We should all be more open to the possibilities in life that we have rejected – ways of interpreting the world, relationships with other people and other things, and ideas about ourselves and our own capabilities.
Years of study and reflection have led me to a worldview that I call creativism, simultaneously a philosophy, religion and ethic. At the core of creativism is the observation is that our lives are all about creation in one form or another, through to death and the potential for new life, new creation. How all this happens is a mystery which has no single explanation. Science and the different brands of philosophy and religion all offer partial explanations which are useful, but it is up to each of us to make our own sense of it. As I am doing now.
In this paper I discuss firstly creation, or the world as I see it, then move on to openness which is the standpoint which I have had to adopt in order to think about creation. The link between the two is reciprocal. Creation is the process of opening out from some kind of source, and to understand this process we ourselves have to be open to it. We have to be attentive to every part of it - all the supposed facts, the ideas, the relationships, and the inwardness, which is the self.
Here in summary are the main conclusions I have reached about creation. These cover the varieties and dynamics of existence, questions of value and relationships, and the mysterious unknown we all inhabit. I start with this last topic.
The Divine
When I contemplate the world and life I am struck most by two things: the incredible diversity of everything, and the incredible capability. These are linked, for capability arises out of diversity, while it also creates new diversity. The capability is evident through the neverending cycle of creation that is with us every minute of every day, with new things constantly coming into existence, flourishing, fading, then disappearing and leading to the next iteration of life. It is all a miracle and simultaneously a mystery. A mystery because we don’t know – and cannot know - where it all comes from, why it is, and where it is going.
It is in this mystery that I perceive the Divine – God and Allah and Brahman and the Tao and so on, all rolled up into one. This is the one, which is also, through its boundless creativity, the many. This Divine or Divinity is more than just a theory: it has substance by way of Providence, which I understand to mean that which keeps us going and completes us when we fall short. Through Providence we have the capability to do things, and the doing of things is the ongoing process of creation. The Divine is the ultimate Mystery, not to be defined in any way and not to be limited by ideas of gender or race or goodness or personality or anything else; for quite simply it is the overarching, underpinning All. We limit it for our own purposes, making it fit for our own particular needs, or if we are atheist in our persuasion we set it aside as mere fantasy. We are all free, after all, to make such choices for ourself. But if we deny its reality altogether we are denying ourselves the full box of tools we need to move forward – the sum of all ideas and experiences available about our existence, its meaning and its potential. We are condemning ourselves to be closed in our approach to life, not open.
A world of equals
The world is astonishingly diverse and getting more so by the minute. We now have new forms of existence that are artificial which we must relate to – at a time when we manifestly are failing to relate to each other and to nature. Diversity is not just a matter of numbers. Self-evidently, we all exist to support each other; we exist in partnership; and the more people and things caught up in this partnership the stronger we are.
Inasmuch as we are part of the same Mystery, we are equals, with no one (or no thing) inherently more valuable than the rest. We all have our part to play and deserve respect accordingly. Even the magnificently creative Divine, assumed to be our source, has little meaning without us, just as we (of course) are nothing without the Divine. At the other end of the scale, science has taught us about molecules, atoms and particles, all of which have value; just as, in everyday observable life, the grain of sand on the beach has value. Science does not cancel spirituality or religion, nor vice versa; they are equal and complementary players in the overall cut and thrust of ideas.
Good and bad
We necessarily assign value to things and to people, in order to survive; thus there is good and bad and everything in between. Paradoxically, the good thrives on the existence and operation of the bad. They are together in a symbiotic relationship, like the eternal yin and yang. Wars are rightly held to be bad but they lead to peace agreements, just as injuries and diseases lead to hospitals and healing, and so on. In time, the benefits of this sort of process become universalised; so, creation opens out the world. It does so at a pace that is frustratingly slow, so we must be patient, accepting that this pace is necessary for change overall to be bearable.
If we see good and bad in this way we can accept that the bad, however abhorrent, is necessary. This helps us when we face squarely the Divine, which is not solely good or of course solely bad, but the mysterious whole that is beyond all such partial values.
Freedom for all
The overall thrust of our existence is positive, despite the many casualties. We seek happiness for ourselves, and because we are social beings we seek happiness for others as well. Similarly, because we are social beings, we suffer when others suffer and we try to alleviate or minimise their suffering. Happiness is widely held to be the ultimate goal in life, but I suggest that a more realistic goal is wellbeing. Wellbeing includes happiness but it also includes the ability to deal with adversity. There are many things that contribute to happiness and wellbeing – things that are goals in themselves, like peace, prosperity and justice, and we can and should dedicate our lives to achieving these sub-goals as well. But at the base of it all is freedom. We may not all be able to enjoy all the varieties of freedom spelt out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but we can at least give each other as much freedom as possible. And we can offer encouragement, so that we can all open out our respective lives into whatever we deem to be our maximum wellbeing.
