What is a creativist?

A creativist is a human being with a heart-felt need to make things. However this need arises, it drives the creativist to write fiction, paint landscapes, compose symphonies, design computer programs, build sailboats, devise political systems ... whatever is imaginable. Creativists use creativity to make things that are altogether new. They hope the fruit of their efforts will have lasting influence, and that their ideas will benefit all people. Creativists want to live on through their work. They'd also like to reap some reward while alive.

Sadly today's society does not place enough emphasis on ingenuity and evolutionary thought. People are afraid of change. Our social environment rewards what has been successful in the past. Today most creative minds are forced to work within the confines of a consumer culture geared to get the little guy to pay his measly earnings for whatever product attracts attention. The best music, the best writing, the best planning, the best filmmaking, the best graphic design, goes toward the buy and sell of the business world. Art for art's sake is left to the wealthy, the funded elite, the universities, the dedicated poor, and the many part-time creativists who must keep "real jobs" in order to survive.

When creativists do break through to the big time and earn enough from their craft to fully support themselves, they're often forced to compromise their ideals and their creative intuitions because they must produce to sell, and must now deal with media middlemen. Editors, publishers, record companies, TV network executives, college administrators, movie houses, science foundations, and demanding fans all have their own expectations of the established creativist. "We like what you did, now do it again." Once achieved, a reputation is a burden not soon lost.

All of this is contrary to the motivations that initiate creative activity. It's all very besides the point, and stifles the creativist in real and destructive ways.

What makes you think things will ever change?

please note: The word "Immuexa" was originally my name for what later became the World-Wide-Web. It's now the name of a company, not a network.

The software known here as "ThoughtShop" was originally called "Colony." The rights to the tradename "Colony" were sold in January 2000.