The Right to "Be" Creative (From the Founding Director)

We talk so much about fundamental human rights: life, liberty, security, education, work, property, protection of the law, and many more. We, justifiably, regard these rights as inalienable, and take great care to protect them. Diplomatic relations frequently reflect the extent to which countries perceive each other as observing these rights. Many civil and international wars have been fought when it was deemed that certain fundamental human rights were seriously violated.

But, what about "The Right to 'Be' Creative" -- evidently the most fundamental of all human rights, and the one right in terms of which other human rights acquire their meaning and significance? What about the right to develop and to express one's particular set of abilities in the things that one perceives as important and beneficial to society and the rest of nature, and that one feels called or specially equipped to do?

A body of data no one knew or thought existed conclusively demonstrates our quintessentially creative essence and, serendipitously, pinpoints the real but hitherto unsuspected and unnoticed crisis that is threatening our collective survival and the future of our civilization and our Planet. Contrary to the conventional wisdom and official statements, the modern crises are not an economic crisis, per se. They are not political or environmental crises, either. And they are not disparate crises -- family crisis, gender crisis, education crisis, racial/ethnic crisis, energy crisis, population crisis, environmental crisis, international crisis -- as we have been made to believe. The modern crises and the global predicament are, fundamentally, a creativity crisis! This is the inability of the vast majority of human beings to realize their natural potential -- to discover, to develop, and to contribute their unique abilities in significant and beneficial social and ecological actions -- and, resultantly, personal sense of futility and the global epidemic of meaninglessness of which many personal, social, economic, political, and environmental problems (e.g., anxiety, depression, alcoholism, substance abuse, infidelity, suicide, over-consumption, delinquency, crime, hatred, prejudice, corporate sabotage, militancy, group violence, fear, insecurity, etc.) are the symptoms, or the facets.

The modern crises also reflect the absence of a viable, transcendent, mutually beneficial, and ecologically responsible system of values to which people can dedicate themselves and their special abilities.

If, therefore, we are to resolve our present difficulties and to achieve the much-desired and much-hoped-for "future positive" -- if we seriouly want stable families, self-confident children, patriotic national and planetary citizens, safe streets and neighborhoods, increasing labor productivity, long-term corporate viability, social and ecological responsibility and, ultimately, global peace and security -- what is needed is institutional arrangements and operational relationships that allow all the world's six and a-half billion people to experience themselves as creative and contributing members of society, and their lives as having meaning and significance. Necessarily, too, we will need to evolve goals for mankind and Planet Earth that people perceive as good for everybody and everything, as giving direction and purpose to their own lives and, therefore, as worthy of the commitment of their time and their creative energies. There is just no other viable way!

That, precisely, is the message of the Global Creativity Network -- a world-wide association of concerned individuals and groups dedicated to raising and expanding a global creativity-consciousness and, in particular, to promoting the conditions in which every human being is able to develop and to contribute his or her particular set of abilities.