
🕊 Common Sense for the Greater Good
A Vision Beyond the Mundane
There is a kind of common sense that serves the common good—what we might call the mundane common good. It fills potholes. It funds schools. It protects rights. It keeps the lights on. It makes sure society more or less functions.
This kind of common sense is important. But it is not enough.
We live in a time when functioning is no longer sufficient. When survival is not the same as life. When a working system may still be a soulless one. And so, alongside the common good, we must begin to speak of something else:
The Greater Good.
Not just local.
Not just national.
Not just efficient or sustainable.
But whole.
A deeper, wiser, more luminous good.
A good that sees the planet as sacred.
That honors every person not as a resource, but as a living spark of potential.
A good that transcends borders and budgets and short-term metrics.
A good that listens.
We must reclaim Common Sense for the Greater Good—a new civic compass grounded not only in practicality, but in poetry, ecology, beauty, and the long memory of the Earth.
This is not a utopian escape. It is a return.
To what indigenous traditions have always known.
To what mystics and artists have always whispered.
To what children understand instinctively before we train it out of them.
The Greater Good is not a policy. It is a way of being.
The Role of the Creative Spirit
In the age of algorithms and automation, it is not markets or machines that will save us. It is our ability to dream again. To imagine differently. To feel more. To connect the inner life with the outer world.
This is why the creative spirit matters so deeply now.
Not only as entertainment.
Not only as personal therapy.
But as cultural guidance.
Artists, poets, dreamers, makers—these are the ones who tend the deeper roots of the Greater Good. They are not distractions from society. They are its conscience. Its compass. Its possibility.
But we have failed them. We have failed ourselves.
We have treated art as decoration. Creativity as a hobby. Vision as a luxury.
A Vision Rooted in Trust
This is why I’ve begun writing about the Creative Freedom Act—a bold proposal to provide every professional creative with a $100,000 annual basic income.
Yes, it is a policy.
But it is also a test of imagination.
Can we trust people to make beauty and meaning if we give them the space to breathe?
Can we treat the cultivation of insight, story, and soul as public infrastructure?
Can we extend the logic of survival into the logic of becoming?
The Creative Freedom Act is the first seed.
A doorway from the mundane common good to the Greater Good.
From maintenance to emergence.
From function to flourishing.
It starts with the artists. But it ends with everyone.
A Culture Worth Living In
We must not only preserve society. We must regenerate it.
We must not only be good citizens. We must become good ancestors.
And we must not only survive the future. We must shape it.
This begins, I believe, by building a culture worth living in.
A culture where creativity is not a side project, but a civic practice.
A culture where rest is honored.
Where silence is listened to.
Where the imagination is not a threat, but a guide.
This is the vision.
This is the Greater Good.
And this is the invitation:
🌿 Call to Action
If this resonates with you—
If you are a creative soul, a cultural worker, a citizen of the deeper good—
I invite you to take the next step.
Join the movement.
Help seed the idea of the Creative Freedom Act.
Share this post.
Talk about it with your community.
Write your own version of what a Creative Society could look like.
Start imagining out loud.
Let’s not wait for permission.
Let’s start the conversation.
Let’s begin now—artist to artist, dreamer to dreamer.
Let’s do the work of the future.
Together.
—
With creative trust,
Cecil
Interesting reflection on the importance of creative life
Ok, I have been thinking about this concept since you first posted it. Trying to think about this from the perspective of the ordinary citizen
Perhaps all the ducks lined up in a row would make more sense from the "Greater Good" point of view, at least to begin with.
I also think the approach needs to be done in a focused and structured manner depending on who you are going to be addressing, targeting why it would be advantageous, both for them and for their community. For example, the little town of Capitola, on the beach in California used to be a popular resort for families when I was growing up. It was cute, artistic, affordable.
The town has become more popular because of the cute and artistic vibe and the land values have become incredibly high. I would love to live there but a house like mine (3 bedroom, 2 bath, 1840 sq. ft). A three-bedroom house in Capitola, California, would likely cost somewhere between $1,200,000 and $2,000,000, but could be higher depending on the specific location, size, and condition.
If I were to talk to the city council there, I would emphasize more about the benefit of the arts to giving children a more rounded education, opening galleries not only featuring local artists, but also providing works of more well-known artists, such as yourself for the benefit of the community, helping Capitola to also foster and promote itself as a more focused and growing arts community. The people there already have the money to buy expensive art, so the issue of paying artists would not be their first priority, or they would think it would be ok to pay artists. I hope I'm making sense.
So this is getting long already. Here were some things to consider coming up with strategies to be considered, depending on the situation. It is just a very rough outline.
Where to begin
Research, studies, and statistics
Methods of fundraising: Go Fund Me, Incubators, Auctions supporting other “worthy” causes with a fee, form a low fee based organization,
Which audiences to target: what would they support and why is it beneficial to them?
Arts communities:
Schools: Curriculum, Activities
Institutions: Mental Health, Long-Term medical assistance,
Galleries
Performances
Open houses
New Buildings
Art Banks: Loan Funding?
Strategic approach: 1. Get people excited, Show–not Tell, Meet objections, change minds, demonstrations,
Pros & Cons from a societal perspective
Pros & Cons from an educational perspective
Pros & Cons from a wellness perspective
ect.
Motives
Potential Outcomes
Just my opinion.
Christine