In Magical Thinking and the Decline of America<\/em>, historian Richard L. Rapson took a long look at the nation\u2019s romantic idealism. \u201cProbably in no other society of the world can one write the script for one\u2019s life as completely as United States. This fact has made the nation the \u2018promised land\u2019 for much of the world over the past two centuries,\u201d Rapson wrote. \u201cThe flight into endless self-improvement and innocent optimism has a long lineage in our past.\u201d[iii]<\/a> Perhaps anticipating Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d sloganeering, Rapson pointed to the disconnection between America\u2019s self-image as an \u201cexceptional\u201d driver of human history, and the growing evidence of the nation\u2019s falling fortunes. This has led to what Rapson described as a growing \u201cflight from knowledge and reality into faith and fantasy,\u201d resulting in large part from \u201can American public increasingly in thrall to the fairytales told by the mass media.\u201d[iv]<\/a> \u00a0It also promotes a \u201ccultural fixation on the individual, the personal, the biographical, the confessional, and, all too often, the narcissistic,\u201d and hence the rise of new \u201cmagic words\u201d like \u201cself-awareness,\u201d \u201cpersonal growth\u201d and other aphorisms promoting everyone to \u201cbe all that you can be.\u201d[v]<\/a><\/p>\n Individualism lies at the heart of American idealism, dating to the country\u2019s Enlightenment Era origins, when the autonomous subject was invented as a counterpoint to deific and royal authority. Necessary as individualism was (and remains), no one could have predicted how its value could be magnified and distorted in neoliberal times.\u00a0 The initial affirmation of personal identity, which encouraged people to vote and participate in society, soon morphed into \u201cstriving to get ahead\u201d and \u201cwinning at any cost.\u201d Eventually the \u201cself\u201d would become an American obsession of theological proportions. \u201cThe purpose of nearly all the current gospels is to put believers \u2018in touch\u2019 with themselves<\/em>,\u201d Rapson further explained.[vi]<\/a> This new brand of secular \u201cfaith\u201d also comports well with the religiosity many Americans still profess, especially evangelical strains that promise economic gain to dutiful worshippers.<\/p>\n Idealistic beliefs and magical thinking also have scientific explanations. Brain scientists often distinguish between two kinds of \u201ccognitive style\u201d in the ways people think about and make sense of the world: reflective<\/em> and intuitive<\/em> thinking. Reflective thinkers tend to be more considered and cautious in forming judgements. Intuitive thinkers are more likely to reject logic and accept \u201cuncanny\u201d propositions. The intuitive person often is prone to what psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky termed the \u201cconjunction fallacy,\u201d in which is when connections are assumed between rationally unconnected situations.[vii]<\/a> Studies have shown such patterns in people who believe in mind reading and astrology, for example, and they might well be behind the mystical attraction of creativity.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s get back to Big Magic<\/em>. Written in memoir style, the book is reminiscent of Gilbert\u2019s break-through bestseller Eat, Pray, Love<\/em>, in which the author left a monotonous married life and then travelled the world\u2013\u2013savoring food in Italy (\u201cEat\u2019), discovering spirituality in India (\u201cPray\u201d), and finding a hot Brazilian boyfriend (\u201cLove\u201d).[viii]<\/a> While many readers found the book inspiring, others thought it smacked of class privilege. Big Magic<\/em> offered more of the same, while also zeroing-in on feelings of insecurity common in the 2000s. Many people want to be \u201ccreative\u201d (especially with all of the recent hype), but also feel they just don\u2019t have it in them. To Gilbert this is all about fear<\/em>. \u201cYou\u2019re afraid you have no talent. You\u2019re afraid you\u2019ll be rejected or criticized. You\u2019re afraid your work will be taken seriously. You\u2019re afraid of being a one hit wonder,\u201d she wrote.[ix]<\/a> The solution is all about spreading your wings, flying free, and letting your inner artist emerge. \u201cYou don\u2019t need anyone\u2019s permission to live a creative life,\u201d she concluded.