CREATIVITY & SOCIAL CHANGE
By Captain Paul Watson
Every social revolution throughout history has been initiated by passionate individuals, not by governments, or soulless bureaucracies. And every social revolution has succeeded when enough individuals exercised the virtues of passion, courage, and imagination. These are the virtues of creativity, and just causes succeed when passionate people have the courage to transform what they imagine into reality.
We are now in the midst of the greatest social revolution in history and the cause is simply to save humanity from humanity and to reverse the cycle of mass extinctions that we are presently experiencing.
We need to defend diversity on land and in the sea and we need solutions and these solutions can only be realized by harnessing the imaginative side of human culture – the arts.
The camera, the pen, the paintbrush, and the computer are the instruments of change in today’s world.
We don’t need nor desire guns and bombs to bring about change, we only need to exercise our creativity, to visualize change, unveil the possibilities and allow the messages to be absorbed by the imaginations of passionate people.
Conservation, environmentalism, biocentrism, and advocacy for rights for nature, for animals, and people are all creative processes.
As a conservationist I am both myth-maker and dream-weaver as I challenge the forces that I need to overcome. I design symbolism to inspire the public and use cameras to expose the truth.
I also turn for assistance to the legion of artists in every field who have the power to turn dreams into reality because they have the ability to reach into the hearts and minds of millions to pluck the strings of inspiration.
Fomenting change is a significant act of creativity with all of society as the canvas and activism as the brush, and that activism takes shape in the creative actions of artists, musicians, photographers, poets, writers, lawyers, architects, designers, teachers, healers, and philosophers.
Creativity is the key to saving creation from our darker side and the key to a future of ecological harmony between humanity and the diversity of wondrous species we share this planet with.