Lies Confronting the Creative People

As a creative individual, I have experienced all sorts of nastiness confronting creative people. This is my response to some of these claims.

Claim 1: You are a freak, what do you have to offer us?

Answer: Wisdom comes in all sorts of unexpected places, and it takes someone who thinks differently from people around them to come up with new ideas or correct other people when they are going wrong.

Claim 2: Creative people are selfish/narcissistic/etc.

Answer: If that is the case, then the world owes everything it has to selfish and narcissistic people. If it is narcissism to be preoccupied with ideas, then the world owes everything that it has to narcissistic people, as everything that we have started with thought. If it is narcissism to want great success, then the world likewise owed everything that it has to narcissistic people.

Claim 3: Your life is not perfect, what do you have to offer anyone else?

Answer: If my life was perfect, I may have very little to offer the next person. A woman of my acquaintance was thinking about writing about her life but did not want to do it because not everything in her life had been good. In fact, writing about bad things can be highly useful, and it can show people a way to make the most of a bad situation.

There are any number of other claims on this matter, but I do not wish to bore the reader, so I will say this. There is a vast use for creative people, and they do a huge amount of heavy lifting for everyone else. Sometimes they are rewarded, and sometimes they aren't; but in all cases they do something important for the civilization and should be rewarded appropriately.