Who Stole Our Creativity?

independence and ingenuity in yesteryear's children

Has our creativity been taken from us? I look at a jigsaw puzzle of children's books from the late 1800's to early 1900's. The expectation is that young people can build, fix, make, cook, play, sew and think. There are adventures on the sea, on trains, and on horseback by moonlight—for girls and boys. I look at how these things have become expensive hobbies rather than capabilities of daily life. And I examine the spiritual aspect of whether we are God's creativity, not creation, and we are being thwarted in our function in life.

As anyone who’s watched my videos knows, I am a jigsaw puzzle junkie. And this is my favorite kind, with clear color distinctions and every mini-pattern resolving into something interesting. The one I did is below:

Produced by Flame Tree Publishing in the UK, another version called Hi-Jinks is just for girls:

Late 19th- and early 20th- century children’s books are the subjects of this print from the Bodleian Libraries. Richly illustrated covers in bright reds, blues and greens adorn the rows of shelves, featuring titles such as Little Miss Sunshine, No Ordinary Girl and A Girl of High Adventure. They are all light-hearted tales with brave female characters that can be found within the Bodleian Library, which is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. During his retirement Sir Thomas Bodley decided to return the library to public use and in 1598 refurnished it to house approximately 2,500 books. The doors first opened to scholars in 1602 and in 1610 Bodley agreed with the Stationers’ Company of London that a copy of every book published in England would be held in the library. Since then many extensions and buildings have been added and together the Bodleian Libraries now house over 12 million printed items.

Although brave female characters are a popular cause, I never met a bandwagon I didn’t want to tip over. In the mixed-gender version of the puzzle I put together, I found a representation of boyhood that I’m terming tonic masculinity—constructive, protective, industrious, adventurous, healing. Here are some of the titles for boys:

• The Boy’s Handy Book

• Every Boy His Own Mechanic

• Campfire Stories

• Warne’s Happy Book for Boys

• Monster Book for Boys

• The World of Sport & Adventure

• “PLAY”

• Not Cricket!

• Things to Make

• Out With the Tide

• Every Bit a Briton

• Under Wellington’s Command

But the girls’ books were also adventurous and industrious:

• The Worst Girl in School

• A Clever Daughter

• Three Hundred and One Things a Bright Girl Can Do

• Little Miss Sunshine (also one of my favorite movies, with a different take ;-)

• The Girls’ Adventure Book

• The Lady of the Hundred Dresses

• Very Private Secretary: “her curiosity aroused…”

• The Youngest Girl in the Fifth

• The Happy Housewife

• A Courageous Girl

I look at these functional skills that everyone felt capable of learning, which have now become expensive hobbies. On the thread of Charles Eisenstein’s excellent series on the nature of evil, there was a discussion of the legitimate use of power. I feel that a parent’s use of power over the child is to give them eventual power over themselves. Kids who don’t learn to cook, clean, make, do, and fix end up expecting someone else to do these things for them as adults.

In the same way, the purpose of local gov’t is to enable families to have power over themselves through the ownership of homes and businesses, and the purpose of federal gov’t is to enable communities to have power over themselves.

I end by talking about the spiritual aspect of creativity. My Course in Miracles meditation this morning was “I am under no laws but God’s” and some lines seemed quite prescient:

You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off disease and death. [Text 134]

It also says that we were created as God’s channel for creation—that creativity and expansion is the endless joy we deny ourselves by our belief in hell. This parallels Charles Eisenstein who writes:

The whole model of good versus evil is a myth as well, a story that partakes of some of the deepest and most damaging ideologies of our civilization. I could tell you that there are no “forces of darkness” or “forces of light,” but that would be less true than this paradox: In the great cosmic battle between evil and good, evil’s most powerful weapon is the idea of a great cosmic battle between evil and good.

I think that we’re on a journey, not in a battle. This time we’re in is a turning point in the spiral, where we’ll be able to restore what we love in a better and more lasting form. The bygone era of ingenuity and DIY resourcefulness isn’t nostalgia for the past but anticipation of a future that’s coming sooner than we think.

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To follow this up, I suggest Imagination Seeks Attention:

In this far-ranging video, I look at whether AI art is Art, an article by M T Xen on Imaginal Hygiene, and a TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor on My Stroke of Insight. Rob Brezsny looks at imagination as the magic wand that shapes your future and Caroline Casey says, "Imagination lays the tracks for the reality train to follow." The right side of the brain is what A Course in Miracles describes as revelation, with the linear left side describing miracles. I posit imagination as the corpus callosum between the two, passing love notes.

and What’s the Best That Can Happen?

My daughter Cassandra has a new question, "what's the best that can happen?" I apply this to global events and the coup to take over our bodies, minds and world. I share some of the things that give me joy: Rob Brezsny's Love Bombs, Wendall Berry's The Power of Place, David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything, and Caitlin Johnstone's We Are a Confused Species in an Awkward Transition Phase.