#creative philosophy

There’s a consistent trend I keep seeing: people are terrified of being replaced. Not by other humans, not by shifting markets, but by AI. And every time I see someone panic about it, I can’t help thinking — hun, the only people who want to replace humans are the ultra‑wealthy. The 1% who benefit from cutting labor costs, speeding up production, and squeezing profit out of every possible corner.

Everyone else — the 99% — will consume both AI‑generated content and human‑made content without a second thought. People already do this with everything else: ebooks and print books, digital art and traditional art, indie films and blockbuster movies, fanfiction and published novels. Most consumers don’t care about the purity of the medium. They care about whether the story resonates, whether the art moves them, or if the content fits their mood.

So why do people keep blaming AI?

Because blaming AI is easier than blaming capitalism.

If someone says “AI is replacing us,” they get sympathy and a clear villain. If they say “capitalism is replacing us,” they have to confront the fact that the same system they rely on to make money is the one harming them. That’s uncomfortable. It forces people to acknowledge that the creative economy was already brutal long before AI showed up.

And here’s the part nobody wants to admit: A lot of creators aren’t just afraid of losing the act of creating. They’re afraid of losing the chance at upward class mobility.

People want the fruit, the prestige, the best‑selling novel, the movie adaptation, the award, the recognition, the financial stability that comes from being one of the “chosen” few. They want to climb the ladder. And they want to be part of the creative elite. That's a mouthful to spew out. But tell me if this is not true. Let's be honest about this.

AI threatens the pathway to all that I mentioned — not the ability to create.

That’s why the fear feels so intense. It’s not just about art. It’s about class.

The truth is that the creative industry has always been shaped by capitalism. Most actors aren’t wealthy. Most musicians aren’t wealthy. And definitely most writers aren’t wealthy. Success has always been inconsistent, unpredictable, and tied to systems that reward profit over passion. AI didn’t create that reality — it just exposed it.

Meanwhile, the 99% will continue consuming whatever they enjoy, whether it’s human‑made or AI‑generated. They’re not trying to replace anyone. They’re just living their lives.

The replacement pressure comes from the top, not the bottom.

So when people say they’re afraid of AI, what they’re really afraid of is losing their shot at climbing the class ladder through creativity. They’re afraid of losing the dream of being chosen. And they’re definitely afraid of losing the illusion of a fair path upward.

But blaming AI won’t fix the system. Blaming won’t change the economics of art. And it won’t make the creative industry any less brutal.

If anything, it distracts from the real issue: We live in a system where creators have always had to fight for space, recognition, and the means to survival.

And that’s why I keep writing. Not because I expect prestige or to bear fruit. But because the act of creating is the part I can control, and the part that still matters, no matter how the world changes.

The philosophy of Imagism is grounded in clarity, precision, and directness in both thought and expression. Originating in early 20th-century poetry, Imagism was a literary movement that rejected the ornate and sentimental style of Victorian poetry in favor of clear, sharp imagery and economy of language. Philosophically, Imagism can be understood as a response to the changing perceptions of truth, language, and beauty in modernity.

Core Philosophical Principles of Imagism:

1. Direct Treatment of the “Thing”

Imagists believed that a poem should present an object, emotion, or scene without unnecessary abstraction or embellishment. This reflects a philosophical commitment to phenomenological clarity—capturing experience as it is perceived, not mediated by convention or vague generalities.

2. Precision and Economy of Language

Imagists strove for linguistic minimalism, where every word earned its place. This economy reflects an anti-rhetorical stance, opposing the idea that more words equal more meaning. In this way, it shares ground with analytic philosophy and logical positivism, which also value precision and clarity in language.

3. Image as Epiphany

The image in Imagism is not merely descriptive—it is revelatory. A single image, rendered cleanly and truthfully, can convey complex emotions and insights. This approach resonates with Zen philosophy, where truth is often transmitted through the immediate and the concrete.

4. Rejection of Traditional Forms

Imagists often broke away from strict meter and rhyme, favoring free verse that matched the natural rhythm of thought and speech. This rebellion mirrors a broader modernist critique of tradition, questioning inherited structures in both art and life.

5. Sensory Experience as Truth

Imagism’s reliance on visual and sensory imagery places it close to empiricism, the philosophical view that knowledge arises from sensory experience. The image becomes a primary unit of meaning, conveying truth without requiring conceptual explanation.

Philosophical Influences and Parallels:

Ezra Pound (a key Imagist) was influenced by Chinese and Japanese poetry, especially haiku, which share a focus on simplicity and immediacy.

T.E. Hulme, another foundational figure, drew on Bergson’s philosophy of intuition, arguing that art should convey the essence of experience, not abstract ideas.

Symbolist poetry and phenomenology are also close cousins to Imagism in their emphasis on perception and inner experience.

Summary:

Demand proof. Ask for explanations. Stand at the door of knowledge, banging loud enough to wake the neighbors because you want to learn. Don’t leave that door until wisdom sleepily lets you in. Thank him for his time. Ask him about everything. Come back again and again until it makes sense.

Make time for the things that matter to you. And make time for the things that matter to him too. He’s up anyway, let him put in a few of his own interests.

Struggle with doubts.

