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The critical spirit looks at what already exists and questions it. The creative spirit looks beyond what already exists and searches for something new.

The critical spirit compares reality to an ideal. The creative spirit attempts to manifest an ideal by bringing it into reality.

The critical spirit discovers problems and performs investigations. The creative spirit explores possible solutions and performs experiments.

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“Is the [literary] canon of value? The canon is nothing but value. It is a complex system of interlocking, stabilizing and destabilizing — constantly circulating, always shifting — values. The course of that endless circulation alone is what holds the canon stable, is what alone allows it to bend and recover. We think of the canon as a social object that holds things comparatively stable in the face of shifting values. But that “in the face of,” with its suggestion of opposition, is only more mystification. The canon is not a passive natural object, but an active social object, and it is precisely the shifting of social values that fuels the canon and facilitates its stability.”

— Samuel R. Delany, “The Para•doxa Interview”

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Language is based on agreement. You and I can communicate only insofar as we agree on the meanings of the words we use. If you judge one of the words to have a different meaning than I judge it to have, then I will not be able to communicate what I intend by using that word. Similarly, if I use a word that has no recognizable meaning for you, then I will not communicate anything at all, since for you it will be literal nonsense.

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“Truth has two meanings: there is truth as knowledge of reality, and truth as reality itself.”

— Nikolai Berdyaev, The Beginning and the End

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“Ambition meant never being satisfied, to be always hungering for something more, constantly pushing forward because no success could ever be big enough to quell the need for new and even bigger successes…”

— Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1

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We put enormous emphasis on optimizing quantities. Our attention is shackled to screens where we make certain numbers go up and other numbers go down. We want to measure everything so that we can control and optimize it. The benefit of this is that we are able to fulfill our material needs more efficiently and with less effort.

But by doing so, we begin to think only about quantities. We create incentives to sacrifice quality in order to obtain better quantitative results. We become so focused on measuring and optimizing, on increasing efficiency and productivity, that we stop thinking about what is happening to us in our day-to-day lives.

It is perhaps not surprising that we then feel there is something missing — as though life is not going as well as it ought to be, even though all of the numbers are moving in the right direction.

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“Every technology contrived and “outered” by man has the power to numb human awareness during the period of its first interiorization.”

— Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy

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She has many problems but perhaps the biggest is that she is always bored.

The people she knows talk endlessly about the most mundane topics. She doesn't understand how they can stay interested in these things. The games and the shows and the movies that they find so engaging do nothing for her. It's just the same thing over and over again, she wants to say. But she doesn't say anything. She just listens and nods.

She goes for walks around the city and everything she sees is dull. It's the same city every day, the same streets, the same parks, the same shops. She goes to events that look exciting and sometimes they actually are. But everyone ignores her at these things. There is no contact — nothing she can hold on to, nothing she can build from.

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“Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you really want them to understand.”

— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

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“I’m sorry you’ve become a writer… I’m sorry this disaster has come for you. I love you. But you have to pay attention. It won’t help now, I don’t know what will help now, but I promise it will help later. That’s all you need to do. Pay attention.”

— Andrew Sean Greer, Less Is Lost

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My attention must be free to wander. But often I inhibit its freedom. I narrowly focus on one task to the exclusion of all else, or I block particular experiences or ideas from my view, or I try to possess and maintain whatever is present.

When I do these things, my attention becomes stuck. My imposed control restrains it. Being stuck is not the same as lingering or being at rest. My attention may rest on a single point, but I need to allow this to happen without force.

When I restrict the movement of my attention, my sensitivity towards myself and the world is profoundly limited. As I force my attention to stay fixed on my own particular ends, it cannot reach anything or anyone outside my focus. I treat myself like a machine, with no other concern than to fulfill practical goals.

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