In our own time, a pervading secular spirit has begun to diminish such face-value acceptance of mythical narratives and belief in supernatural phenomena. In terms of the Christian faith, this is demonstrated, for instance, even with respect to such a central point as Jesus's relationship to God, which is now considered by many to be not ontological, but that of an inspired human prophet. It is true that mainstream Christian churches continue to interpret in a literal way Jesus's statement in John's gospel that "I and the Father are one." And, more broadly, traditional churches continue to accept established Christian doctrine regarding the Holy Trinity, which is believed to encompass in the essential unity of One True God the three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In orthodox belief, each of the three persons plays a distinct role: God the Father is seen as the power behind creation. God the Son is viewed both as the ordering principle in creation and, in his human form, as Jesus the Christ, man's redeemer. The Holy Spirit, who is thought to embody the love between the Father and Son, is believed to have descended to earth following Jesus's ascension to heaven, where, as the Paraclete, he maintains a spiritual presence in the souls of Christian believers. Finally, seen as a unity, the Christian God is believed to be both the author and sustainer of the universe, and the guide, helper, and redeemer of those on earth who believe in him.
Yet, these days, informal conversation relating to the Christian faith makes it evident that increasing numbers of Christian church-goers, though continuing to offer lip-service to the orthodox creed, are finding it more and more difficult to believe that God Himself walked the earth two-thousand years ago as a seemingly self-evident human being. They are far more inclined to understand the phrase "I and the Father are one" as a figurative declaration of Jesus's unity of purpose with a power he believed to be the source of universal love. Such a symbolic interpretation can in fact offer meanings that are not only more believable, but, in the view of many, also more profound. It can suggest, for example, that Jesus's claimed unity of purpose with the source of universal love makes his words and life choices as a man the right model for all people to emulate; or that, because he is in spiritual unity with that source, he can introduce it to the world in his own person, thereby directly imparting to human beings the highest power in the universe with which to transform their lives for the better.
Similarly, the inroads of science have sharply diminished a once common belief in the supernatural. Particularly in Western Europe and North America, the New Testament accounts of Jesus's miracles and his salvific mission on earth are viewed more and more as a myth to be understood symbolically. Today, among many, if not most, nominal Christians in those places, Jesus is no longer acknowledged as the Son of God sent by the Father to redeem, and ultimately rule, a helpless, sin-ridden human race. Rather, he is perceived as a true "Son of Man," who during his ministry gave prophetic voice in the Sermon on the Mount and other missionary preaching to a number of revolutionary and transformational moral, ethical, and spiritual principles. Four that readily come to my own mind include: "I am come that they [Jesus's followers] might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father." "Love your neighbor as yourself." And, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." All of these injunctions, as I will attempt to show shortly, are subject to secular interpretations that can have important practical significance.
For two-thousand years, these and other words of Jesus have resonated with Christians around the world--particularly, perhaps, in Bible study and as themes for church sermons. Today, however, in a far more secular time, it is the prophetic wisdom of Jesus that has the greatest relevance, especially for many Americans who feel under siege by the deceits in daily life of American society and culture. Our nation today, contrary to Jesus's plea that we love our neighbor, has become to all appearances, from the top down, a huckster society. The news media shill for the government, and the government, think tanks, and advertisers shill for corporations. Congressmen push snake oil in political debate, knowing that the other party will never buy it and help sanction it by legislation, but that it will go over big with faithful campaign donors and the constituents back home. Taking a cue from the actions of the powerful, much of the population hopes to follow in the same track and, in some way, win at least "fifteen seconds of fame."
The country's culture mirrors these trends. The run-away train of American imperialism carries leaders from all segments of the American complex of power ready to patronize nations that do our bidding and reflexively demonize those that demand the right to go their own way. Commercialism runs rampant every day: in the endless stream of in-your-face TV ads for products we don't need; in the cartoon quality of political attack ads; and in cable TV news coverage, such as the political gossip and shallow horse-race analysis of national election campaigns, that is aimed at little more than swelling viewer counts for the benefit of corporate sponsors. At the people level, America is in significant part a fear-driven, gun-crazy culture, as shown by both its high level and fervent defense of gun ownership, its cavalier support for war, its repeated episodes of mass killings, and the bodies of black youths on ghetto streets, felled either by other socially disaffected black youths or, often, by scared, racist, or overzealous police officers. A revealing clue to this decadence, as President Obama himself once intimated to his regret, is that a significant portion of our population does in fact find whatever sense of social identity it has in an overly elastic interpretation of the Constitutional right to bear arms and an overly literal reading of the Old Testament of the Bible.
Nature Shows Us a Better Way.
Surely, the millions of Americans who feel besieged by these repressive trends, and the many more who seek to escape their actual effects, would welcome a "creativity revolution" that could significantly upgrade the motivations and values that currently drive our society. In helping to achieve that change, they might find a starting point in the words of the early 20th-century French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, who urged that sculptors design their works so as "de faire ressortir les grandes lignes de la nature": "to make stand out the main lines of nature." That principle applies not only to the design of sculptures or any other creations in the fine arts. In an extended sense, it also applies to the design of anything of practical value in the real world--from more empathetic approaches to teaching young children; to cars powered by non-polluting energy sources and engineered for maximum reliability and safety of performance; to wind farms and solar panels for economical power generation. In all cases, mankind's conscious creation should reflect nature's fortuitous creation, which tends always, in its main lines, to a more perfect harmony between the needs of its multifarious life forms and the environment they inhabit. By following nature's model, humans would necessarily make use of their own inborn insight and talents, either by themselves or in concert with other individuals, to develop new organizing concepts or create new materials, tools, products, foods, housing, facilities, and other constructions that add objective value to the world and meet the real needs of people. Such a course would also change the meaning of work from a driven pursuit of personal and corporate competitive advantage to a self-motivated personal or collaborative pursuit of meaningful creation, opening the way to empathetic, rather than merely transactional, relations with other people.
