We all want an interesting job by which we mean one that allows for a high degree of
creativity
There used to be quite a lot of creative jobs around
But they've been disappearing since at least the middle of the 19th century
In that century the English art critic and social reformer
John Ruskin pointed out that the medieval building industry had once left its builders-- room for a huge amount of creativity
evident in the way that these craftsmen had had fun carving
Gargoyles grotesque animal or human faces in distinctive shapes high up on cathedral roofs
The stonemasons might have had to work to a fixed overall design and their toil was not always easy
but the gargoyle symbolized a fundamental freedom seen in many kinds of
Pre-industrial work the freedom to place a personal creative stamp on one's work
Nowadays, there are some creative jobs around of course
but the majority of those involved in
Making and selling say phones or furniture or buildings will have no opportunity to be creative
themselves
They belong instead to a highly anonymous army of labour
Working with in vast companies and that executes the creative designs of a lucky few
Modern capitalism has radically reduced the number of jobs which retain any component of creativity in them
Take for example. The Eames chair designed by Charles and Ray Eames
Which went into production in?
1956 it is a highly distinctive creation that deeply reflects the ideals and outlook of the couple who designed it if
They'd been artisans operating their own small workshop
They would perhaps have sold a few dozen such chairs to their local customers in a lifetime
instead because they worked under modern capitalism many hundreds of thousands of chairs have been and
Continue to be sold
That's wonderful in a sense but a side effect of this triumph has been that the demand for well-designed
interesting chairs has been
substantially cornered a
New creative person wanting to make a new kind of office chair nowadays has to face the fact that it's already possible
To buy a very nice example
Designed by two geniuses and available for rapid delivery at a competitive price in other words
You won't stand too much chance of success
We're familiar with the idea that the wealth of the world is being ever more tightly
concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of people
the infamous
1% but capitalism doesn't only concentrate money
There's a more poignant less familiar fact that it's only a small number of people are sometimes
Overlapping but often different 1% who can have interesting that is creative work
It's telling that we are at this point in history
Obsessed with the romance of individual creative geniuses our society has developed an ear
fetishistic interest in stories of brilliant startups colorful fashion gurus and idiosyncratic
Filmmakers we might like to think we're turning to them for inspiration
But it may be more the case that we are using them to compensate us for a painful gap in our own lives
Just as it was in the 19th century during mass migration to cities that novels and pictures about country life
achieved unprecedented popularity
among newly urban audiences
The many interviews and profiles of creative types in the media at the moment
mask the fact that for almost all of us it will prove almost impossible to compete against the forces of
standardization
Far more than because of anything we may ourselves have done most of us are highly likely to find a considerable portion of our work
free of opportunities to carve our own gargoyles and
Therefore will find it distinctly boring
We are certainly richer now than we've ever been and then we ever were in a pre-industrial world
But our work is arguably a lot less filled with day to day
Opportunities to mark what we're making with a stamp of our own creative spark
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