The Greater Good and the Creative Life - no. 1
The Greater Good - no.1
The Greater Good and the Creative Life - No. 1
We live in times that test the soul - where distraction is easy, cruelty is common, and self-interest is dressed up as virtue. In such a world, we who create must ask ourselves a deeper question: What is the greater good, and what is our role in serving it?
The phrase “greater good” has long been used in politics, philosophy, and religion - sometimes nobly, sometimes manipulatively. But for us as artists, poets, musicians, writers, dancers, dreamers, and cultural workers, the greater good is not an abstract ideal. It is the living current that moves through our hands when we create with honesty, with care, and with courage.
It is tempting, especially now, to retreat into our studios and silence. To tell ourselves that the world is too broken, too loud, too fast to bother with. But the truth is: humanity needs artists more than ever. Not to decorate the world, but to remind it of its soul. To tell stories that carry truth, to make beauty that heals, to disrupt the trance of numbness and noise.
The greater good is not about conformity. It is not about martyrdom. It is about alignment - living and creating in a way that nourishes the world rather than drains it. It is a commitment to integrity, to depth, and to presence. It asks us to make work that matters - not in terms of market, but in terms of meaning.
This doesn’t mean you must become a political artist, or that your work must shout. It means that your very act of paying attention, of shaping the ineffable into form, of telling the truth only you can tell - that itself becomes an offering. A form of service. A gesture toward wholeness in a fractured time.
We are not here merely to entertain. We are here to witness, to illuminate, and to point the way home - whatever that may mean to those who encounter our work.
Let’s stop asking only what we can get from the world, and begin asking what we can give. Let’s work not just for applause, but for the elevation of the collective spirit.
The working toward the greater good isn’t a slogan. It’s a way of living, a way of choosing - again and again - to be part of something larger than the self. For us, that something larger may be called art, or harmony, or truth - but whatever we call it, we know it when we serve it. We feel it when the work is honest. We see it in the eyes of those moved by what we’ve made.
This is a call - not to arms, but to hearts. Not to conformity, but to conscience. We are the keepers of imagination, the caretakers of possibility. Let us live and work in service to something that transcends us. Let us create not just for ourselves, but for the greater good - and in doing so, help make the world whole again.
I have often thought of starting to movement where one day per year, there would be no music playing anywhere, not on Radios, TVs, Restaurants, Sports, or any other place that uses music for commercial purposes, to let the world experience a world without it. The value would certainly be seen differently if it was not available.
To those who have nothing to do with the creative arts, this essay and the subject would be labeled as 'idealism' or an extra curricular activity. It's why funding has stopped for specific grants (like the National Foundation for the Arts, PBS too), because those who don't care for this crucial expression of the soul and ideas think it's just a waste of money and time and resources. But I've always seen art/the ability to create it (and that includes all the many kinds that you mentioned) is indeed a necessity in life........maybe not like air/food/shelter but it stands alone. Imagine a world without it! I wouldn't want to live in such a world. Yes, it is a necessity indeed.