Creativity: A New Social Class
From English 194 Wiki Site
By Christopher I. Gonzalez
11:25, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
Contents |
Abstract
In The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida notes: “The economic need for creativity has registered itself in the rise of a new class…the Creative Class. Some 38 million Americans, 30 percent of all employed people belong to this new class” (8). Notably, Florida associates the “creative” advent with monetary incentive rather than the workings of an artist’s creative cognition. “I define the core of the Creative Class to include people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or new creative content” (8). Florida’s definition of the new, emerging social class implicitly reduces the individualism of intellectual property and, for economic purposes, objectifies creativeness for the betterment of an elite, intellectual society.
Description
An exploration of Richard Florida's "Creative Class" as a socio-economic evolution of creativity.
Analysis and Evaluation
Florida classifies the Creative Class into two categories: “The Super-Creative Core” (68) and the normative, Creative Class. The former categorization includes a finer delineation of intellectuals: “scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and artists, entertainers, actors, designers and architects” (69). As Florida points out, the grouping of superior members means to elucidate the impact of the group’s efforts on the economic/consumer society. The Super-Creative Core “[produces] new forms or designs that are readily transferable and widely useful” (69) across all economic classes. The subdivision to the Core class encompasses business-type thinking and the formulation of thoughts to make keen, business decisions. “These people engage in creative problem solving, drawing on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems…What they are required to do is to think on their own” (69). The difference between both divisions of the Creative Class is the application of creativity. The Super-Creative Class, in essence, manipulates the creative intangible. Specifically, the superior class creates new forms and designs for others’ engagement: new business models, new modes of thought, etc. The latter division deals largely with the creative situation at hand; the conflicts and dilemmas derived from the Core’s creation.
Apart from the divisional qualities of the Creative Class, the success of such members lies largely with association and interactive grouping. The Creative Class’s productivity level is, as Florida points out, reliant on organization: “…these people have…a strong desire for organization and environments that let them be creative—that value their input, challenge them, have mechanisms for mobilizing resources around ideas and are receptive to both small changes and the occasional big idea” (40). The engagement and provocation of thought amongst intellectual peers is catalytic for the Creative Class. The intellectual interaction of the Creative Class is appropriate to Sumita Roy’s notion of the creative language. “Language may, at the basic level, be thought of as a combination of sounds for everyday usage with which we convey to the people around us the objects of our awareness… [but it is also] a mode of communication of ideas and sharing of experience” (Roy, 45). Language, communication, and interaction provide for a formidable source of intellectual exchange and synthesis of new thoughts and ideas.
The organization of the Creative Class, for the procurement of thought suggested by Florida, is seemingly restrictive. Rather than providing an independent means of creative thought, the Creative Class is environmentally dependent and in need of exclusive, intellectual situations. The dynamics of the productive, Creative Class are in contradiction with creativity’s conventionality. “Objectivity, detachment and distance form important components of creativity. The growth and development of creativity in the mind of the artist is linked with the advance of other faculties like intellect, emotion, perception” (Roy, 59). According to Roy, the creative mind is in need of a departure from the experiences of everyday life in order to facilitate superconsciousness—thoughts and ideas outside the realm of reality associated with creative thinking. The process of detaching oneself from the modes of reality contributes to the acquisition of superconscious thought for the sole, creative mind. Florida’s assertion of a collaborative (see: collaboration), creative class suggests a deviation from the intimate workings of the thinker. Creativity, in the context of the Creative Class, involves a direct awareness and interaction with the surroundings of the Creative member.
Though Florida emphasizes the importance of intellectual congregation among the Creative Class, he paradoxically contends the need for individuality among creative members. “The members of the Creative Class exhibit a strong preference for individuality and self-statement. They do not want to conform to organizational or institutional directives and resist traditional group-oriented norms” (11). Florida’s assertion of individuality is, in part, a contradiction to his aforementioned notion of organizational thought provocation. Florida’s previous organizational statement suggested a “creativity mainstream” exclusive to the Creative Class’s mode of creativity. Florida notes: “…the increasing nonconformity to organizational norms may represent a new mainstream value. Members of the Creative Class endeavor to create individualistic identities that reflect their creativity” (78). Members of the Creative Class, in part, are components to a mainstream, economic culture. Though individual identities are created to distinguish creative quality, members of the Creative Class are components to the economic mainstream; the mainstream fundamentally being an opponent to the divergent, creative thinker.
