Create, in the Age of Crisis
Sluggishness is always worse than crisis.
I feel that experiencing an economic recession cycle when young is not necessarily a bad thing. Recession can expose structures that were previously obscured under the surface, providing opportunities for us to observe and even touch them. Moreover, only by immersing ourselves deeply can we gain profound insights that pierce to the bone. Treading water and lying flat may seem wise, but the cost is that one becomes a bystander at historical turning points.
Apart from economic cycles and geopolitical shifts, many hazardous factors are still accumulating - ecological challenges concealed in public instead of private spaces, and the upheavals that technological leaps have brought to human civilization as a whole.
Like the labyrinth of black orbs encircling the Earth that slowly emit toxic gases in Simon Stålenhag's The Labyrinth, they threaten to dim the sunlight until no tree can bloom one summer.
This is the cultural crisis brewing in my mind - I see strong parallels with the existentialist tide in Western Europe after WWII, when the youth sought to unite and combat nihilism with ardent humanism, rebuilding consensus amidst rubble.
The pressure of peers has morphed into the pressure of an infinitely evolving technological civilization. To me, creation is the means of saving myself in this age of crisis.
Creation signifies the realization of imagination. Creation, once you believe in it, contains the power to transcend dimensional and disciplinary boundaries - when rendered in words, it unifies literature and physics. For they both originate from a higher-dimensional, harmonious world where the dichotomy between empirical and conceptual does not exist, only a blending of reality and fantasy. I think this approaches the state of "unity between heaven and man".
It is this opportunity that prevents creations in the age of crisis from being merely accommodations of hardship. Creators in the age of crisis must be encyclopedic. Crisis provides reasons to discover alternative perspectives, keeps us clear-headed, and gives non-conformist thinkers the chance to take the stage. This inclusiveness makes crisis a valuable experience. This meditative, introspective experience can only bring transcendence if we recognize that this is an age of crisis, and create within it with determination and wisdom. The age of crisis signifies the passing of the old order, a chaotic transition toward new structures. In chaos, creation is the only way to bid farewell to nothingness. However small, for in the infinitesimal resides the infinite.
The infinitesimal contains the infinite. This line gifted from an admired senior always struck me as profound yet lacked personal resonance until now. But I believe it fully encapsulates the meaning behind my title - creations in the age of crisis.
It should also include the spirit of Wang Shuo when he brazenly claimed that "no one can teach me" in his sophomore year, and Bjarke Ingel's "Yes is more" and "Formgiving".
Though seemingly mild and waveless on the surface, such tranquility contains the energy for dramatic change.
Sluggishness is always worse than crisis.
08/04/2023