A morally indifferent creative current drives humans to make total artworks

Evidence

It was not only despair but hope and inspiration—the Hauptstrom—that had gotten people out to the communes, and it was the same Hauptstrom that left behind the stories, the architecture, the art, and the ideas. This electrical current, which Szeemann once described as a “joyfully grasped, albeit pre-Freudian energy unit that doesn’t give a damn whether it is expressed or can be applied in a socially negative, positive, harmful or useful way,” runs throughout history, throwing off new forms each time. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 209

Categorization

• SEED: The Hauptstrom as amoral, non-instrumental creative energy running through history could anchor an essay on what drives commune and craft impulses that resist productivity’s logic.
• XREF: connects to: Creative workers stay morally disconnected by avoiding evidence of their work’s harm; Moral and political engagement can drain the creative source that justified it — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 493; Art achieves objective revelation through subjective effort only at the cost of illusoriness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2742 (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Creative workers stay morally disconnected by avoiding evidence of their work’s harm; Moral and political engagement can drain the creative source that justified it — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 493; Art achieves objective revelation through subjective effort only at the cost of illusoriness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2742 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Moral and political engagement can drain the creative source that justified it #complicates (0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 493
• Capitalist commodification displaces the aesthetic value of art #complicates (0.77) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 69
• Mechanical reproduction of beauty destroys the unconscious idolatry that made beauty vital #complicates (0.75)