Creativity and Power

[jbseth]

Hi All,

I came across the following from Seth on Creativity and Power.  It's interesting what Seth has to say here, including how we think about these two words.


NOME, Ch 7, S853:

I want to make a few comments. Generally speaking, creativity has feminine connotations in your society, while power has masculine connotations, and is largely thought of as destructive.

Your scientists are, generally now, intellectually oriented, believing in reason above the intuitions, taking it for granted that those qualities are opposites. They cannot imagine (pause) life's "initial" creative source, for in their terms it would remind them of creativity's feminine basis.

In the framework of this discussion only, you have a male's universe. It is a universe endowed with male characteristics as these appear in the male-female orientations of your history. The universe seems to have no meaning because the male "intellect" alone cannot discern meaning, since it must take nothing for granted. Even though certain characteristics of the universe are most apparent, they must be ignored.

(Pause.) You must understand, I know, that the terms "male" and "female" here are being used as they are generally understood, and have nothing to do with the basic characteristics of either sex. In those terms, the male-oriented intellect wants to order the universe, name its parts, and so forth. It wants to ignore the creative aspects of the universe, however, which are everywhere apparent, and it first of all believes that it must divorce itself from any evidence of feeling. You have in your history then a male god of power and vengeance, who killed your enemies for you. You have a prejudiced god, who will, for example, slay the Egyptians and half of the Jews to retaliate against previous Egyptian cruelty. The male god is a god of power. He is not a god of creativity.

Now, creativity has always been the species' closest connection with its own source, with the nature of its own being. Through creativity the species senses All That Is. Creativity goes by a different set of rules, however. It defies categories, and it insists upon the evidence of feeling. It is a source of revelation and inspiration — yet initially revelation and inspiration do not deal with power, but with knowing. So what often happens in your society when men and women have creative bents, and good minds to boot?

(10:03.) The Catholic Church taught that revelation was dangerous. Intellectual and psychic obedience was much the safer road, and even the saints were slightly suspect. Women were inferiors, and in matters of religion and philosophy most of all, for there their creativity could be most disruptive. Women were considered hysterics, aliens to the world of intellectual thought, swayed instead by incomprehensible womanish emotions. Women were to be handled by wearing down their energies through childbirth.




NOME, Ch 8, S857:

(Pause at 10:28.) "Power is natural. It is the force, the power of the muscle to move, or the eye to see, of the mind to think, the power of the emotions — these represent true power, and no accumulation of wealth or acclaim can substitute for that natural sense of power if it is lacking. Power always rests with the individual,..."


-jbseth

[Sena]

Women were to be handled by wearing down their energies through childbirth.

jbseth, thanks for the above quote. The official teaching of the Catholic Church still prohibits contraception, although most Catholics now ignore that teaching.