Years ago I read an H. G. Wells short story called "The Country of the Blind". It tells of a mountaineer named Nunez who literally stumbles into a Utopian, secluded valley populated entirely by blind people. They had started out with sight, but disease robbed their newborns of vision, and after fifteen generations they had even forgotten what having sight was like. They had thoroughly adapted to the lack of sight, just as cave dwelling creatures do.
Nunez naturally thought his ability to see would allow him to rule and help the people. Instead, he was confronted with doubt and derision, as people thought he was making things up or even deranged when he tried to describe what it was like to actually see. No longer able to deal with the frustration of the attitude of the villagers, Nunez acquiesced and gave up his efforts to convince people he could see.
He fell in love, but his request to marry was refused by the village elders because they thought he was ill due to his talk of seeing. It was suggested that his eyes be removed, since they were judged to be the cause of Nunez's illness. In one ending of the story, his attempts to warn the village of an impending rock slide were dismissed, and he barely managed to escape with the woman he loved before the village was destroyed.
The story was meant to be an allegory for the small-mindedness H.G. Wells saw in Edwardian England. Many people at the time only accepted a certain version of the world that fit their comfortable existence. Ideas and concepts which fell outside of their views were dismissed as unrealistic flights of the imagination or the rantings of the insane. People demanded that order be observed and that proper members of society would help to maintain the status quo.
Creative people are also "people of vision" . The reverse is also true. It's just as visionary and creative to come up with a new way of building a home that is more environmentally friendly as it is to develop a style of music that is outside of conventional expectations. Both are also equally valuable to society. Both are also subject to the same lack of vision that plagues the majority of people within most societies.
"The Country of the Blind" offers the same the sort of scenario creative and progressive-thinking people constantly find themselves in. Whether it be the style of a painting or the message behind the words of a song, the "seers" of the world, who express their vision through the arts, are often subjected to either derision or condescension. Just as with the story, those who lack vision are oblivious to the fact. They have accepted their version of the world not only as normal, but as the correct and preferred version. Anything outside that version of the world is an anomaly to be disregarded, or even destroyed if it becomes an annoyance.
The irony of this is that the next generation often embraces the very same concepts and ideas that a previous generation rejects as "crazy". It's a sad irony, though, because they then turn these new ideas into staid convention, robbing them of the life and originality that made them a vision in a vision-less world. By reducing the novel and creative to the level of the mundane, we then take it for granted. We lose sight of the value genuinely creative people and their works have in our society. We end up wanting the 'product', because it has become a valued part of our lives, but we don't want to properly recognize and support the producers of those products.
We see this in things such as the cuts to music, drama and arts programs in our schools. It's evident in how demand to pay less and less for the music, images and artwork that we use to enrich our lives. The worst part about his is, we extend this lack of appreciation for our visionaries to those who see solutions to practical concerns such as racial, social or economic issues.
It's no coincidence that many truly creative people are also forward thinking, and deeply passionate, about social issues. It comes with having a mind and spirit that are constantly seeking, forever dissatisfied with the here and now because that mountaintop leads to a vista that cannot be neglected. The desire to discover or produce something new, something creative, is unrelenting to those with vision. Creative people seem to be passionate, more caring, about things others aren't. Why is that?
Is it a matter that creative people naturally care more, or do they simply find ways to express what they care about in more passionate, attention-grabbing ways?
Does being creative make you more caring, or does caring more elicit greater expression of the creativity that is inborn within each one of us?
Whatever the answers may be, the real issue is why society tends to dismiss the most creative people and their ideas, at least until it's proved there is a profit to be had. In so doing we stall progress technologically, socially, economically et al. We rob ourselves and the entire world of advantages that creative endeavors offer, simply because we either cannot or will not apprehend the value of it until well after the fact.
For instance: in 1987, Apple came out with a device that was unique at the time, the Newton. It was a computer that you could hold in your hand, with a touch screen that allowed you to do many of the same things you could do on a bulky desktop or laptop computer. It failed commercially. (Interestingly enough, 20 years earlier people accepted such as device as normal in the scifi series "Star Trek".) Yet now the iPad and other tablets are ubiquitous in our society, and are surpassing conventional computers in sales and usage.
That is the conundrum of being creative in a mundane world: Right now, people ask "Why?" while in the next decade, or the next generation, they will be asking "Why not?". What they once rejected, they now accept, even demand, as a part of their lives because someone came along and convinced someone else that money could be made from the idea. Nicholas Tesla offered the world free electricity. Thomas Edison offered the world electricity for a price. Look at where we are at now.
The history of art is filled with men and women who died penniless, but now collectors are paying millions for their works. It's the height of frustration to realize that a song or a novel or a photo or a painting that is earning little or no money right now could become an iconic masterpiece in the future, simply because someone decided (often after the artist is dead) that they are willing to pay a premium for the work.
Like Nunez in the H.G. Wells story, people with creative vision have to deal with being viewed as liars or mentally ill by a society which lacks vision. The saddest part of this is that the society could benefit greatly from heeding the words of the creative people who are the subject of so much derision. Consider how people with vision and creativity feel when they are left with the choices our society so often poses to them.
One: give up and join the vision-less masses.
Two: Sell out, and compromise the vision by finding ways to make it fit into the expectations of the vision-less right now.
Three: Stay true to the vision and endure the reproach it brings, trusting that one day someone will embrace the vision and receive the benefit it brings.
This goes out to all those creative, crazy visionaries out there: please choose option three. As hard as it is to deal with being a visionary in a society that lacks vision, we all need you more than we realize. The quality of life of our future generations depends on creative visionaries staying the course right now, more than ever, even if doing so leaves them feeling like Nunez in "The Country of the Blind".
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