Why are we here? Why was I created? What'south the purpose of this affair chosen life?

To artists, whose essential purpose is creation, these 1000 questions are felt profoundly — the human status is our stock in merchandise, even if information technology's incredibly privileged to ponder it every bit one's profession. As millions struggle to make enough money to eat, we struggle to make art. This is why every serious artist, at some point, questions: is what I do useful, or relevant to everyone — or is it simply luxurious?

As a artistic writing practitioner and teacher, I wrestle with this constantly.

Beauty, identity, soapbox, documentation, exaltation, or fifty-fifty just exposing a stink does indeed do good humanity. Just when the climate is changing alarmingly, and millions displaced by war are unwelcome in virtually places, and our leaders increasingly justify abusive power, it'south easy to question the value of telling stories or building sculpture. Afterwards all, what does a painting requite to the populace? How can a writer take on a president?

Uncovering larger truths

The answers, perhaps, are found in art itself. One success proves the potential of all the rest.

If you lot recall in 2003, when U.S. Secretarial assistant of State Colin Powell was to deliver to the United Nations a declaration of war against Iraq, the tapestry depicting Pablo Picasso'south Guernica was covered up. It was said that the epitome of the fascist bombardment of civilians was too shameful to face. How could nosotros talk over an unprompted war in front end of ane of history's greatest rebukes to warfare?

The details, however, were apparently more mundane. Camera crews had simply worried most the cluttered background the cubist tapestry would present behind speaking officials. And the number of journalists attending the press conference had swelled, requiring a more than capacious venue downwardly the hall.

Those facts, it is said, were backside why Guernica was censored (and then to speak). Yet the roofing of it, for whatever reason, uncovered a larger truth that resonated around the world. The implicit irony became explicit commentary. Picasso had unveiled the image in 1937, yet 66 years later, and 36 years after his death, the painter was still speaking to united states.

A woman looks at Spanish artist Pablo Picasso's

A adult female looks at Spanish artist Pablo Picasso's

Image: REUTERS/Marta Jara

A affair of words

At New York University'southward campus in Abu Dhabi, where I am a professor of literature and creative writing, 1 of my courses examines books that sought to accomplish what Guernica did. In "Novels That Inverse the Earth," my students wrestle with the few fictions that stretched beyond personal or literary influence and launched revolutions, addressed colonial abuse, improved public policy, forged cultural identity, or challenged repressive dogma. The ten books bridge nearly a century and a half, past writers from around the world, yet, from Uncle Tom's Motel to The Satanic Verses, each shares a vital characteristic.

In 1896, the Filipino national hero Jose Rizal was tried for rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy, for satirizing the abuses of the colonial Castilian friars in a saga that started with his novel, Noli Me Tangere.

Nosotros all know how that turned out — he was executed by firing squad on the eve of the revolution that ousted Kingdom of spain but was later hijacked by America.

In the early 1930s, Erich Maria Remarque's honest condemnation of war, All Quiet on the Western Forepart, resonated around the world — and so much and so that a order-footed, insecure petty human named Joseph Goebbels orchestrated mobs to attack the screenings of the movie-adaptation. Information technology was one of the get-go displays of Nazi thuggery. Thousands angrily fix upon cinemas beyond Germany and Republic of austria, which led to a ban on the film and the novel's burning. Goebbels dubbed such attacks as a "cleansing of the High german spirit." Remarque'south citizenship was eventually revoked and he fled his own country, while the regime pursued its lethal attacks on "non-people."

Nosotros all know how that turned out — millions were killed systematically as a continent was devastated by war.

In 1989, Salman Rushdie published a novel that, he said, criticized "a powerful tribe of clerics" who had "taken over Islam" — the religion of his upbringing. "These are the contemporary Idea Police," Rushdie wrote even before a fatwa was declared past Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, who was irritated at having his past exile satirized — portrayed in the volume every bit an exiled imam aspiring to power. Khomeini condemned the volume as a tool of the "world devourers" with the "entire Zionism and airs behind it"— a "calculated" plot on behalf of "colonialism." Rushdie went into hiding, and those associated with the publication suffered murders, stabbings, shootings, arson, and bombs. This was, according to Khomeini, "then that no one volition cartel to insult the Islamic sanctity."

We all know how that turned out — with many people at present convinced that "free speech is responsible speech," despite the fact that what is supposedly "responsible" volition always be dictated past the powerful.

In my course, my students discovered that each novel on our reading list spoke against the injustices of its fourth dimension, and in doing then highlighted the injustices of today. We found in every volume a stubborn insistence on speaking out.

Everybody enhance their hand

Silence, it is said, implies consent. But that'southward only half the story. Silence besides confirms oppression, because the power to speak out is too often a luxury of the privileged.

The ambitious populism we see today seems to exist a attestation to people refusing to exist silent — and rightly so. Our societies take largely failed to provide as for all, and technology now gives us new avenues through which to to be heard, and with which to rebel against repressive ideas and structures. New leaders have latched onto that and now seek to speak for u.s.a., even though many of them are rallying united states of america crudely around fear and mistrust.

But there is hope where there is life, even such every bit it is now. Because information technology reveals potential. This is where, counterintuitively, literature and creative writing come up in.