<\/p>\n Gilbert wasn\u2019t kidding about the \u201cmagic\u201d in all of this. The book was peppered with quirky anecdotes about strange coincidences and unexpected flashes of insight. \u201cWhen I refer to magic here, I mean it literally. Like, in the Hogwarts sense. I\u2019m referring to the supernatural, the mystical, the inexplicable, the surreal, the divine, the transcendent, the otherworldly. Because the truth is, I believe that creativity is a form of enchantment,\u201d Gilbert wrote.[x]<\/a> But when she got down to the nitty-gritty of how to actualize this process, her story would make creative economy fans blanch. After debunking myths of aesthetic genius in the name everyday (\u201cgenuine\u201d) creativity, Gilbert dove into a starving artist narrative. \u201cHere\u2019s what I did during my 20s, rather than going to a school for writing,\u201d she began: \u201cI got a job as a waitress at a diner. Later, I became a bartender as well. I\u2019ve also worked as an au pair, a private tutor, a cook, a teacher, a flea marketer, and a bookstore clerk. I lived in cheap apartments, had no car, and wore thrift shop clothes. I would work every shift, save all my money, and then go off traveling for a while to learn things.\u201d[xi]<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s a trick: stop complaining,\u201d Gilbert advised: \u201cFirst of all, it\u2019s annoying. Every artist complains, so it\u2019s dead and boring topic.\u201d Contradictions notwithstanding, this attitude has a number of downsides. For one thing, it celebrates backward attitudes toward creative labor: film crews hired on a project-basis, occasionally published writers and journalists, web-designers working in coffee shops, and adjunct college faculty hired one course at a time. \u00a0Rather than questioning this negative pattern, Gilbert\u2018s exhortation to \u201cstop complaining\u201d does just what tight labor markets have always done\u2013\u2013by putting all the blame on the individual. The message is that with just a little more persistence, hard work, or \u201ccourage\u201d the wondrous \u201cmagic\u201d will arrive. In other words, Big Magic<\/em> told readers to embrace the mystifying operations of the creative economy in the belief that enchantment will provide a reward for their extreme effort, sacrifice, and transcendental faith. Never mind that corporate boards are reaping fortunes while underpaying employees, or that things could operate in a different way. In the highly individualized world of magical creativity, workers never see themselves and a unified pool, and, in fact, often never see each other at all. Control becomes internalized as work shifts to the psyche itself. Meanwhile, would-be creatives are told to worship the system and do anything they can to gain admission.<\/p>\n Historically, this contradiction was explained in Marxist theory as a simple fact of capitalism\u2013\u2013as the structural advantage of employers plays out in the \u201clived experiences\u201d of the labor class and its subordinate self-image. Caught up in the here-and-now of getting work and doing a good job, workers tended to forget their inherent disadvantage and unwitting supported the system. The difference today is that this failure to recognize what is really going on has moved well beyond the workplace itself, now reinforced in the \u201cinstitutional apparatus\u201d of school, media, consumerism, and social interaction, not to mention the continuing privatization of formerly public accommodations provided by government. The persuasive surround of culture now has become economized in the way Michel Foucault described as a dispositive\u2013\u2013<\/em>defined as a \u201cthoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures \u2026 the system of relations that can be established between the elements\u201d [xii]<\/a><\/p>\n In Creativity and Other Fundamentalisms<\/em> Pascal Gielen dissected the deep transformation of public consciousness occurring as \u201ccreativity generates a new \u2018faith\u2019 not unlike prior faith in art.\u201d[xiii]<\/a> Increasingly isolated from each other as \u201catomized individuals,\u201d the new creative subjects often find themselves \u201clacking the traditional grounding that institutions used to offer.\u201d[xiv]<\/a> This lure of the new fundamentalism is strengthened in the fast-paced and ever-changing world of commercial creativity, where workers find themselves without a voice or a sense of job continuity.