I open my book on Visionary Creativity with:
Visionary Creatives swim in the culture of their day and manifest in their work the spirit of their age. The things they create—in art, design, science, technology, business—embody that spirit.
So, what is the “spirit” of our age; what is the nature of our culture; what is the “stage” on which we create and on which we live our lives?
Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.
~ Francis H. Cook, interpreter of Buddhism for the West
What will be the new Creativity?
What kinds of things will be created in the twenty-first century? To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, we can no more say what the Visionary Creatives of the future will bring us than we can say what tonight’s dreams will bring us, as they both come from the same realm. But we can discuss the emerging culture of the twenty-first century, the stage on which we will be living and on which our Visionary Creatives will be working. Read more
