A big buzz word in education and self-improvement circles is “creativity.” We’re urged to unlock our creativity through classes and hands-on activities and to encourage the quality in our offspring. Businesses and organizations are told creativity will solve employee dissatisfaction and will improve the bottom line by bringing out innovative ideas.

Stop and consider, however, that the gap between the well-to-do and the middle class grows wider by the day. This inequality is based not infrequently on the types of jobs members of each category hold. Once you have a potful of money, you have flexibility to invest it, save it, loan it, explore for precious metals with it, i.e., become wealthier.

As the curves indicating income diverge more and more, it’s obvious the future doesn’t bode well for the middle class. So what’s the big deal about creativity? Why do we constantly moan we’re not giving people enough time to get creative? The last thing we need is a workforce like that, brimming with innovation and enthusiasm. What jobs are going begging?  In my neighborhood, the signs posted on telephone poles, the listings on the Internet are for unskilled workers, people to fill positions in fast food joints, lawn care, child care, telemarketing.

Let’s stop lying to ourselves. All we need are wage slaves, drones*, who can tolerate mind-numbing routine. In fact the more we can do to dumb people down, so they’re satisfied with tedious jobs, the better off the nation will be. Creativity can only lead to intense dissatisfaction with these jobs and subsequently with the hand-to-mouth existence mandated by them.  So what we should be doing, short of lobotomy to remove the ability to experience dissatisfaction, is crushing the populace until all they can think about is that drink, joint, pill, or sexual experience waiting them after work.

I recently read Anthem by Ayn Rand, a dystopian novella that bears some of the hallmarks of her political philosophy. At a future date, society has regressed and lost technology. People live collectively, and socialist thinking rules every action and decision. Individuality is a punishable crime. Despite these restrictions, the brave hero, a creative fellow, manages to reinvent electricity and breaks free to start his own settlement. That’s the trouble with creativity. Unfortunately those folks with that trait are almost impossible to suppress.

*(To be clear, drones are not, by-and-large, workers; but they loll around and have the ability to reproduce. Sound familiar?)