The Creative Society

by Adam Mitchell

Synopsis

                The Creative Society written by Lars Tvede is all about the importance and status of creativity around the world. Lars talks about creativity like it’s a resource more valuable than oil or any precious gem. The best part of creativity is that it has the potential to be a renewable resource. It’s almost like our world is a vehicle to Lars, and when it’s working it’s called progress, but every vehicle needs fuel. This fuel, of course, is creativity.

In The Creative Society Lars talks a lot about how creativity in western culture has become increasingly stagnant. He is nice enough to give western society credit for a lot of innovation that was spurred on by our creative culture. Then he moved on to condemning the fact that our society has been metaphorically shooting itself in the foot for the past few years, by punishing or deterring the once creative mindset our western culture had once held in such high regard. He even went as far as to explain just where we started to go wrong. He specifically pointed at things like overbearing taxes, the marginalization of the citizenry, over-regulation, debt, stagnation, unemployment and an overall feeling of pessimism in our society.

When drawing to the end of the book you get to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Lars basically starts to list of the problems like he did before, but this time he talks about the solutions. Some of these are as simply as tax reform to encourage entrepreneurship. Others are a little more complex to carry out, such as starting to rekindle the idea of creating something of your own, instead of just getting a random job and trying to climb the corporate ladder. This is especially important to teach our youth, as they are the ones who are most impressionable and have plenty of time to cultivate their ideas for the future. Another Key factor to keeping creativity alive is de-centralization. De-centralization allows for different ideas of how to do one thing, this leads to some ideas being better. These ideas can then be handed off to other nations through trade and then tweaked and possible improved. To put it simply centralization and isolationism kills creativity and doing the opposite helps it flourish.  Overall this was an extremely interesting book that deserves a good read. I’d especially suggest this book to people ages 16 to 22. There is nothing in this book a 16 year old should get confused about and holds valuable lessons for these possible up and coming entrepreneurs. Though I’m sure for those who are interested in the subject this will be a fun read no matter their age.