The Rise Of The Artist

I have devoted a lot of my time to making art, and I can tell you that frustration is a fact of life for me. I'm virtually never as good as I want to be. My work rarely turns out the way I want; and this doesn't even begin to touch on issues of coming up with ideas and creativity/originality. Learning to deal with and live with failure is just something many ordinary artists have to do constantly.

"Fail early and often" is as much of a maxim to live by for artists as it is for entrepreneurs.

Perhaps 1 in 100, or 1 in 1000 works will be something you're pleased with, and then you can count that as a success. Or perhaps the journey can be counted as much or more of a success than the destination. A lot depends on your expectations.

William Staford was once asked how he was able to write a poem every day. He answered, "I lower my standards."

Well, those right-handed people who have had strokes in their left middle cerebral artery distribution might beg to differ on this point. However, I got this far because I found your first paragraph to be quite compelling writing.

1984 is about authoritarianism and censorship. The "futurology" section of its wikipedia article is about predicting a future in which the dystopian state depicted in the novel is stable, and persists indefinitely. (That is, the one discussing futurology as a theme of Orwell's work. It has nothing to do with machines taking over art or whatever nonsense the author has projected onto Orwell's work.)

That 'artists' shy away from systems thinking is a ridiculous assertion. The first person who comes to mind is Leonardo Da Vinci:

From the wikipedia article bearing his name,

"Renaissance humanism recognized no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are as impressive and innovative as his artistic work.[17] These studies were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy (the forerunner of modern science), made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.[17]" [0]

I would argue that systems thinking and understanding the world around us is essential to produce art that isn't descended from something like a cargo cult.

>Over the next 100 years, the importance of creativity will trump systems thinking due to the rapidly escalating power of computers.

First of all, systems thinking is more than just computer programming. In the same way that cybernetics is more than just computer programming. Writing programs that do what you want and do what you mean without actually specifying the operations involved is something that I would think is an AI complete problem.

In other words, to explain the problem you must first understand the problem, hence systems thinking.

>No, I’m not talking about an apocalyptic “Rise of the Machines,” but rather about the future ascent of people who excel in creativity, intuition, and the marshaling of original solutions, things that computers won’t be able to do for a long time.

I'd bet money computer algorithms that can write code can draw you a picture. (That is to say, 'creativity' is also an AI complete problem.)

>In the United States, the key predictive score to spot a good systems thinker-- our future leaders-- has been the SAT and IQ tests.

I think the biggest name on wikipedias "list of mensans" is Buckminster Fuller. With a membership of 110K, I would expect a larger list if IQ was an almost 1:1 predictor of success.[1]

The rest is just design dressing.

[0]: Taken from the article, Fri Mar 1 23:26:15 PST 2013 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_vinci)

[1]: One could argue that wikipedia may not have an exhaustive list of MENSA members who went on to do great deeds. My reasoning is that because wikipedia is a community project, the people who would compile a list like that are probably MENSA members who want to brag. Therefore the list is probably fairly inclusive of most famous MENSA members. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mensans)

[2]: I'm citing wikipedia yes, but the OP cites nothing.

We typically think our code is never good enough and can always be improved. Learning when something is "good enough" or as you mentioned "lowering one's standards" can lead to a more productive and happier life.

From what I understand, if you are a math teacher you virtually have a guaranteed job at many, many highschools across the nation. If you're an art teacher, good f'ing luck.

The cold, hard fact is that art, music, dance, and theater are not considered serious occupations by the overwhelming majority of people in the US (despite their worship of celebrity artists, musicians, and actors). If it's their kid, they want the kid to be a doctor, lawyer, or (more recently) dotcom billionaire.

Art/music/dance/drama class just does not fit in to this very narrow-minded view of the world, where profit and fame are king. Some kids are so driven that they might take an art class (usually their first semi-serious one is in high school.. and by then, how many math classes have they had?) or even study it at university. But if they do study it at university, it's either as one of many electives or (if as a major) against their parents' objections -- because most parents know how hard it is to "succeed" in this society as an artist, musician, dancer, writer, or actor.

If you are an engineer or programmer, nevermind doctor or lawyer, you're going to usually be taken much more seriously and get more respect from most people than any kind of non-celebrity artist. And funding in the schools generally reflects these sad but all too common views.

Unfortunately, scientists and teachers are often in the same boat as far as lack of respect as artists are. But even there, the amount of funding given to educating more scientists and teachers is far greater than that devoted to educating various artists.

The dollar is king in America, and the overwhelming majority of artists are near the bottom rung of the money ladder in this country. Odds are you'll make far more money working at McDonalds than you ever will as any kind of artist. And, a bit of philanthropy notwithstanding, the rest of society reflects this monetary bias.