The Capture and Dispersion of Creative Energy

How Capitalism Hijacks Creativity

A lot has happened in my personal life over the last few months.

I quit my longtime design job and went solo after almost 2 decades there. The creative industry is in a hard spot right now, and the writing is on the wall for how AI will change the landscape of art and design. Spoiler alert, it’s going to lead to the enshittification of anything design touches. And that’s a lot of things. It’s a needless pivot deeper into the territory of greed and profit driven by clueless middle managers trying to cull staff salaries from the budget, etc.

The place I was working was the same as every other mid-sized company, haphazardly run by owners who had a laughably poor understanding of how their own business worked. The rumors of downsizing the art department to send work overseas were becoming less of rumors and more of a reality. So I jumped ship before I got the inevitable pink slip. There were astrological and logistical reasons that made it a good time for me to do so.

I’ll admit I’m still getting used to the feeling of not going to work. It is weird to wake up each morning and not have to bolster your psyche to make it through the gauntlet of pretending to care about other people’s profits, toxic co-worker gossip, and the existential dread of watching the minutes click by as you sit there doing nothing but fulfilling someone’s power fantasies of “work” for work’s sake. Anyone who punches in 8 to 5 will tell you that it sucks your soul away, in what feels like a very literal sense. I’m now in the process of rebuilding my selfhood outside the context of work. It’s a little like retiring and a little like figuring out what to do after you just graduated from high school.

In the creative fields, you expend your energy and imagination for the benefit of a company that profits greatly from your contributions, much more so than you as an employee ever will. I personally created hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars of wealth for the owners of the company I worked for, while being paid much less than the national average for that role. It’s a kind of labor that is often taken advantage of because it’s driven by passion. While I’m sure there are passionate accountants out there, very few people dream of calculating numbers from a young age. No shade if you are one of those weirdos, the world needs all types!

Children who grow up with a natural inclination for creativity find that their skills are quickly captured in the name of capitalism upon reaching adulthood. I remember coming up with the coolest drawings as a kid and being inspired almost constantly by everything I came across. Later, as an adult working a creative job, I was reduced to copying someone else’s creativity as quickly as I could so I could move on to the next job, rinse and repeat. Nothing was inspiring because I didn’t have time to deeply think or feel about anything I was doing in the workplace.

Curiosity and a drive to create are inherent in most people (at least before it’s stifled by society), and I would argue is an aspect of humanity that has been drained away for the benefit of shareholders, when it is intended to bring beauty and healing to our families and communities instead. If we look at creative energy as we would any other type of energy, what happens when it’s captured and dispersed before it ever makes any type of change or contribution in the world? It’s like damming a river and redirecting all that kinetic energy to power something that makes the world actively worse, not better. Not only does the energy go towards something it wasn’t intended for, the downstream environment is also no longer nourished and dries up.

I believe our society is operating at a creative deficit. The calories, vitamins, and trace minerals provided by the imaginal skills are being starved from our culture on a grand scale, being replaced with the empty nutrients of “content” created by machines¹ for the masses.

Our communities need actual healers, artists, and writers. We need plant workers, yoga teachers, and creators of all kinds. Look around or talk to basically anyone and it becomes apparent that these skills are in dire need. Capitalism, as it stands now, makes it incredibly difficult for the village artist or the neighborhood herbalist to keep the lights on. Those who have to work other jobs find the energy that was meant to be shared with others is captured and dispersed before it ever makes a difference. Those who strike out on their own find that once money is the impetus for sharing these skills with others, the necessary relationship with the community is subject to a power dynamic that stands in the way of nourishing the future. In other words, the system is fucked from both sides. Money is the problem.²

Obviously, there are so many things that would have to change in order to revamp the creative/community relationship, but I wanted to put these thoughts out there in the spirit of resistance. If you are going to work each day and feeling this way, you are not alone. If you have some ineffable need to create or do something, you are not alone. Even small gestures of nourishment to improve your community go a long way towards breaking the dam and releasing the waters back where they belong.

Go out and make something beautiful. I plan to.

1. I put AI-created content on the same level as content created in boardrooms or by corporate drones. Let’s not even talk about marketing agencies, which might exist in a level of hell lower than those mentioned above.

2. A healthy society would consider the good health, joy, fulfillment, and right stewardship of the environment above the profits of the few at the expense of the many, especially when so many suffer from a lack of imaginary units of currency.