Over the weekend I revisited Why Man Creates, a 1968 animated short documentary, written by Saul Bass and Mayo Simon. The 29 min short, was surprisingly commissioned by Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Company, who requested a film about ideas and the importance of imagination within the company. What they received was a wonderfully creative film about creativity itself.
In an attempt to keep their subject matter as managed as possible, creative processes and factual history are combined in 8 explorations on relation to creativity titled-The Edifice, Fooling Around, The Process, Judgment, A Parable, Digression, The Search, and The Mark.
Interesting things happen when the creative impulse is cultivated with curiosity…The need to create is part of the very essence of our existence, and if we stop creating, we cease to live.
-Saul Bass
Why Man Creates was frequently screened in classrooms and PBS across the United States throughout much of the 1970’s, helping to educate through Bass’s ability to introduce text to a world of motion and dimensional space. As a whole it speaks to creativity including, humor, satire and irony while combining serious questions about the creative process and how it comes into play for different individuals. It still holds up as a fun look at creative impulse and curiosity and is appropriate wherever creative problem-solving is the goal.
The opening episode titled, The edifice, tracks civilizations history of human creativity from the wheel to the atomic bomb in three minutes. Demonstrated vertically over an animated tower, with blocks containing some major achievements, figures, and moments of creativity that have affected civilization (good and bad) throughout periods of human growth.
The Edifice can be viewed above, the full 24 min short film lives here.
Ed·i·fice
1. A building, especially a large, imposing one.
2. A complex system of beliefs as "the concepts on which the edifice of capitalism was built."
The Edifice begins with early humans hunting. They attempt to conquer their prey with stones, but fail, so they begin to use spears and bait. They kill their prey and it turns into a cave painting, upon which a building begins to be built. Throughout the rest of the section, the camera tracks upward as the edifice grows ever taller.
Early cavemen begin to discover various things such as the lever, the wheel, ladders, agriculture, and fire. It then cuts to clips of early societies and civilizations. It depicts the appearance of the first religions and the advent of organized labor. It then cuts to the Great Pyramids at Giza and depicts the creation of writing.
Soon an army begins to move across the screen chanting, "Bronze", but they are overrun by an army chanting, "Iron". We see early cities and civilizations, various Greek achievements in mathematics are depicted as Greek columns are built, around which Greeks discuss items, including,
"What is the good life and how do you lead it?" "Who shall rule the state?" "The Philosopher King." "The aristocrat." "The people." "You mean all the people?" "What is the nature of the Good? What is the nature of justice?" "What is happiness?"
A man in a bird costume then attempts to fly, in a reference to Icarus. The culture of ancient Greece fades into the armies of Rome. The organized armies surround the great Roman architecture as they chant, "Hail Caesar!" A man at a podium states, "Roman law is now in session", and when he bangs his gavel, the architecture collapses. Dark soldiers begin to pop up from the rubble and eventually cover the whole screen with darkness symbolizing the Dark Ages.
The Dark Ages consist of inaudible whisperings and mumblings. At one point, a light clicks on “I've invented the zero." At which point his colleague responds, "What?" and he says "Nothing, nothing." Next come cloistered monks who sing in Chant,
What is the shape of the Earth? Flat. What happens when you get to the edge? You fall off. Does the earth move? Never.
The scene brightens and shows a stained glass window. Various scientists open stained glass doors and say things such as,
"The Earth moves." "The Earth is round." "The blood circulates." "There are worlds smaller than ours." "There are worlds larger than ours."
Each time one opens a door, a large, hairy arm slams the door shut. Finally, the stained glass breaks in the wake of the new enlightenment-Michelangelo and da Vinci are depicted. Bass becomes more critical as the view continues to move upward and the sequence approaching the twentieth century. The telegraph is invented and psychology created. While acknowledging the significance of Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, and Louis Pasteur upon mankind’s contemporary strivings towards awareness, knowledge, and good health.
We hear the speeches and documents on government and society from the American Revolution onward with quotes such as,
"All men are created equal...", "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", "And the government, by the people,...", etc. and ends with "One world.",
The light bulb and steam locomotive are created and belts begin to cover everything. Darwin is referred to as two men hit each other with their canes arguing whether man is an animal.
Bass ends with an ominous criticism of both excess consumption and the shortsightedness of employing scientific discovery without understanding potential long term consequences. The Wright Brother’s plane becomes sky bound, followed by a more modern jetliner, followed by jetliners being piled on top of one another in rapid succession (indicating the Western world’s confusion between evolution and excess), followed by washers & dryers, cars, televisions and early computers being disposed of on top of the planes, followed by the image of a radioactive atom mushroom cloud engulfed in noise and smog sitting on top of all this waste.The edifice ends with that man yelling, “Help!”
What have we added to the heap?
Then what? The wheel was great, but its now been 53 years since the edifice ended screaming for “Help.” What have we collectively accomplished? Besides the Pacific Ocean garbage patch and never ending student loan hell?
We closed out the conflicts of the 60’s with the 70’s counterculture rebellion- leading to the sexual revolution, voting rights, Roe vs Wade, Stonewall, and decades later same-sex marriage.
In parallel, relations between Roman Catholic Church and modern culture grew during this time, catering in the raise of conservatism, political repression (bathroom bills), growing systemic racism, and militarization of our local police.
Along with this we saw the Vietnam War, Cold War and raise of nuclear fears, even a war on drugs, AIDS, rolling us right into September 11th and our never ending war(s) on terrorism. Increasing pandemics, global warming, and growing water right issues, like Flint, Michigan and the Shrinking Colorado River.