In 1969, Lee Kuan Yew, the president of Singapore, famously said: "Poetry is a luxury we cannot afford. What is of import for pupils is not literature, just a philosophy for life." In this, the founding father of that impressive minor nation was wrong. A philosophy for life is precisely what literature teaches us.

You demand simply open up a book, from oldest scripture to contemporary novels. Moses refused to be enslaved, Odysseus spoke truth to power, Atticus Finch did not compromise justice, and Hermione Granger showed the states how things are washed. Plato imagined a just nation, Thomas Paine proved the importance of universal human rights, and John Stuart Factory empowered the individual and revealed the necessity of freedom of expression.

It'south all in that location on paper and in the ether. The self and society, tragedy and triumph, right and wrong, values and ideals — Lee Kuan Yew's philosophies for life are hands accessible through bookshops, libraries, and the internet.

Yet while it's conventional that wisdom exists in literature, artistic writing has always been seen every bit more than rarified or intimidating. It has been celebrated equally personally palliative, yes, but information technology's never been considered a method to increase participation in social club. Later all, what skilful is composing verse and writing stories when y'all need a chore, or a nation must be founded, or a war has to be won, or cancer is ravaging the bodies both human and politic?

But creative writing can exist anyone's best preparation for speaking out — and if yous've e'er read novels, heard scripture, watched movies or TV, listened to songs, or learned folklore, and then you lot've been studying your entire life how storytelling works. Past applying your hand at creating information technology, you lot are not only attempting art, you are learning vital skills and life lessons.

Fiction teaches us about characters and empathy, plot and consequences, and the value of nuance to truth. Poetry teaches us how to distill language, value silence, and sympathize metaphor. Non-fiction (which certainly includes journalism) teaches us accountability to facts, disquisitional thinking well-nigh the systems in order, and the importance of getting out into the world to listen to others. These are only a few of the skills one learns from writing creatively.

Are those life lessons not vital to commonwealth? To take a voice is to take a vote. To have a vote is to exist represented in order. To represent ourselves conspicuously and confidently empowers us citizens to air our own concerns and our customs'south grievances, to be accountable for ourselves, and to demand the accountability of our leaders. If we are not trained to articulate our arguments properly, we will never be heard legitimately, and nosotros tin can be ignored too conveniently.

Speaking of democracy

My own philosophy for life comes from the art of storytelling. I persevere in participating publicly in a hostile earth past knowing that expert always outweighs evil. This seemingly naive notion is proven by the stories every despot or mass murderer must tell of themselves.

Adolf Hitler, for example, was convinced of his righteousness; he loved his canis familiaris Blondi, was proud of his country, and idea noble ends justified his violent means. Similarly, the terrorists who flew airplanes into the Globe Merchandise Centre on September 11, 2001, did so for a celebrity they believed was far greater than themselves; they must have thought they were heroically righting a historic wrong. The notion of skilful always prevails, even in warped minds that are objectively proven to exist evil.

What's perilous, however, is when such corrupted stories are believed past others. In the Philippines, where I am from, a subtle war is taking place — one of narrative; righteousness is its abiding theme.

The dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who stole billions of dollars and denied democracy for more than than a decade, is having his story posthumously recast by his children and their allies who benefit from his undemocratic legacy. Faux news sites and online propagandists are being recruited by the powers that be to undermine human rights, due process, and the checks and balances required for democracy — that system that even so remains our best grade towards equality and the only method to ensure the bloodless removal of leaders who may plough calumniating.

History, it'southward said, is written past the victors, and in so being it all but guarantees that they remain the victors. This is why information technology's estimated that some 80% of our higher elected offices in the Philippines remain in the hands of dynasties — which are family unit businesses that will always present a conflict of interest between kin and country. The story is theirs to tell.

This is why I write for newspapers, write novels, and teach creative writing. I encounter information technology equally the long game — a dialogue with the subsequent generations who will hopefully larn from our mistakes of the by. However sometimes it feels that our leaders are and so entrenched that an creative person's merely recourse is to have the last word — to be brutally honest and mocking in judgment in works that we hope will outlast even the statuary statues these leaders erect to themselves. Simply in that location'south defeat in even that; in the Philippines nosotros'd call that konswelo de bobo — the consolation of the stupid. The terminal word may be consolingly and powerfully terminal, only it's even so retroactive.

What would be proactive is helping others develop strong voices then that nosotros citizens are no longer just arguing fallaciously on Facebook and Twitter over the daily outrage, while unsatisfactory leaders ride our division towards the next election.

The antidote to impunity is accountability. Nosotros all know that. But accountability can only be demanded if our voices have effect. A lone voice, or the voices of the educated elite, cannot legitimately speak for the voiceless, then cannot be truly consequential. If a voice is a vote, then they must be raised, every bit a majority, in enervating truer representation and improve leadership.

Then there is conspicuously work to be done. Not all fine art must be inclusive, but no fine art should be sectional. Neither literature nor creative writing must e'er be privileged equally a luxury, for our story volition be too hands controlled that way. And while art itself might not alter the world, it'due south abundantly clear that information technology can empower those who volition.