Though members subscribe to the dynamics of an economic mainstream, the Creative Class concentrates on “diversity and openness” (79). The quality of diversity and acceptance is conducive to the Class’s effort to establish creative, individualistic identities. “Diversity of peoples is favored first of all out of self-interest…Talented people defy classification based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference or appearance” (79). Florida’s explanation of diversity with the Creative Class is the first instance of a “transcendence of reality.” Rather, the Creative Class is accepting of persons who transcend societal norms; the subtle implication of a consciousness superceding conventionality. Though diversity and openness provides for acceptance and understanding, the level of diversity among the Creative Class is restrictive and exclusive. “While the Creative Class favors openness and diversity, to some degree it is a diversity of elites, limited to highly educated, creative people…its existence has certainly failed to put an end to long-standing divisions of race and gender” (79). Notably, as mentioned by Florida, Class diversity is executed for self-interest: the Creative Class means to create an environment conducive to the intellectual thought of its members.
Members of the Creative Class find the strongest incentive for creativity through the “experiential life” (165). Florida notes: “…the Creative Class lifestyle comes down to a passionate quest for experience…a creative life packed full of intense, high quality, multidimensional experiences. And the kinds of experiences they crave reflect and reinforce their identities as creative people” (166). Specifically, the experiences described by Florida deal with immediate, environmental experiences—outdoor activities and urban outings. “[The Creative Class] crave creative stimulation but not escape” (166). The desire for creative stimulation rather than escape is in contrast to past notions of creativity. Sumita Roy notes Aldous Huxley’s use of mescaline as a means of provoking creative thought: “Huxley himself…regarded mescaline as merely a mode to tentatively extend the doors of ordinary perception…to delve into the unlimited potential of the human mind which remain undiscovered and in total neglect during the ordinary states of consciousness” (174-175). Roy underscores Huxley’s transcendence and escape from ordinary consciousness to explore the bounds of the creative mind. The Creative Class, according to Florida, prefers the environmental stimulus rather creative, cognitive exploration.
The desire to engage in an experiential life, in the creative-economical sense, can be problematic for the Creative Class. “[The] fact that the packaging and selling of experience is often perceived to be—and often is—inauthentic” (187). Effectively, the creative experience becomes a marketable commodity targeted towards the Creative Class. Subsequently, an overexposure to creative commodities creates, what Florida calls, “the generica…[a lack of] authentic, indigenous, or organic venues that offer a wide range of options “ (187). The saturation of marketable, creative goods questions the validity of the Creativity Class’s “creative experience.” The Class may be fundamentally individualistic, but the engagement of creative consumption creates “constructed” (188) identities. Moreover, compliance to Class commodities is merely a “pastiche of recreational fads and marketing gimmicks” (189) associated with the general behavior of any economic class. Florida’s Class distinction lacks the quality of transcending conventions and norms associated with creativity.
Ultimately, the Creative Class establishes a sense of conformity that is consistent with most economic classes, especially one that finds itself superior through facets of creativity. “Some people find the Creative Class elitist. But the existence of a large and growing new class of highly paid creative workers is not the problem; rather, I submit, it is a healthy sign. What is elitist—and inequitable, inefficient and even dangerous—is the persistence of a social order in which some people are considered natural creators, while others exist to serve them, carry out their ideas and tend to their personal needs” (323). Subsequently, the Creative Class fails to surpass conventional notions of elitist economics. Though labeled a creative class, the Class itself follows economic conformities and, ultimately, finds identity as an economic collective. Florida’s definition of the Class as "creative' only means to describe the method to which such collective finds dominance in an economic hierarchy. “Creativity for us is an act of synthesis...bits and pieces to put together in new and unfamiliar ways, existing frameworks to deconstruct and transcend” (186). The application of creativity may be present in the occupations of its members, but the Creative Class fails to transcend socio-economic norms. More specifically, creativity is directed towards the establishment of a conformist, elite class, and neglects the transcendence of trite conventionality.
--Christopher I. Gonzalez 00:55, 5 June 2006 (PDT)
