the creative engine

[miriam_e]

I just listened to a couple of superb talks by Richard Florida again. (If anybody else wants to hear them let me know and I'll put them online. The transcript to one is still at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/booktalk/stories/s1072885.htm ). He is economics professor at Pittsburgh in USA and points out that open and tolerant communities with innovative, vibrant social scenes are responsible for economic growth in modern western countries. He explains that the best indicator of economic fertility for a city is what he calls the 'bohemian index' and that it also correlates directly with the amount of gay and lesbian culture in that city. It has nothing to do with taxes or business incentives or sports stadiums.

It occurred to me that creativity, openness, diversity, and tolerance are the antithesis of what our current prime minister wants for our country. He wants an Australia based upon mining, indentured slavery, and monotonously conformist white culture. He wants to exclude gays, artists, writers, musicians, and other drivers of the creative economic boom.

We have a small window of opportunity and, as far as I can see, it is rapidly dwindling. Soon China and India will be the creative capitols of the world. All the money funnelled into those countries by businesses desperate for cheap products means their middle classes are rapidly growing.

We need to recognise the importance of our creators and reassert our real strengths. We have lost a lot of time and squandered our advantages. Free education, public declarations of tolerance for alternative lifestyles, boosting opportunities for creative industries -- all these are needed as soon as possible to help our country grow and take a leading part in the economics of the 21st century.

But I don't really expect it to happen. Howard lives many decades in the past. He still believes firmly in the mining and farming based economy of the 50s and his so-called "healthy" Australian economy is fuelled by cheap products from China and massive personal debt while his government reneges on their half of the social contract by slashing public services.

I don't think Rudd will be much use either. He is religious and seems out of touch with reality almost as much as Howard. I don't feel very optimistic.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Openess and diversity might be all swell and good now, but in the past?
For the masses, I'm not sure they drove change. Perhaps at the elite level.

Soon China and India will be the creative capitols of the world.

Nothing scares me more, nothing is so great a threat to the world I know, then this. It's not necessarily bad, but the expansion of India and China is scary. China alone uses more concrete in a day than the world used a few years ago. And they are yet to awaken the Green within.

I don't think Rudd will be much use either. He is religious and seems out of touch with reality almost as much as Howard. I don't feel very optimistic.

Bob Brown doesn't inspire me with optimism either, but I vote Green.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

In the past, openness and diversity surely had an important role too. The wealthiest nations sprang from diverse populations. Little UK, invaded time and time again, being exposed to many different cultures , technologies, and ideas became one of the strongest nations on the planet. USA grew to great wealth via the veritable flood of immigrants moving to a land of opportunity.

But now, more than ever, our source of wealth lies in the ability of people to be creative -- to design new medicines, new machines, new computers and their software, new kitchen utensils, more energy efficient equipment. And Richard Florida shows that what makes for a fertile breeding ground for such flourishing ideas is an open, tolerant, and creative environment.

The idea that this is something simply for elites is discouraged by Richard Florida. He points to Japan's rise to technological and industrial mastery. The West had this idea that creativity was to be encouraged only in elites. Japan experienced explosive growth in markets because its industries valued creativity in ordinary workers on the shop floor. They asked for, valued, and quickly implemented changes suggested by anybody, down to even the cleaners. Japan, more than any nation, shows that creativity works at all levels to enrich a society's wealth. We restrict it, treating "lower" classes like cattle worth minimum pay and no conditions, at our peril.

I used to be scared of the rise of China and India, but I no longer am. We are throwing away our right to a good future and we have nobody to blame but ourselves. If they are more suitable successors then so be it. We could ride that wave with them, but it looks like we've chosen to be has-beens. If they didn't grasp the future then it would be significantly dampened by us. At least someone is taking up the call. Perhaps we can manage with some of their crumbs. It is a much better future than getting totally screwed by ourselves.

The thing that scares me most nowadays is religion. Most of all islam scares the willies out of me. Ever since I read some of the Koran I've realised how utterly insane that religion is, and how it insists on absolutely no quarter. There is no sharing this world with islam. The koran insists that those not embracing islam must die. The bible says the same insanity, but not as repetitively, not as insistently as the koran.

Actually Bob Brown is exactly what you want in a leader: someone who doesn't want to be prime minister and who is genuinely interested in human rights and our future. I vote Green too.

Arthur C. Clarke said it best in his novel "The Deep Range". I can't remember the exact quote so I'll paraphrase:

Leaders were chosen by computer in order to find the person whose psychological makeup and capabilities best suited them for the job. They were dragged, kicking and screaming, into office to serve their term, getting time off for good behavior.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

...[China is] yet to awaken the Green within.

That is no longer so. I recently listened to a talk given by Herbert Girardet (transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/inconversation/stories/2007/1973135.htm#transcript mp3 download: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/icn_20070712.mp3 the audio will be there for another week or two). He has been helping China design a minimum energy eco-city that excludes motor traffic, has lots of parkland within the city and is closely surrounded by food cropping land to reduce transport costs. The idea is to make a city that has high density, high luxury, low eco-footprint that has a great lifestyle yet is sustainable. It is exactly the sort of thing we should have been doing decades ago.

China has a lot of work to do, but it is catching up and in some areas surpassing us surprisingly quickly.

[revbobbob.livejournal.com]

Forget China and India. The action isn't in countries or even states, it's in cities. Like yours. And you can make a difference.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

That's true, and is part of Richard Florida's message.

Unfortunately politicians generally see it differently: keep the little people in their place and reduce their wages, only the rich need education, diversity is bad. Under those conditions cities atrophy and die. All other things being equal China and India rise to the occasion... and my blessings to them. [sigh]