Creativity is central to
management of our individual lives, but in modern times few people are able to access this as a resource. Alan Watts writes in The Wisdom of Insecurity:"We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives out of all proportion to 'instinctual wisdom'; which we are allowing to slump into atrophy. As a consequence we are at war within ourselves - brain desiring things which body does not want, and body desiring things that brain will not allow; brain giving directions which body will nor follow, and body giving impulses which brain cannot understand...So long as mind is split, life is perpetual conflict, tension, frustration and disillusion. Suffering is piled on suffering, fear on fear, and boredom on boredom. The more fly struggles to get out of honey, faster he is stuck. Under pressure of so much strain and futility, it is no wonder that men [sic] seek release in violence and sensationalism, and reckless exploitation of their bodies, their appetites, material world and their fellow men".
Globally at moment there are many problems facing mankind. Diminishing natural resources and increasing populations mean that we are in a spiral of entropy. Our investment systems have been using capital assets of our planet as income since beginning of industrial revolution. We are putting little energy back into our planet.
Third world populations look enviously toward apparent richness of first world countries, and wish to emulate consumerism that appears to make its citizens so happy. Our media propagate illusion that we can buy our way out of environmental destruction, and that retail therapy is panacea to all dis-ease and unhappiness.
Although nature of work is changing there is still more slavery in world than there has ever been. Mass production is shifting generally to third world countries where cheap labour and environment are more easily exploited. Tiny-wage slavery is still cheaper than investing in up to minute technology for many third world industries. New technology steadily gobbles up jobs. Service, leisure and electronic industries have replaced much of our manufacturing losses to third world but now even these (often part-time jobs) are being 'outsourced'.
Certainly creativity is needed at individual and governmental levels to produce new opportunities in employment, information, education and leisure activities. Many of manufacturing 'jobs for life' we have lost to cheaper workers have been replaced by part-time, poorly paid and insecure alternatives.
The development of new forms of employment and ability to cope with accelerating change needs creativity at all levels. Pressures towards conformity stem from, "a demand that education should primarily way to enhanced social status and a materially safe way of life" (T.P. Jones in Creative Learning in Perspective).
