Why are there so many great creative people in the past that we do not have in the current day?
What causes of creativity have been present in history? In art?
>>384184
Hard to be creative, and express your thoughts/art while also working to buy and maintain a house, car, food, water, and sustain your family. Creative people are out there but the way modern society has formed allots no time for the expression of that creativity.
There's a thing called magic. It's the shrooms everyone was smoking
>>384204
Gentleman scholars of the past were wealthy in that they could afford leisure. Today, even someone who could survive with such a lifestyle is looked down upon.
The downfall of the glorification of leisure coincided with its replacement by consumption. Consumption must be fed by production.
I don't tell anyone I'm a writer in real life, because it's the same as telling them I'm a deadbeat. I can't look even look my parents in the eye. I suppose a man in my position in the earlier ages might have joined the priesthood.
>>384204
So, if we refer back to the Renaissance, everyone had a lot of free time? I guess, if you were an artist back then, that would have meant that you were from a family with the ability to sustain itself. Did it have something to do with the lack of activities people from such families had?
because you're talking about a 500-year span of time compared to our present time
>>384263
artists came from artist families. art was work
>>384184
creativity is a transferrable skill, brah.
people use creativity to:
>apply theoretical knowledge to concrete ends which bring in cash
>generate spreadsheets and compile MI
>generate reports and compile MI
>make decisions based on MI
>create source code for computers
>think up new uses for computers
>analyise data for various reasons
>create corporate art like movies, TV shows, novels etc.
>create financial irregularities
>create tax loopholes or find same for corporate clients
>undo said loopholes for regulatory employers
>etc etc etc
>>384247
So the arts and ability to express one's creativity was due to the fact they wanted to spend money and time on it?
I disagree with the premise, its survivalship bias.
You're current statement is completely wrong. You're looking through a tube at history, noticing people who in reality are centuries apart from eachother. Creativity is at the top of its game thanks to the internet, you just don't notice it.
>>384276
Of course. You didn't have peasant scholars for that very reason. The landed gentry had a vested interest in producing culture, it was part of their myth of superiority. That being said, they did well for a time.
Nowadays, the rich spend money on cars and other bullshit, instead of endeavoring to prove themselves in the arts and sciences.
The poor on the other hand, certainly can dedicate their lives to such works, but will be looked down upon and seen as sacrificing friends, family, and career.
>>384308
>Of course. You didn't have peasant scholars for that very reason.
Time for you to look up Munster and the English Peasant's Revolt.
>>384314
Crazed anabaptists don't count. Oddly enough, religious claptrap was the only thing ordinary people could author without being considered batshit insane.
>>384347
>Crazed anabaptists
I really hope you stick to military history, where they kick the shit out of you for judgemental attitudes towards OPFOR.
>>384369
I am not wrong to lament the fact that the primary enfranchisement of the lower classes into literature came with a decidedly religious bent. Nor is it ahistorical.
Also, this isn't a military history thread.
>>384204
There are more people living off of passive incomes today than at any other time in history.
>>384184
How are you measuring creativity? Oil paintings? Inventions? Architecture? We have millions of creative types in the US alone, several of whom I'm sure can match the technical skill and imagination of the greatest Renaissance artists.
>>384184
Define "creativity"
If you mean the ability to create new concepts or idea, they are everywhere, but you may find what they find neat as stale. A lot of pressure is put on you as well, because so much is already know. Not to mention the school system will drill into you to stop being creative and to instead work in line, which can be hard to get rid of, but hard to work without at least a little of its influence.
>>384516
My point was that you're getting away with this shit because your lecturers are far to lax on your eisegesis.
>with a decidedly religious bent.
Vulgar, idealism.
>>384569
Not just a religious bent, but an iconoclastic one. Iconoclasm has never done civilization any favors, mark my words.
There are plenty of great artists in all varieties of media today. You just don't realize it because of the info glut and rose-tinted glasses.
>>384601
There's an issue of Social Text (IIRC) from the early 1980s with an essay by Le Guinn on story telling and an essay by Hayden White on hermeneutical method. Read some White. Figure out what eisegesis is, and why anachronistically projecting your personal morality onto the past is like a cleaveland steamer.
>>384184
We don't have them anymore because people die.
Because people of color are under a total state of oppression and tyranny, so white people don't have anyone to steal from.
>>384646
People in history were vastly more judgmental than I. Besides, I'm only repeating a contemporary attitude towards the peasants. I don't have to project.
>>384716
>People in history were vastly more judgmental than I.
Doesn't change the methodological problem.
>I'm only repeating a contemporary attitude towards the peasants.
Doesn't change the methodological problem.
By the way, the peasants had different opinions of themselves. Half of Munster was lumpen-bourgeois as well.
Projection.
memes are creativity
>>384765
I bet you find primary sources infuriating. To the scaffold you heathen! May God have mercy on your soul.