For me, the statements of Jesus I've already quoted can be directly related to the pursuit of those ends. His declaration that "I am come that they [Jesus's followers] might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly," raises the question, What does Jesus mean in this statement by "life"? Understood in the context of the "creativity" theme elaborated in this essay, it might be fairly interpreted to mean the consciously directed creativity that separates man from nature, as evidenced by the historically unique and impactful parables, teachings, and utterances of Jesus himself. And what is meant by a more "abundant" life? Again, it suggests to me a living of life in which people, most in concert with others and a few artists privately, make use of their inborn insight and talents to freely produce new creations that add objective value to the world and meet the real needs of people.
The more abundant life that Jesus speaks of--in a time when no provisions were made by ruling powers for enhancing the general welfare--is represented in its scriptural context as a spiritual gift from his Father. The following pronouncement also involves a gift from the Father: "He that believeth on me," Jesus says, "the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father." I interpret this statement, first, to mean that those who appreciate the revolutionary creativity of Jesus's own insights regarding the importance of love and of one's own sense of truth can by that inspiration do works that are comparable to his. But, what about the greater works that believers in Jesus will do when he has returned to his Father? According to New Testament scholars, Jesus's unspoken but implied literal meaning is that his followers' "greater works" will then be possible because the Holy Spirit, descending from heaven, will take his place by living within them, thereby continually instilling in their own earth-bound nature a direct source of spiritual empowerment. The entire quoted pronouncement, however, also makes figurative sense in the context of the emphasis on human creativity developed in this essay. Isn't it possible that the "greater works" Jesus's followers will do by means of their spiritual empowerment will be works that surpass Jesus's own static caring functions of healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and giving hope to the despairing? Might not his followers now be empowered to make full, loving use of their inborn insight and talents? If so, they would be prepared to serve two different purposes of conscious design that could help lay the foundation for a secular kingdom of joy: namely, to create things that add objective value to the world and meet the real needs of people; and, in whatever ways are needed, to help liberate the creative capacities of others.
Finally, in the context of liberating the creative instinct, might not Jesus's command to "Love your neighbor as yourself" be interpreted as an injunction to promote and uphold for other people the same right you claim for yourself to develop and give expression to your inborn talents? That command, in turn, is echoed by the injunction to "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," which would seem to advance the ethical principle that no individual should be less willing to help others make real their "God-given potential" than he hopes others are willing to do for himself.
Making Meaningful Use of a Precious Gift.
The capacity of the human race and possibly other intelligent beings in the universe to develop concepts and to consciously plan, design, and produce life-enhancing constructions of various kinds is ironically the crowning work of undirected cosmic forces, planetary environmental dynamics, and the random gene mutations that underlie biological evolution. Mankind's capacity for conscious creative design therefore constitutes a gift of the highest consequence--which, in turn, poses the very real challenge of making good use of it. Much careful planning is needed to ensure that individual creative talents, from those of the solitary artist or craftsman to those in groups at all levels of inclusiveness, are used effectively to add positive value to the society. Whether the creative work takes place in a garret, a local shop, a small company, a corporation, an institution, or an international peace or climate forum, it should be aimed at meeting real economic, social, environmental, cultural, or spiritual needs.
With that in mind, and with due recognition that the notions of "conscious creativity" so far elaborated in this essay are as applicable outside as inside the workplace, I want to touch only lightly on a subject I know is best left to experts: namely, the shape an American "creativity revolution" might take in its millions of organizations, ranging from "think tanks" and McDonald restaurants to automotive assembly plants, that are established for the output of products. Here are just a few broad assumptions: I assume, first, that any widespread implementation of creativity-based production would most likely have to be driven by relevant agencies of the federal government. They would need to do at least the following: establish provisional priorities for meeting as-yet unmet or under-met social needs; consult with corporate leaders in major industries to determine their capacity and willingness to help meet those needs by means of creativity-based production; and build public support for the new system by explaining how it could benefit both employees and the society as a whole. As to the actual workings of creativity-based production systems, I make these four assumptions: that, at least at first, they would be implemented only in U.S. manufacturing facilities of major corporations in critical industries; that they would take the form of small self-directed modular production teams similar to those pioneered by Saturn Corporation in the 1990s; that they would encourage cross-module operating flexibility by means of annual obligatory employee training programs; and that they would be invested with considerable latitude for creative problem-solving, in-process innovation, and quality improvements.
In industrial applications, the tooling and programming solutions produced by small self-directed modular production teams could in various ways add objective value to existing manufacturing operations. They could, for example, extend the capabilities of particular operations over a wider range of applications, cut manufacturing costs, and improve the performance and reliability of resulting products. In addition, because creativity-based production systems are considerably more agile than standard production practices, they would also be well-suited to provide fast, cost-effective solutions for such developing challenges as possible mandated limits on industrial carbon emissions.
Though the prospect of a "creativity revolution" is only a vision at present--perhaps, even, only my vision--a widespread transition from top-down profit-based, to bottom-up creative, production practices could well play a vital role in more rapid achievement of needed improvements in American society. Here's just a small sampling of things we could and should do:
- Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.
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