Wrestle with them in the thick fog of confusion. Memorize what they look like, what they feel like, what they sound like. Explore every possible side. Invite them into your home, sit them down in that chair in your mind that you don’t ever sit in because it makes you uncomfortable, and make them squirm. Don’t let those doubts go until you find the truth.

Doubt is like an aluminum foil ball. As you search and prod and question, it will start to smooth out until its sides are smooth. You’ll find a reflection of yourself in it. You won’t like it. Keep going anyway.

Never stop questioning.

When people push you away for your “nosiness” or your “intimidating stare” or the way your face looks when your earnestly seeking truth, march out of the room and straight up to the library doors. Don’t just get other people to do all of the searching and all of the answering. Go and find it for yourself.

Pour over books from every author and topic you can think of. They will tell you things you don’t like, ugly things, words that shoot right into the heart of your soul. Resist the urge to slam the covers closed, to spew accusations at the invisible authors. Remember you did ask for truth. Understand it will be difficult.

Keep going.

Keep searching. Keeping fighting until you find yourself standing in an empty room, the shelves now rid of every idea. It’s only you now—you and your wandering mind. This is where you make your decision. This is where you decide what is true. This is the part where you must decide who you are and which voices in the world you will believe. But this is not the most important part.

Those days you spent searching, shouting, debating, finding. Those were the days that mattered most. You looked contradictions in the eye and said “truth is in here somewhere.” You pulled apart paradoxes and weighed them against that voice in your soul urging you, urging you to keep going. You woke up day after day and didn’t stop asking. You sought advice. You sought truth. And you sought those through every single path you could think of. No Stone was left unturned, no book unread, no philosophy unconsidered, no belief unexplored. You didn’t stop when you got tired or frustrated. No, you kept going, never pausing at the “nice” and the “almost right” and the “good enough,” but instead tucked those bits into your pocket and kept going.

This post concludes my week of curation! I hope you enjoyed these blogs as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them-- you can find more of my work on instagram @athena.naylor, or here on tumblr at athenanaylor.tumblr.com. Thanks to Our Comics Ourselves for having me, and enjoy this post on Lynda Barry!

-Athena

“What It Is” is the first book by Lynda Barry that I ever owned, and it messed with my head in the best possible way.

How does one even categorize this book? It’s certainly not a straightforward comic or graphic narrative, though Barry intersperses autobiographical comics throughout the text.

“What It Is” claims from it’s subtitle “Do You Wish You Could Write?” to be a kind of guidebook for writers, and it is true that the reader can find exercises and writing prompts at the back of the book. But as a whole, this work more accurately represents a  creative manifesto, a philosophy text composed of dense collages and thought-provoking questions.

Reading this book for the first time forced me to reinvent what the act of “reading” meant. How does one approach one of these collaged pages? Barry certainly composes this book so that the reader’s agency is at the forefront-- there’s not really a “wrong” way to engage with the work. For myself, I found that I had to ingest this book slowly-- each page felt like it forced me to practice being present, to be a “close reader” of images. Which makes sense, since the entirety of “What It Is” attempts to answer the question “What is an image?”

“What It Is” reflects Barry’s commitment to engendering creativity in people at all levels. The autobiographical comics scattered throughout trace her own relationship to her creative practice from the time she was a child to the present day. It would be fair to say this book is the first of a series that connects closely to her current status as a professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where she teaches comics and participates in research about the psychology of creativity-- particularly how hand-drawing and hand-writing information impacts how we interpret and remember it-- and how different disciplines incorporate images into their practice. 

Other books that Barry has produced in the same strain as “What It Is” include “Picture This” and “Syllabus,” the latter of which documents her experiences teaching at UW Madison. But “What It Is” definitely remains my favorite of these three in how it tackles the abstract questions that confront why creativity is so necessary to the human experience.

I don’t know if I can answer precisely what a memory is or how it works, or where a story resides before it manifests in a physical translation, or even if I know what in fact an image is. But I definitely feel the better for taking the time to contemplate the question, and I have Lynda Barry to thank for that.

… so I said, make a concerted effort to drink lots of water, that way if you have any bladder leakage, you won’t smell like pee. The one night I didn’t close my curtains and was getting a good night, I woke up to flashing lights on my wall; there was an accident on the highway, and about four cop cars were out there. My vertigo is back, and I’m wondering if it’s due to my sleeplessness or the…

On the back page of the first issue of Hanna-Barbera's then-house organ, The Exposure Sheet (July 1967), Bill and Joe used the occasion to explain their philosophy about flicktoon production. In concluding, the pair made this somewhat astute observation:

We often wonder where the thin line between real and unreal is drawn, and by whom....

(N.B. To see a larger version, click or tap on the image)

Within a few years, of course, network and activist pressure would send 3400 Cahuenga into a state of aseptic sterility creatively and production-wise, with a predictable sort of blandness ensuing. Yet Your Humble Narrator, for the sake of this blog, seeks to strive for bringing forth the full whimsically-driven potential of many among the more light-hearted Funtastic-type characters, especially for the sort as came along from about the early 1970's on--the sort as tended to be more predictably-driven. Not unlike John O' London's Weekly in a way.

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