
Do your best.
Good luck.
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? excerpted with minor edits from the ebook Artful Survival – Creative Options for Chaotic Times by M. A. Ricciardi, 2009 (1st Edition), 2011 (2nd Edition)