SAVING
CREATIVITY
Are we moving toward the end of history, where all societies will be “liberal democracies”, as Francis Fukuyama suggested? Perhaps, but the road to that destination hasn’t been easy thus far, and it probably won’t be in the future either.
Why? - because once people take future wealth and security for granted, they often become dangerously complacent and oddly irrational, and they also tend to over-institutionalize their societies. These three phenomena can destroy healthy nations. Successful liberal democracy is therefore not a steady state, and once you have reached it, you must constantly defend it against armies of paper-shufflers, rent-seekers, Spartans, cynics, scaremongers, ecofascists, babblers, charlatans, naysayers and social Utopians.
However, there are ways to protect creativity and keep societies agile and dynamic that we could pursue. If we do that, the future could actually be rather bright.
The 12 threats to creativity
The creative state