The world is ending and there's nothing you can do about it.
Do you honestly believe that?
Hi,
This is the third piece in a series of deep dives into the Everyone's Creative Manifesto. You can read the other parts by following the linked headings here.
Challenge Systems
There's no "one right way" to do anything. Nothing is impossible to try. There's always another way to do it.
When we decide to create something, there's a lot at stake. It can be something as small as a drawing in your notebook or as big as a social movement—either way, when we engage with our creativity we make ourselves vulnerable. Creative acts are personal and honest—they say something about who we are and what we value. Sharing that in any way risks having someone else shut you down or attack you for what you tried to do.
This is incredibly useful for hegemons. Those with power and control have a strong motivation to use their power to protect their power. I believe creative acts—art making, writing, organizing groups and sharing ideas - are the only way to fight that power. I also believe the people at the top know that, too, and they are highly motivated to shut us down before we have the chance.
This is why authoritarians hate freedom of speech (the real freedom of speech, not the dog-whistle, freedom of hate-speech we hear lots of people making a stink about) and this is why you see more people shut down for violating corporation's rights than the other way around. We live in a web of complex, self-reinforcing systems that have been built to protect themselves through the fact of their existence.
This situation we're in can leave you feeling defeated. I know that happens to me. It's frustrating and deflating to feel something pushing back on us every time we try something new. A lot of us seem to feel like there isn't a way out—that we lost. The system got too big. There's nothing we can do but sit and ride this out until the end. We're in a kind of pre-apocalyptic purgatory, waiting to be consumed by the next inevitable disaster.
...and that's exactly how they want you to feel.
…purgatory is enervating. The danger, to me, is that it can become so enervating that there's no energy left to see past the boundaries of the present. But this creeping sense of inevitability doesn't just feel bad; it obscures the actors continuing to tighten the ropes…
…the people who stand to gain the most from determinism (in others) are typically the people doing the determining.
— Jenny Odell, Saving Time
That's their trick. To constrain what's possible by establishing rules that we aren't allowed to question. You can't ride your bike to work because we can't allow a world that takes lanes away from cars. You can't afford a house because we can only build million dollar mansions and one room condos. You can't write your book because you have to work 60 hours a week and you can't take time off without losing your job. On and on it goes. Any solutions we may create for the biggest problems in our world are, by default, rejected because the systems won't allow them to exist. They won't even let you try.
But nothing is impossible to try. Some systemic order telling you something isn't allowed or is impossible is fundamentally wrong. You can try to fly, draw, set fires with your mind, tell stories, make things better for others, invent something you've always dreamed of—you might not succeed, but you can always try.
...the idea that the world is hopeless because millions of kids are going to die needlessly due to impoverishment this year ignores the fact that thirty years ago, kids were twice as likely to die before the age of five, and that change did not happen naturally or inevitably, it happened because many people collaborated across time and space—they collaborated in anger and frustration and disgust, but not in hopelessness.
— John Green, "The Seduction of Despair"
This is why I refuse to think copyright law is the best solution we can come up with for artists to make a living. Or that tech startups are somehow the best solution we have for every problem in the world. Everywhere we look, the way things are being done rarely seems to be doing things very well. And yet we mostly hear about why doing something else will cause the end of the world. Well, good news! The world’s already ending! Maybe we can afford to give something else a shot?
That's what Challenge Systems is asking you to do. We need, now more than ever, to use our creativity to create actual solutions to the seemingly insurmountable problems piling up around us. The only way out is by coming up with a new idea, and know that there will be someone ready to try to shut you down when you do. You can't let them. We have to push back.
The one thing we know won't work is the way we're doing things now.
Have a great day!
Lots of love,
Simon
P.S.
🔗 Links & Thinks 🧠
Quoted above, the book Saving Time by Jelly Odell is a huge inspiration for my ideas around challenging systems. She points out how we've bought into false views of the world all the way down to how we think about and conceptualize time. If you want to feel like there is another way, this book will definitely help you imagine what that could be. Give it a read or a listen.
Also quoted above, there's a timeless usefulness and wisdom in everything John Green has to say in "The Seduction of Despair." It's four minutes. Give it a watch.
A recent example of how creativity can be used to challenge systems and highlight issues is this amazing (and upsetting) video from Chris Doel where he salvages enough disposable vape batteries from the garbage to create his own e-bike battery. It's absurd and a wonderfully creative way of showing the problem so we can really imagine the scope of how irresponsible this practice is. We need a lot more of this kind of thinking.
And, as always, Webworm is serving it up with a great piece (two, actually) from filmmaker Giorgio Angelini. In the context of challenging systems, though, his grievance with Netflix and the insane way these monopolistic streaming companies bury movies and obfuscate their metrics is exactly the kind of thing we need. Why should we just accept that this is the way things have to work now? Who does this serve?
👏 👏