(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr. Find out more at my newsletter.)
Creativity is a tool for freedom and a tool for a functional society. It enriches and empowers. It provides new ideas and lets us see old ones in new lights. It topples tyrants and leaves potential tyrants in fear. If you’re a creative person, you’re morally obligated to empower others to use their creative abilities to ensure freedom and a functioning society.
To help people be creative means that they can think outside of the cages built around their heads. It means they’re harder to rule and control, and more able to be responsible citizens. Creativity is freedom – but also it’s a chance to take responsibility in new ways.
Helping people to be creative also gives them options that go beyond thinking. It may help them find a new job, freeing them of financial chains. Creativity gives them abilities to find solutions to problems, allowing them to fix things as opposed to following snake-oil charlatans.
Showing people the power of their creativity and how to use it finally means happier people. Creative people don’t just have the chance to be freer, more responsible, more powerful – they can experience joy more. When you can dream and imagine, you can find what you enjoy kand new ways to enjoy – and happy people can be hard to control.
How you help people be more creative, however, is a trickier bit. Each of us has our own creative tools, methods, and inclinations – these may not fit those we want to help. Each person we wish to aid has their sown situations and challenges and desires. To share creative power means asking what you can share and how to share it – it’s a journey, not a destination.
An excellent place to start is to ask how you got inspired, who helped you be more creative, what helped you see what you could do with creativity. This may be only relevant to you (and probably is), but analyzing the experience will help you find lessons to apply to others. If a supportive parent helped you, then you have a place to start – be supportive as they were.
Finally, keep in mind that this call to action is not one of superiority or a chance to lord your creativity over others. We’re all links in the chain; others aided your creativity before, and in turn, you pass it on. Each person you help is not “beneath” you – sharing and supporting is a mutual learning experience, because you will learn from everyone you want to nurture. Be humble in helping because then you’ll learn (possibly about your flaws).
So let us inspire others, share power, encourage creativity. We’ll empower and guide, help people be more, and build a stronger society. It’s a responsibility, but such a glorious one.
Steven Savage