[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[davin heckman]

Eugenio,

I think you are right to note that creativity and desire and community
do not always move without conflict.

> This is an interesting portrayal of the mechanics of desire. I agree that desire is a motor for creativity, both individual and collective. But how do we actually move together into these commonly held futures you mention? A quick view on history may show that such moves have seldom been made without ruptures and conflicts. We could try to focus on the expression and actualization of collective desires from the viewpoint of complex systems, in which local interactions generate large scale changes. Politics, then, would emerge from a creative construction of the social actors, with all their common / opposed desires.

I think these are the ontological stakes of consciousness.  What we
think has implications for what do.  What do has implications for what
we think.  And, if we live in a true community, our ideas and actions
are bound to modify, be modified, contradict, and/or complement the
negotiation of being.  (Which, by the way, is why I get upset with
contemporary American ideologies of individuality, both of the
conservative and neoliberal varieties.  What is the point of speech if
it is impotent?  Yet this is the defense of free expression that is
commonly deployed....  "These are mere words....  they mean nothing.)
But I think most mature people realize that a) you want to live a life
of some consequence and b) you want to live in a world where you can
grow and change.  And I think this is where these opposed desires are
a wonderful thing.  They demonstrate the power of consciousness and
the vitality of being, that our thoughts and action can translate into
change.  This is the allure of politics.  It doesn't necessarily offer
a 1:1 correspondence between the individual's thought and the social
reality, but it does offer a mode of being in which being itself is
consequential.

Davin