#creative stagnation

This blog explores how modern entertainment shifted from storytelling to engagement, analyzing how algorithms, outrage, and audience behavior turned creativity into a predictable, self-repeating system.

Though the Order gave the appearance of strength, the absence of creativity within its ranks, except in some fields of scholarship, indicates a degree of stagnation in the departments of its life. […] fruitless controversies absorbed the energy of able theologians who might very well have turned creatively to the problems posed by the Enlightenment. In the spirit of Thomas, they might have sifted out the positive elements and harnessed the intellectual, social, and political insights of the rationalistic philosophies for the salvation of men and the good of the Church. The religious life, closely regulated by the Holy See, manifested no incentive, and, indeed, no awareness that it might be profitable, to explore whether might not be new ways more in keeping with human dignity, of living the consecrated life. The men of the age could see no need of this, as the present age was unable to see it until the winds of Vatican II began to blow. The Order suffered from the malaise that gripped the whole Catholic body and was shackled, like the Church herself, by the liberal monarchs of the day. The eighteenth century was more concerned with the defence and preservation of old things than with the development of new ones. Soon, much of the old would be swept away violently.

I've spent over a decade shaping words for others.