>>384784
this
creativity has just evolved
>>384837
Primary sources are refreshing, I don't feel the need to go around their house and cut their big toes off with bolt cutters for disciplinary failure; because, they were not conducting themselves historiographically.
>>384184
>Why are there so many great creative people in the past that we do not have in the current day?
>current day: the present
>past: everything before the present
gee I wonder
>>384846
agreed fäm
>>384184
>Why are there so many great creative people in the past that we do not have in the current day?
Because you're ignorant. Not exactly on purpose, it is much easier to view thousands of years of history and find millions of influential people who have contributed great things to humanity than to look at the millions of innovators today but not know which technologies will be deemed "creative" decades from now.
>>384524
>several of whom I'm sure can match the technical skill and imagination of the greatest Renaissance artists.
So why don't they?
>>386611
They do, but they lack the centuries of hype development. In a couple hundred years some of our greatest modern artists will only just start getting discovered.
>>386611
There's no reason to be a Renaissance-style artist or sculptor when such things are better served by photography, digital art, or 3D printing.
Also, remember that creativity is not just measured in the classical arts like painting and sculpting, you can also see creativity in newer forms of art like film, photography, video games, etc, or even things that aren't art like medical science, computer science, etc. And if you actually believe there were more innovations in science and technology or in the arts in total during the Renaissance than the Modern Day you're crazy.
>>386647
>In a couple hundred years some of our greatest modern artists will only just start getting discovered.
How can you guarantee this? It's just as likely our descendants will condemn the art of today.
>There's no reason to be a Renaissance-style artist or sculptor when such things are better served by photography, digital art, or 3D printing.
Then why is it considered higher and more important style of art? Considering the saturation of the latter and the universal appreciation and demand for the former, it seems more a product of indolence or direct rebellion against such sensibilities/expectations.
i.e. why devote years of your life into a sculpture when something like pic related gets the job done and requires very little
why build a ornate buildings when you can mass produce cookie-cutter souless blocks that serve the same purpose
>>386697
compare the statue of david to things like this that are supposed to be considered on the same playing field
>>386697
>why build a ornate buildings when you can mass produce cookie-cutter souless blocks that serve the same purpose
I don't think you understand. You can create digital art and 3D models just as beautiful and complex as Renaissance art (of course it's entirely subjective, though).
The argument isn't "why create a beautiful painting when I can just draw a dick in 3 seconds in Microsoft Paint", it's "Why waste time and money on the labour and materials required for a Renaissance-style painting when I can create something just as beautiful with a few computer programs?"
Depends what you mean by "creative". If you mean the visual arts area and the fact that you can't name a present-day "master" with the same kind of fame or status as the old masters, it's because the arts now is simply over-saturated by literally everyone dabbling into anything remotely creative/crafty and calling themselves artists. There are some very good ones out there, but you have to sort through all the other garbage first. That and there are probably more of these very skilled artists than ever. Keeping a list and elevating them into names you'd recognize isn't a thing that happens anymore.
It doesn't help the digital age and this constant stream of information and images has reduced art into something people just aren't that impressed about anymore. It's hard to amaze people these days. People think paintings can be made in a snap and for free.
Basically, the culture is different now.
Also,
>tfw even art students raised their eyebrows on me when I said I wanted to do classical art because all they want to do nowadays are more abstract/expressive/contemporary or whatever
>"boring", they said
>>386703
What makes it objectively worse than the Statue of David?
>>386720
>You can create digital art and 3D models just as beautiful and complex as Renaissance art
post examples then.
>>386724
it's a physical piece of art. Unlike say, music, a film, or a computation system, it actively occupies a space in the world.
therefore we can determine it's value with less subjectivity. You can determine "A is made of an inferior material to B" or "A is less in line with its surroundings, it's vulgar for the sake of it"
i can plant a stick in the sand and say it's an obelisk of worship because I say so, but it quite clearly has less value than an a proper ancient obelisk from the ancient middle east which may have actually been accepted and used for that purpose.
>>386778
>You can determine "A is made of an inferior material to B"
Inferior material in what way?
>"A is less in line with its surroundings, it's vulgar for the sake of it"
Subjective
>i can plant a stick in the sand and say it's an obelisk of worship because I say so, but it quite clearly has less value than an a proper ancient obelisk from the ancient middle east which may have actually been accepted and used for that purpose.
Bandwagon fallacy, just because an Egyptian obelisk had more worshipers doesn't make it better than a modern stick in the sand.
>>386791
>Bandwagon fallacy, just because an Egyptian obelisk had more worshipers doesn't make it better than a modern stick in the sand.
From a utilitarian standpoint, yes.
and art, religion, concepts of social norms have utilitarian value even if you choose to judge them on a personal level.
if art is not aesthetic, if a church has no members, and the proposed norms of a society are never upheld, then all of them are for all intents and purposes, dead -- or even lacking the worth of even being considered what they claim to be.
