Is being paid to perform an act of creation in some way counter to the purity of art, science and creation?
In a sense, it would seem that the creation of artistic and scientific work would be impossible, especially today, without a financial backer or benefactor. Having the resources, and let us not forget that time is perceived as a resource, to perform any action is prerequisite to any achievement. However, is getting paid really the proper compensation?
A mother who provides the necessary care and personal investment in to her children is not persuaded in to releasing her efforts for perceived value. The metaphor is not quite the same, except that some creation embodies a significant amount of emotional investment. Time is really immaterial when the muse has you and your entire being is enthralled in the creative act.
So we tell ourselves that we don’t do it for the money. We say that we want to do important work and to help others. We want to make the world a better place.
When we get done with the justifications, we would do what we do anytime and anyplace if the resources were available and all we care about is the work. Someone will have to clothe, clean, feed, and care for our needs lest we forget our good manners and ability to operate within polite society. When the fervor is done and we are spent, then we want our reward and benefits from our work. (As an aside social structures are important, so are manners, moral guides, familial bonds and personal relationships. We are not presently civilized and should make the effort to create a civil (lawful) social order. Technology does not create civilizations, individuals do. People who respect and appreciate one another. Not people who tolerate, and rely upon artificial ‘rights’.)
We do not want to be thrown aside or taken advantage of to benefit those jackals and vultures who wait by the sidelines to collect our bounty while we are too weak to defend it. They swoop down with their legal (not lawful) fangs to nip and tear at the flesh till we are persuaded to release our prize to them. They will say that they took care of you and supplied you with the necessary building materials to start with. But, having said that, they are welcome to the pile and not the prize. The raw material is theirs, and what we do with it is ours.
So the banks, investors, and other people whose priority is to collect the results and get a return on their perceived value (i.e. money) have no sense of what creation is. The money they deal with is created in their imaginations without any emotional investment or creative act. Money is a great invention in principle. How it is used is another story all together and really one of the great tragedies of mankind’s civilization. Usury is the vulture’s beak, the jackal’s teeth, and the hyena’s laugh.
The true value is humanity. We should value the individuals and not their creations. The creation has only provided value to its creator by honing the skills and shaping the destiny of that one individual. Money has no real value, it is a faith-based system akin to religious fervor and is tolerated because people believe they receive some benefit from its creation and use. We place so little value on people and the very ground upon which we stand, that our perception has become like that of a mole operating in the dark. We keep digging and digging without a sense for where we stand in relation to the world and only recognize the small patch of earth we call home.
The study of art, the pursuit of science and the act of creation are some of the highest forms that we presently understand. They are not the end of our journey, they are a way-station on our path. We need to survive the journey on our path to higher forms of creation and understanding, and the only way we know how to achieve this survival is to rely upon payments for our services. However, whom are we servicing and what to we serve?