A reader asks:
I’ve read Jane Jacobs, now I’m reading your books. After reading The Rise of the Creative Class, the question that jumps out at me is that this “Class” appears to be amoral. Is that true?
What say you?
Creative Class
The source on how we live, work and play
September 24th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Wow. That’s completely naive.
September 24th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I don’t agree with the reader.
First, every individual in endowed with an inherent, intuitive morality. We needn’t appeal to books of any kind for moral lessons.
Second, the moral lesson I take out of Jacobs’ and Richard’s books is that society should avoid supra-ordinating a totalizing modernism over and above the needs of individual people. In Jacobs case, this meant that we should avoid destroying cities through hideous renewal schemes, since first and foremost cities are homes to their residents. What could be more moral than that?
September 24th, 2008 at 10:19 am
ouch, I find the term “class” – when used with Creative Class – to be an enlightening, which gives our class meaning. It shouldn’t be a rich or poor, black or white, it’s about creatives!
September 24th, 2008 at 10:38 am
This issue came up on the “single’s Week” posting as well.
Depends what you define as morality.
To me, concepts such as justice, equality, freedom and respect sum it all up. Aren’t those what the creative class has been trying to achieve in the Urban Centres and workplace? (e.g. defending gay rights? Respecting immigrants and diversity? Preserving the environment, hence justice for all human race now and in future? Freedom of expression?)
Again, I am socially left-wing. People to the right consider me amoral.
September 24th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Even the word “morals” means different things to different people. This amazing TED talk from Jonathan Haidt entitled “The real difference between liberals and conservatives” opened my eyes quite a bit:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
There no particular solution presented here, but it helps a great deal with framing the situation. I strongly endorse investing 19 minutes into watching this.
Cheers,
– Richard
September 30th, 2008 at 4:17 am
Ah, the relativism of the neo-liberal. What are you going to say, “it’s ok for me to murder you because I make a lot of money, but it’s not ok for you to murder me because you are a philistine”?
Of course morality always means morality, no matter how you define it. It’s always wrong to murder and steal. Haven’t you read “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker? Or try “What’s Left?” by Nick Cohen.
Needing a subjective interpretation of morality (“it depends what you mean by morality”) means you are amoral.
Anything less is atomistic, solipsistic and anti-social.
Yes it hurts your liberal, bourgeouis worldview that it could possibly be right to constrain individual liberty for the sake of harmonious society, but otherwise life would be brutal and short.
I keep wondering on this website, what exactly are you all working towarsd? Richard Florida keeps mentioning using Creativity to tap the potential of all people, and to harness the economic growth to lift people out of poverty. They are fair goals. But a lot of the other posters and commenters seem to lose track of this and just want to chase the economic growth that the creative class create for its own end.
What kind of world do we want? Do we want creativity to keep on generating wealth so we can consume until we have to eat our own excrement, or do we want a world where “creativity” comes up with answers to economic, social and environmental problems?