Creative content of society

The ratio of the level of effort expended by society on activities such as art, philosophy and cosmology – endeavors with no direct practical benefit - to total effort can be characterized as creative content. Since this is a ratio, it can decrease if either the numerator (effort in creative activities) decreases or the denominator (total effort) increases. It may be interesting to measure this over time as this may be a proxy for the evolution of societies.

Early in their history, there is evidence that humans engaged in creative endeavors such as art and story telling. The capacity of the human brain allowed conceptualization and abstraction. As they settled down through agriculture, an era of practicality and good living, the total effort increased dramatically. Although creative efforts also increased, the net effect may have been a decrease in the ratio. Later, industrial revolution allowed societies to lever up, dramatically increasing total effort resulting in a significant reduction in creative content. This trend continued for the past century with increased productivity from application of technology for practical living.  Associated increase in leisure, however, has not been invested in creative endeavors sufficiently, leading to a continuous decline in creative content.

This basic metric may also be studied in subsets such as the rise and fall of cultures and countries. A decrease is creative content beyond a threshold may trigger a long term decline and eventual death in such human systems. Sustainable cultures and countries may need a stable level of creative content, without which they lose perspective and wither away. Technological progress, as measured by efficiency gain and related increase in total available effort, is not a good measure of advancements or sustainability. A more important measure is how much of the available effort is diverted into creative endeavors that nurture the essential aspects of the human system.