\u00a0 Gielen explained that \u201cwith no clear idea of the future, creative individuals are bouncing from one wave to another.\u201d Online connectivity, so often seen as a blessing, only makes anxieties about the future worse. \u201cAnticipation is central to high speed networked society, both in investments and in keeping up with peers, trends, new products. This produces a lack of depth, continuity, history, memory, stability, and solid social connection. Networks destroy permanence and the essence of actor-network theory, which is communication,\u201d Gielen observed.[xv]<\/a><\/p>\n This leaves many Americans frustrated and angry about a problem they cannot name\u2013\u2013often lashing out against anything or anyone they can blame: government, immigrants, each other, or even themselves. It also provides a perfect set-up for super-hero leadership figures proffering quick fixes, or magical cures like those promised by creativity. The postmodern blurring of fact and faction doesn\u2019t help matters either, as critic Dana Polan once pointed out. In a post-truth age of \u201cfake news\u201d many people find themselves in a quandary over what they can believe. Unlike the industrial age, \u201cHere ideology may have as a function less to reproduce productive relations than to disenfranchise workers by offering no interpelative space,\u201d Polan wrote.[xvi]<\/a> This environment supports \u201cdominant power by encouraging a serialized sense of the social totality as something one can<\/em> never understand<\/em> and that always eludes one\u2019s grasp.\u201d<\/p>\n [i]<\/a> Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear <\/em>(New York: Riverhead, 2015) p. 8.<\/p>\n [ii]<\/a> Big Magic<\/em>, front matter, n.p.<\/p>\n [iii]<\/a> Richard L, Rapson, Magical Thinking and the Decline of America<\/em> (New York: Xliberis, 2007) p.11.<\/p>\n [iv]<\/a> Magical Thinking and the Decline of America<\/em>, p. 21.<\/p>\n [v]<\/a> Magical Thinking and the Decline of America, <\/em>p. 20.<\/p>\n [vi]<\/a> Magical Thinking and the Decline of America, <\/em>p. 131.<\/p>\n [vii]<\/a> \u201cHow Come Some People Believe in the Paranormal?\u201d<\/p>\n [viii]<\/a> Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman\u2019s Search of Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia<\/em> (New York; Riverhead, 2007).<\/p>\n [ix]<\/a> Big Magic<\/em>, p. 15.<\/p>\n [x]<\/a> Big Magic,<\/em> p. 34.<\/p>\n [xi]<\/a> Big Magic<\/em>, pp. 100-111.<\/p>\n [xii]<\/a> Michel Foucault, Power\/Knowledge: Selected Writings and Essays, <\/em>Colin Gordon, ed. (New York: Vintage, 1980) p. 194; See also Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Coll\u00e8ge de France 1978\/79<\/em>, Michel Senellart, ed., Graham Burchell, trans. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008).<\/p>\n [xiii]<\/a> Pascal Gielen, Creativity and Other Fundamentalisms<\/em> (Mondrian Fund: Amsterdam, 2013) p. 18.<\/p>\n [xiv]<\/a> Creativity and Other Fundamentalisms<\/em>, p. 36.<\/p>\n [xv]<\/a> Creativity and Other Fundamentalisms<\/em>, p. 25.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/worlding.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/imgres7-218x150.jpeg\")
<\/a>Publicity doesn\u2019t hurt. Reviewers effused over Big Magic<\/em> as a \u201cbook-length meditation on inspiration\u201d (Newsday<\/em>) to \u201cunlock your inner artist\u201d (Woman\u2019s Day<\/em>) and \u201cdream a life without limits\u201d (Publishers\u2019 Weekly<\/em>).[ii]<\/a> This message resonated well with the rising chorus promoting creativity as an innovation engine and economic tonic.\u00a0 While no one would dispute the positive benefits of a little artistic dabbling, at what point does such wishful thinking begin to border on delusion? Or put another way, when does fantasy paper over reality? Might it be that America\u2019s fondness for make-believe is party behind the nation\u2019s political confusion and disaffection? Do fairy-tale versions of life infantilize a citizenry that should know that answers don\u2019t always come easily?\u00a0 Certainly the fantasy-version of reality offered by certain politicians would fail any thoughtful analysis. But instead, many leaders continue treating their constituents like children, with entire governments encouraging populations to set worries aside and simply \u201cBe Creative.\u201d<\/p>\n