We all experience life at different levels of consciousness, but we all need the same basic things in life; food, shelter, health, love — that’s it. We make it complicated.
Creativity is the central aspect of being human. Without it, a person experiences a poor life. The soul wanes into the darkness, and can no longer illuminate what’s good and promising in the world.
The mind falls prey to the prism of information that we see on the internet. The media chews at our souls, regardless of the fear it creates. It promotes what’s bad and pessimistic in the world. It’s a fear monger.
This frightens me. I often write about the antidote to this fear. To act, create, to walk, to explore life. To always be a beginner, like a child discovering a colourful garden.
Most news articles are the result of machine generated pieces that a newsroom gathers each day through agencies. Journalists spend their time checking for readability, fact checks have been guaranteed by the agencies, and nobody checks for errors in spelling and grammar. journalist are fortunate if they get a real job to report on, these days.
What we see and read on the internet is nothing but a sliver of information about the world we live in. If you tally up what you have read or watched each day, you’ll come to the conclusion that you have been looking at the same topics over and over again. It feels like an information overload, it is.
The internet is a repetitive screen of cursory information. There’s little knowledge to be had unless you take control and follow through on your study, or your pursuit of enough information about a subject.
Life and work should be a progressive journey of discovery. Without discovery, there can be no progress.
To read a book is better than to watch a video on a subject. It just is. Try it and find out.
Imagine if you went to a university lecture on physics. You enter the great hall of learning, take your seat, notebook at the ready. Then the professor skips across the stage, throws her hands into the air, and shouts her lungs out, “What’s up, Physicists?!”.
She bounces around a few times, something like a bad Irish Jig.
“Don’t forget, I have a special on my latest course. Buy it before the end of this lecture and get a discount of 900 %. Sign up to my newsletter and receive a load of gibberish that I write when I’m stoned and lonely.”
That’s YouTube. Some of the people who have decided that they want to teach people about their passion, end up realising that they don’t have the skill of presentation, and engagement for classes. So, they do a little jig, shout, shake their head believing it creates infectious enthusiasm. They then rattle on about their newsletters, special offers (which are always on offer), and then at about 17 minutes into the video, just when you’re hoping the information begins, they tell you what they’re going to tell you. A spoken bullet point list of how exciting this video is.
The reason I’m writing these things about the internet is because I want you to take notice. To become aware.
There are some excellent YouTubers. It’s a medium that requires presentation skills, and practice. It’s a way that a knowledgable person can teach eager students something of value. It’s not easy to do that. Teaching is an art, it’s a creative endeavour.
I read books, whole books. Books about what artists, and creative people have done with their lives. I learn from my reading. I know that it feeds my mind with food for thought. To compare the exploits of a business person who raised themselves by their bootstraps to create something they believed in, to the work and life of a painter, a photographer, or a dancer who only thought of the creativity of their pursuit. They were living life, experiencing life. We can learn from these people when we take time to get deep into what, and why, they followed their creativity.
Well written fiction, all genres, vampires, everyday people, science fiction, thrillers, books of love and heartache, weird books written by people who live a strange life, all of these and more can teach us about life. They make us think great thoughts.
Life is a mystery. Creative people love to find that their work has brought them to yet another fork in the road of life. They are presented with a conundrum of which road to travel along. The first road could lead to anywhere, the second road could lead to who knows where. Then you realise, you make what you will of the roads. You just keep walking and keep your eyes wide open.
To be creative is to live life, to open veins, to live, to bleed a little, to enjoy the fruits of life, but to know that it isn’t all only joy. It is to know that balance of both joy and suffering is life. To be courageous.
Critical thinking — using your brain to make judgements, to gather information, to examine the things that you encounter, expands your thinking.
We gather ideas, useful ideas, and the brain will develop its need to become creative. This is why creativity is an essential and natural tool that we use to be able to ensure food, and shelter, to make sense of the immediate environment that we live in, and utilize it intelligently.
I write articles, and blog posts. I love to write, to get better at it. I’m only human, flesh and blood, But I’ve been around long enough to know that something’s wrong in the jungle.
It makes me sad to see young people being corralled into cages that they are tricked into building themselves. To abandon all that was learned in the past. To wave a hand at older people who try and teach them something that was learned long ago. To buy into the belief that the internet is creating a new, better, improved world.
The internet that teaches us that we don’t need to think any more because a “genius” has invented an app that will do it for you.
Software that takes away the need to make decisions. To push a button and live with the consequences of AI results. You can live a life where you don’t need to think, bleed, ache, or feel joy, real happiness is boxed up into a monthly package.
“Data shows us that most people feel satisfied with this or that virtual product, so sign up and get your monthly subscriptions.”
The idea of boxing up happiness and selling it has been going on since cave people invented the marketplace.
Now, it continues, but at such an intense rate of information bombardment. Our poor minds. It is difficult to think straight, to be critical about anything when the only place to find out about a product, or an idea on offer, is to search on a search-engine that dominates every inquiry on the internet. Bias.
Well, it’s Saturday. I have a pile of books to read. A lovely pile of discovery into the worlds of mythology, fiction, Yorkshire, John Berger, Susan Sonntag, and for fun and thrills, a book about how the drug cartels have created a world economy that influences the stock exchange — or something like that.
Enjoy the journey, and always take the road less travelled. You might discover something new.
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