The more we create as a species, the greater the connective energy is between us.Someone creates it and someone - or many someones - perceive it and that creative energy is transferred or even magnified.

From a new way to arrange your furniture at home to the design of a new store to an epic advertising campaign to the invention of new medicines. The enjoyment we get from witnessing creativity fuels the connection between creator and perceiver.īut there are other kinds of creativity, big and small, all of which have a role in energizing humanity. If the creator makes art, then the creative energy is transferred to the viewer perceiving the art. Creating, in this sense, is truly living life. The vibe starts here. It's a rush to think of something new and great. Carl Jung called it 'the collective unconscious.' Whatever you want to call it I believe creativity is the energy that feeds that collective connection. Human beings are connected in ways we are only beginning to understand. But I have to think that creativity, en masse, can counter the dark forces that lead to war. Photographer: Alan Weller/Bloomberg News.Ī creative act, per se, wouldn't have avoided Sandy Hook or the Syrian refugee crisis. There may have been a critical insight into humanity's condition just beginning to formulate in a ten year old's mind before Adam Lanza senselessly snuffed her out at Sandy Hook.

There could be a technological innovation that would eliminate our dependence on oil that is now instead dodging bullets on a Chicago street.

Right this second there could be a cure for cancer running scared as a Syrian refugee. Imagine what would have been created had some form of war not prohibited it. I think the operative phrase in Lennon's lyric is 'living life' - as in, 'Imagine all the people (actively) living life in peace.' The real damage of war is that it prohibits people from actively living their lives. Think about John Lennon's lyric in his famous utopian anthem Imagine, 'Imagine all the people living life in peace.' It's a nice thought, but how does one imagine that, exactly? When people are living life in peace are they just sitting around smiling at each other? Is peace just the absence of war?

What is the opposite of peace