New Moon and new essay to share on my most beloved topic: Creative Destruction. This is the first of a series of essays adapted and updated from a talk I gave at an Arcane School Conference in New York City, circa 2016.
- Introduction To Creative Destruction And A Warning
This is a tapestry essay, woven with highly flammable threads of thought. Use caution. I’m not a trained pyrotechnician, so watch out for fringe, ideas that push, recognitions that turn new, lines of flight straight off the page. It’s a tapestry, yes, but it’s a launch pad too. The threads are wicks. They light when read.
Each encounter with Creative Destruction is accompanied by an expansion of consciousness, a sudden and dramatic shift in perception. This expansion can be a slow, yawning opening, or, at other times, like a sharp knife plunged in your back along with a swift shove into a blazing inferno. Followed by progressive phases of: WTF!? Abstraction. At-one-ment. Ascension. Not always in that order.
Creative Destruction appears in economic theory, behavioral economics, and I see it plain old everywhere. In the big bang. In small acts of cellular life to atoms splitting wide. Falling in love, migrating to a new country, birth, death, and almost everything in between. Creative Destruction just showed up for me again last week, always uninvited. I’m not sure which phase I’m in.
- What is it again?
Creative Destruction has everything to do with the life force inside a form that can’t fit in there any more. When the container can no longer hold the contents, the container bursts. This process can happen gradually, which we tend to call evolution. Or it can happen (seemingly) sudden: Creative Destruction.
There is a relationship between the two, but that’s a story for next time.
- Creative Destruction VS Evolution VS What’s Next
Gradually, over countless millions of years, a unicellular organism dependent upon photosynthesis developed the capacity to discern light which ensured their survival, and countless millions of years later, through their hard labor of evolution, we peer through eyes that discern more than just light. We can also see color and shape and movement.
At other times, the change is so sudden and absolute that a shattering occurs, a crisis happens. Evolution must accelerate. A new dynamic is happening and new eyes must be shaped immediately to perceive beyond the visible light spectrum. To ensure survival. To ensure that our creative capacity out-paces destruction.
I’m working on my new eyes right now. Eyes to develop vision beyond what I can see. I’m using Creative Destruction to frame the direction where I should look: the proverbial neon arrow that points this way. I hope you’ll come along and work on your new eyes too.
I’ve read in the Ancient Wisdom Teachings that humanity learns through the shattering of forms. When the old form shatters, along with the attachment to it, there is space for new incoming spiritual energies to find expression. With shattering, comes the opportunity to construct a new form of beingness. I’ve also read that new wineskins are needed for new wine.
How is wineskin made again?
Watch for the next installment on Creative Destruction where we’ll meet the Austrian Economist credited with coining the term, along with the principle of spiritual crisis to guide us onward.
Click here to read Creative Destruction Part II: Economics and Spiritual Crisis