“Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss.” — Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

Most of them never find the right target.

The human mind possesses an overwhelming capacity for creativity that continually overwhelms me. Society, science, technology….humanity…has advanced in directions that were previously unimaginable, nevermind thought impossible. And no doubt it will continue to do so.

You might be tempted to say the various revolutions in the way we live are lives (we’re in the midst of one now!) are the product of a few outstanding thinkers. Superhumans, almost. Maybe. Maybe there are only a few ‘right’ people that happened to be in the right place at the right time.

I don’t think so.

Everyone is a creative. Humanity’s greatest strength is imagination, be it applied to science or art.

However, human society currently isn’t conducive to that.

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” ― Stephen Jay Gould

I believe people having to work to survive is criminal. It’s one of the reasons I support Universal Basic Income. What if people were freed from having to go to jobs they probably hate just to be able to survive…to be able to keep working? What if this insane cycle was broken, via automation or otherwise? What then?

If it were ever allowed to happen, maybe it’d lead to people not knowing what to do with the time they’d suddenly been granted. But I don’t think so.

Life is too short. Too short to experience the world. Too short to create out of those experiences. I think a world freed from the 40+ hour work week would be a happier one. An infinitely more creative one too. Who knows where we (humanity) might go, if we all just had the chance to think about things once in a while.

My inner cynic demands I add a caveat here. In all of the above, think is operative. I’m optimistically speculating. The vision of society I just outlined is highly utopian. But the automation revolution is looking promising. And it has the potential to completely change the way we think about jobs, and with it the face of society.

When inspiration hits, grab it with both hands. Spend your time wisely, for it is limited and irreplaceable. Create. Live.