New definitions of trite words for the new age
In these great times of ours, we are assailed by ancient fraud, new sophistry and foolishness, all veiled in modern dressing and histrionic avenues for salvation — thus ignoring rules of common discourse and distinct and clear thinking. I propose some approximations to true meaning as possible emendations to pervasive and insidious nonsense.
♦ Creativity: To make others do the work; to make people believe that whatever I produce is worthy; caprice; abrogation of responsibility towards continuity of thought (i.e., tradition); often an excuse for real hard informed effort.
♦ Innovation: To exploit increasing numbers of people ever farther away; new ways of practicing crookedness; compulsory and tyrannical newness.
♦ Success: All-too-commonly the mark of sharp practice; irresponsible and antisocial increase in profit; blind and misguided public praise; the pretension that our conscience is clean.
Certainly only God (if such a being or verb exists) can be creative. Humans are tinkerers (as evolution is for F. Jacob); junkyarders (like the demiurge — a non-creator god — is in Plato’s Timaeus); bricoleurs who put together things already present [created?] (working like the makers of language for Saussure); combiners (Borges’s amalgamators of imaginary beings).
In brief: humans may be artisans without omnipotence, thinkers, workers, perhaps inventors.
Why couldn’t a precise and less offensive articulation such as: An understanding — or insight-matured in her after long study, deep reflection, and thoughtful consideration be offered? Why do violence to, and pollute language (and hence thought) with the three above-mentioned misbegotten words?
Two millennia ago in morally decaying Rome, Seneca already complained about previously unheard-of professions and occupations then abounding — some not markedly different from our own itinerant experts giving (lucrative) seminars, workshops and conferences on “creativity,” “innovation” and “success” to audiences whose understanding must be at least half as mean as that of the presenters.
For J. Barzun, language is our destiny. Lucidity and sanity in (language’s) sphere of action are not easy to attain. At present, these are almost impossible to reappropriate.