Creative Impulse in Industry Part 5

It often makes an individual so insensitive in his relation to others as to develop an illusion of being really able to stand and act alone, an unnamed form of insanity which is responsible for a large part of the remediable suffering of the world."[A]

[Footnote A: John Dewey--Democracy and Education, p. 52.]

This provincial desire of individuals to stand apart and prove to themselves and to others that they are exceptional people is a primitive ambition in conflict with the actual facts of a present day society where interdependence is a law of living. This conflict is kept alive by the industrial motive of exploitation of people and of wealth. Exploitation precludes sympathy as it precludes growth. "For sympathy--as a desirable quality is something more than mere feeling; it is cultivated imagination for what men have in common and rebellion at whatever unnecessarily divides them." And further, Professor Dewey remarks: "It must be borne in mind that ultimately social efficiency means neither more nor less than capacity to share in a give-and-take experience. It covers all that makes one's own experience more worth while to others and all that makes one partic.i.p.ate more richly in the worth while experiences of others."[A]

[Footnote A: John Dewey--Democracy and Education, p. 141.]

What Professor Dewey says in reference to the growth of children and adults is as abundantly significant in its application to society.

"Normal child and normal adult alike ... are engaged in growing. The difference between them is not the difference between growth and no growth, but between the modes of growth appropriate to different conditions. With respect to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific scientific and economic problems we may say the child should be growing in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbia.s.sed responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness."[A]

[Footnote A: John Dewey--Democracy and Education, p. 59.]

As America and the greater part of Europe have been for over a century devoting their attention to coping with specific scientific and economic problems, is their manhood due to appear? Is the raw, immature character of present day a.s.sociation and interdependence to be enriched by sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness and openness of mind? In the midst of this world war I venture no prediction on the appearance of manhood. But clearly there is a line of action for educators to pursue. Clearer than ever before it is evident that it is the business of educators to see that schemes of education are introduced which do not fit children into a system of industry that serves either Empire or business, but a system that serves whole-heartedly creative enterprise as it might be pursued in the period of youth as well us in adult life. Within the past century and particularly in the past generation we have made brave efforts at cooperation, but our failures to realize the spirit of cooperation are as notorious as the efforts themselves. The effort to work together in industry has been brutal rather than brave. We shall account for this brutality in industry and recognize why the spirit for cooperation in other fields has failed, as we distinguish between a puerile desire of individuals to express themselves and their impulses for creative enterprise.

As industry through the ages has changed from the isolated business of provisioning a family to the a.s.sociated work of provisioning the world, it has blazed a pathway for relationships which are socially creative. But art in social relationships will not be realized until a pa.s.sionate desire for the unlimited expression of creative effort overcomes inordinate desires of individuals for self-expression.

Art in living together is possible where the intensive interest of individuals in their personal affairs and attainments, in their social group, in their vocation, in their political state, is deeply tempered by a wide interest and sympathetic regard for the life of other groups and people. Art in social relationships is contingent on broad sympathies and extended relationships, and it is contingent as well on ability to work for social ends while remaining in large measure disregardful of the personal stakes involved. Because of our inability to lose our personal attachment for our own work, because of what it may yield us in personal ways, the world never yet has experienced the joy and creative possibility of a.s.sociated effort And because it has not we have still to experience art in social contact.

In group work there may be as much power to release emotional and intellectual creative force as in individual work; there may be more--we do not know. There is a tendency we do know in isolated, individual creative effort, _unless highly charged with creative impulse_, to cultivate personal equations intensively, limit relationships, and circ.u.mscribe vision. As the movement of our time is toward world acquaintanceship, the desire of individuals to limit their experiences for the sake of intensifying them, signifies from a social point of view as well as a personal, a neurotic tendency. There is a common and false supposition that the neurotic temperament is induced in the world of art. It is true that an art environment attracts people whose creative impulse is feeble or not sufficiently strong to sublimate the desire for intensive personal excitation.

Such people choose art a.s.sociations _because_ they are limited to individual expression and not because of the overpowering necessity to do work which is creative. As the era in which we live represents a struggle for a.s.sociated work and common interests and its highest concept is opposed to limited interests and autocratic rule, we may well give our best endeavor to realizing creative impulse in the field of a.s.sociated effort, in the hope that the field of art will be some day coextensive with life, and that its expressions will not be confined to the limited world of sculptors, painters, musicians and poets.