Our own creative potential
Regularly, we make prisons for ourselves, believing we cannot amount to very much, or else too readily accepting our prevailing circumstances. However, we are all capable of overcoming all sorts of obstacles, as we discover throughout the life course; we surprise ourselves. Openness is a key to this, in both the way we “read” life and the world and the way we interrelate with others. Jesus in Matthew 17:20 and Mark 11:23 spoke about faith moving mountains, a metaphor for carrying openness to the next stage, which is within ourselves. Hidden within this idea of the power of faith is the realisation that the self achieves things through partnerships of one kind or another: partnering ourselves with certain ideas, putting ourselves in the way of opportunities, and joining forces with people or things that can help. The outcomes of our creative effort may not be what we hope for or expect, and they may sometimes happen after our own lifetime. As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day – but it was built!
Bringing it all together
Summarising all the above, I am driven to five key conclusions. We should, I submit:
honour the Divine as ever-present Mystery, experienced through Providence
treat as equal all that is, for it is all part of the Mystery
accept the bad with the good; it too is part of the Mystery
aim always to make the world better – for all, not just some
recognise and unleash the creative potential within ourselves.
None of this is easy, however we have all sorts of guides and exemplars to help us.
Guides and exemplars
Each society in the history of humankind has contributed to our overall understanding, one way or another, and heroes are numerous. Arguably, the most influential guides and exemplars have come from religion, though there have been many others as well in all walks of life and at all levels of society. One of the best known is Jesus of Nazareth. I use him as my prime example because he is so familiar, despite the confused mess of historical fact, metaphor and interpretation surrounding his life.
Jesus gave his life meaning through having a mission, which was to find out what the world was all about, including the Divine, then act accordingly. He formed the view that he was called to be the Messiah, with his life of teaching and healing culminating in an act of self-sacrifice that would show what living under his God meant.
None of the rest of us (presumably) can aspire to be so exalted, however we can claim for ourselves our own more modest mission. I would summarise this in the following words: that within the limits of our place and time in history, we strive to make the world a gentler place, a place where everyone is better connected to the overall process of creation. Such a mission would require us to do a lot of learning and reflecting, opening our hearts to the world then making ourselves get up and do things to bring about change. This being the 21st century we could not limit our scope to other people, which is what Jesus did, for we would have to embrace the whole of nature as well.
Openness as a principle for living
The mantra of openness provides us with a shortcut:
Open your minds, being wary of assumptions and giving due credit to different truths
Open your hearts to other people and other things
Open yourselves to your own capabilities and become fully creative.
Openness is associated with other virtues, like fairness, generosity, optimism, and patience. These all together might be considered the maturing or full flowering of the human being.
Where does all this openness lead to? How might it benefit us? What is on the horizon? The future has no knowable limits and so our most logical response is simply to open our minds and hearts accordingly, then wait and hope: hope that humankind and nature and artificial life will reach a new harmony, nations will become good international citizens, and so on. We need to walk into life on the front foot. That’s what openness is all about.
Over the centuries, humankind has evolved in fits and starts. We’ve taken risks, but equally we’ve been risk averse. This is entirely understandable, for life in general requires to strike all kinds of balance. But in the process we have become too used to blocking things out. We have rigidified.
We don’t always block other things intentionally, for often we simply accept with question things that we understand as givens in life. The superiority of human beings over animals, plants, and non-sentient partners in creation: that’s a widely shared given. Another is the idea that we care only for people who are close to us, allowing others to take their chances. A third is that we all have innate characteristics that will largely shape who we are and what we become. But none of these or other givens is absolute. Everything is up for grabs, so to speak. And in this supposedly enlightened age, questioning of givens, at least in the West, is often seen as a good thing.
If we’re to be in tune with creation, the neverending process of reaching out to the next thing in life, whether it’s a clean load of laundry, a completed school assignment, getting groceries onto (or off) supermarket shelves, getting protection for a victim of domestic violence, we need to be in touch with all the possibilities. In doing so it helps if we understand, at least in a rudimentary way, how everything is connected. Within the great unified wholeness that is existence, there are all sorts of harmonies and balances that affect what we do, day in day out. Prejudice against Muslims or Asians, for example, might cause us to avoid places where Muslims or Asians are providing a service; or we might deny ourselves the pleasure of eating certain foods, or the character-forming experience of learning how other people deal with the vicissitudes of life. Worse still, we might participate in or condone acts of harm against others. Where is the creation enhancement in this?
Openness challenges us in every possible way. Personal experience has taught me to keep pushing my own boundaries, doing things I thought I could never do, having relationships I thought would never be possible, and – best of all – pushing out my worldview to accept the mysteries of life and turn them to my own advantage. So for example, I accept that bad things happen to me as an opportunity for something better. And in the process, I gain resilience I never thought possible.