We fashion hearts, not manufacture products merely.
Rescuing artistry as a sacred profession from the clutches of neoliberal-driven enterprise includes going against the majority focus to depend upon commercially-driven production as a measure of progress or development; it is to ask in what way does what I create embody my holy desires and express my purest motivations.
The war horse may be readied for the day of the battle, but ultimate victory depends upon a host of complexities beyond human prowess and outside the scope of human control. What might we as creatives do to raise the expectations of participants in our creativities (customers and audiences) to see beyond what the mind alone can conceive, but rather, to see themselves, others, and the world through the eyes of the heart fashioned in love?
Pondering,
In the light of the unrest in North East India, what local artists in Manipur, India, may do to alleviate the strife between Naga, Kuki and Meitei people groups? How can we help and make this a collective effort? What lasting shift in the minds and hearts of the people would we like to see happen as we create with an aim to change the ground reality for beauty–and how this could transform our expectations from and perceptions of ourselves in relation with others and creation?
Thinking further…
In responding to the idea of human “Development As Freedom” Peter Evans writes, “Individual capabilities depend on collective capabilities.”[i] Evans is responding to economist Amartya Sen’s thesis that human development ultimately hinges on the expansion of a person’s capabilities—their access and opportunity to do the things that they believe in and have a reason to value. Second, that people in any given economy have a real place in the determining of economic priorities that ought to constitute or qualify as “development” in their experience of life and economic circumstances.[ii]
Makes me wonder, how might our collective creative capacities–art–offer people a “real place” in determining the economic priorities that rightly should qualify human development?
[i] Peter Evans, “Collective Capabilities, Culture, and Amartya Sen’s Development As Freedom,” Studies in Comparative International Development, Summer 2002: 56.
[ii] Ibid., 55.
