Are You Accessing Your Creative Genius? (Part 3)

We’re still doing a deep dive into the Creative Genius.

This week we explore the relationship between creative genius and technology.

In a sentence, technology enables imagination to become visible.

Kevin Kelly calls the sum total of all of our culture and technology the technium.

The technium has entirely come from the human mind. It externalizes and reveals our collective unconscious.

The technium is a pulsating, electronic coral reef where our collective imagination is becoming more visible, more crystalized, and more alive.

Like a coral reef, new structure is built on top of what has been previously crystalized.

Right now the cutting edge of the technium may be the internet, AI, blockchain, health and life extension, renewable energy, robotics, and space exploration.

The current technium is the most flowing, streaming and alive iteration that has ever existed.

It is closer to resembling nature each day.

Like it or not, this electronic reef is developing it’s own libido and sensory and reproductive organs. It is becoming self-generating. It is going to take over almost everything that we currently do.

We have little choice. Being a luddite will be no point of pride. We will need to adapt, to flow with it, to ride the wave or be crushed by it.

And now my thesis.

In order to survive our own technology, we will have to move beyond our current guardian-led, fear-based, competitive, and scarcity-driven thinking, what Terrence McKenna called the “dominator culture”.

Our creative genius, collective, embodied and surrounded by self-energy, will need to step up into leadership.

Creative genius must become our essential identity as humans. Our last ground to stand on.

If we fail to make this transition, our guardians will simply destroy each other. We will be found unworthy of god-like technology.

If we succeed, we will create heaven on earth, a realization of our true potential.

Now the second part of my thesis.

It may be too much to hope for that the masses to transition to this way of being. Instead, we may be dividing into a creator class and a consumer class.

Let’s start with the consumer class.

The consumer class represents people who consume a great deal more information than they produce.

The consumer class forms a crowd, or disconnected audience. They are powerless and addicted to Kool Aid, which I define as one-to-many broadcast information.

Over-consuming is an easy way to lower creative potential and get intellectual diabetes. Media consumption is by far the biggest drug problem on our planet. The problem is too intangible to get our attention in the same way that real diabetes or heroin does. It will be too late by the time we are ready to address it.

Thankfully, the creator class is also expanding.

Creators are individuals who value their subjective experience enough to create things from it. They tend to form networked groups, or scenius, that are more than just broadcast audiences.

The tools to create are more available than ever. Long tail subcultures are stronger than ever. We are more connected than ever. We are doing more for the environment than ever.

If mainstream civilization unravels, the creator class are likely to be the survivors, the ones to lead what Joanna Macy calls the Great Turning. Creators will be the ones with enough mental fitness, collectivity, and adaptability to navigate change.

The more the creative class steps up into leadership, the more of the coral reef we will be able to save.

So to the creator:

Make sure you produce more locally-grown Kool Aid than the store-bought you consume.

Continue the work to know thyself and heal thyself.

We must become jedis.