Internet, smartphones, and Infinite scrolling have increased as attention span continues to decrease. Our culture civil wars now happen online, with increasing Orwellian surveillance and revising of history all while social media is altering our reality.We have the rise and validation of online trolls, who grew loud enough to be invited to the evening news table. Where they proudly provide false equivalence and legitimacy to often harmful and ill informed hateful views. At which point the nation began to curate our own personal news feeds, pumped up by marketing algorithms, to better support what we wanted to hear creating echo chambers, dividing us even further from the truth and each other.
We have achieved small progressive wins while rolling into more and more obstructionist battles.During which we globalized, world trade formed, we saw the rise and education of the Middle Class, and from what I am reading current decline of the middle class and our education system. Anyone remotely interested in learning, will very very quickly realize that the internet (and large part of media) isn’t interested in teaching but proselytizing. That’s the difference between validating an existing opinion and learning new information.
Why? When? Who? Where? How?
Most of us are fearful of appearing foolish or ignorant, which is precisely what drives a lot of the current tribal ignorance we see in US culture, in particular. A value for something like the scientific method, which embraces being wrong, or critical thinking which values knowledge above all else, cannot survive in a climate or environment where 'being wrong' is the biggest sin of all. Our internet age amplifies and feeds this.
There is a reason critical thinking is not taught in schools. Same reason personal finance declines to be taught. The people who profit from both will keep it that way. If you’re an influential politician, you don’t want informed voters. Informed voters have a habit of asking uncomfortable questions. The problem for both is this- ignorance and power go hand in hand. The more ignorant the population, the greater control a leader has. It’s all about denying knowledge to the population. Just like pre-printing press Europe where the Catholic religion controlled knowledge of Christianity & thus authority under it, our modern day governments fight easy access to information by discredit.
That’s how the lights of knowledge are turned off, while the power brokering and corruption increase. This is why Trump - and other bullies could be scandalized so many times and gain supporters regardless. Populism, nationalism, anti-vax, and just general anti-intellectualism have been infecting this country at a rapid rate in the last five years especially. It is what led to the popularity of narcissistic, bullying wing-nut politicians.
They can’t turn off the Internet, yet - but they can discredit it by poisoning information with accusations of propaganda and manipulation. If our common sources of information are tainted with bias, it leaves tribalism as the primary social information source. In 1995, the amazing Carl Sagan, wrote The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, in which he said,
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. We've arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements — transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting — profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."
“In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
It’s important to remember that Carl Sagan was not some kind of prophet and could not see the future. He simply studied history, studied his present, had a highly competent understanding of both, and lined up the parallels to focus on an accurate picture of what the future could be. Critically, he was a well educated person. Anyone can do the same thing with the privilege and right dedication to being educated and utilizing critical thinking skills.
For example, last months situation with Texas and Roe V. Wade- a lot of folks saw this coming. If you didn't, I can explain how in simple terms. First off, something everyone knows if they pay attention to American politics, republicans are largely motivated by the evangelical right. Second, In the past they used to bomb abortion clinics and physically targeted doctors-obviously this couldn't keep going so they switched tactics, using the courts, and lost many times. They kept at it, they kept banging the drum, and they slowly managed to get themselves a majority on SCOTUS and also control of countless district and lesser courts, all the while continuing their legal contests.
Some may remember that after Trump got elected and even before he got to nominate SCOTUS justices, various states introduced various anti-abortion laws. They did a whole lot of em, too. Most were struck down before they could become law. This Texas one is the first one that hasn't. Now, anyone paying attention would have known that sooner or later, among all these attempts, one would succeed, and it has.
Another example is the energy towards introducing bathroom bills-because public restrooms, are just one more way that Americans silently impose judgment and class structures on people they don't like or who are beneath them. So much anger over a simple human biological function EVERYONE does. To believe that same-sex marriage marks the end of the movement sparked decades ago is wrong.
Science fiction writers, really good ones who spend much of their lives deciphering our world and thoughtfully extrapolating the future, can be incredible sources of wisdom. If you think Sagan writing in 1995 was prophetic check out Aldous Huxley writing 60 years ago:
"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution."
Saul Bass & Mayo Simon creating “the Edifice.”
Not really sure where I was going with this, other than I had a notion to rewatch a childhood memory that used to make me dream. Looking around people seem to be getting used to changes they'd prefer to avoid, feeling an inability or resistance to respond to threats that continue to arise.There’s a story people often share about a frog dropped in a pot of water; if the water is boiling the frog will save itself by jumping right out of the pot, but if the frog is put into a pot of room-temperature water and then the water is slowly brought to the boiling point, the frog will stay in the water until it dies.
The story is used to explain a situation in which a person doesn’t realize how bad something is getting until it’s too late. But just because they're not talking about it doesn't mean it's not making them worse off. The last few years seem to have made the world a bit harsher in tone and short in time to listen. Much like the case of Mr. Frog, if we are not careful, our values will also continue to erode slowly. They can seemingly slip out from underneath us until they are no longer core to how we operate. So how do we protect our values as it slowly kills hope and the ability to listen, empathize, and provide energy to creativity? Bass wraps up his film by speaking to how humankind has tended to create throughout history but a spark for connection and human expression is the goal to creativity throughout.
“Man has struggled against tie, decay, destruction, against death. Some have cried out in torment and agony. Some have fought with arrogance and fiery pride. Some challenge the Gods, matching power with power. Some have celebrated life. Some have burned with faith.
Some have spoken in voices we no longer understand. Some have spoken eloquently. Some have spoken inarticulately, some haltingly. Some have been almost mute. Yet among all the variety of human expression, a thread of connection, a common mark can be seen.”