z

Young Writers Society



The Creativity Epidemic

by InfiniteRectangles


There has been a creativity epidemic spreading through the country for years, affecting everything in its path, from clothes to architecture. There are even campaigns to include the arts in the educational system (as if kids are not annoying enough already). The artists are taking over our country and I, for one, am outraged. In order for a country to function well and intelligently, it needs order and structure, not colors or music or dance. So, for those of you who are tired of creativity getting in the way of true intelligence, I have created a set of methods to get rid of these pesky artists once and for all.

First, we could ban color. Color sparks creativity, so banning it will make it harder for artists to find inspiration. All of the buildings could be simple, grey structures with no decorations to distract the mind from more important matters, such as improving education. Clothes could all look the same as well. And to fix the problem of seeing colors in the environment, we could simply remove the part of the brain that sees colors. Or, better yet, we could just make everyone blind to eliminate paintings, drawings, and other forms of traditional art as well as colors.

Next, we could ban dancing. Have you ever observed someone dancing? It is ridiculous and there is no logic in it. Although many may argue that it is an expression of one’s self, and it makes a good workout, there are much easier ways to do that. If you want exercise, go out for a run; it is easier than dancing and you will look less ridiculous. And why would anyone want to “express themselves”? You are irrelevant. It is your intelligence that matters to us. Anyone who breaks the “no dancing” rule could be paralyzed to prevent them from ever dancing again.

Next, we could ban the very thing that inspires dancing: music. I simply do not understand why people enjoy music. It is noisy and irrelevant. There is simply no need for music, so why have it? All it does is create more noise in an already loud world and inspire people to “stand out”, which is completely idiotic. Children and teenagers would become more obedient if they did not have musicians brainwashing them into thinking that they should be different and rebel against the things they do not like. Also, they would be much more focused on their education without the distractions of music.

You may be thinking, “How can we get rid of music entirely if almost any sound can be made into music?” Well, I have the solution: simply make everyone deaf. If everyone is deaf, then no one could make music, and if they did, no one would be able to hear it. And since no one would be able to hear anything, the brain would eventually forget sound and music, leaving more room for education.

Once the many distractions of art are eliminated, we could use the senses we have left to focus on becoming a more orderly and intelligent nation. Of course, that may be difficult considering everyone would be blind, deaf, and possibly paralyzed, but no matter. A truly strong nation would be able to overcome these small inconveniences and it would prove our intelligence and strong will to other nations. And possibly, when they see how effective this plan has worked for us, they will adopt these methods into their justice systems. The whole world would be run by vegetables, but at least we would be smart vegetables.


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Sat Dec 26, 2015 7:00 pm
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Meerkat wrote a review...



Hello InfiniteRectangles. This is my first review, so please forgive me if I make any mistakes. I enjoyed your work very much!

Satire has always been one of my favorite methods of conveying humor, and I believe you have executed it very well. The tone of the writer of the passage was passionate and zealous, but with such a ridiculous train of logic that it contrasted well with their "sensible" point.

It is interesting to imagine a world in which there is no creativity. Blindness, deafness, and paralysis being only "small inconveniences" was a nice complement to the bizarre logic of the story.

The narrator displays a crazy mindset that I think is very representative of the way people claim to have solutions to problems they do not understand. You developed their near-insane ideas quite well, which, together with their complete lack of self-awareness or knowledge of consequences, made for a very entertaining read.

One small criticism I had is that the story may need some more examples of precisely how a creativity-free country would lead to the betterment of the people, other than a lack of distractions. There would be no more homeless street musicians or starving artists, for instance, or perhaps school kids would perform better without art, music, and sports cluttering up their day ("Won't somebody please think of the children!").

In all, this story was very well-written, and enjoyably humorous. I hope to read more of your writing in the future!

In an unrelated note, your third paragraph made me start humming the theme from "Footloose." It is now stuck in my head, thank you very much.
:)






Thank you for the review, and for your first one, this is very good! You're a natural at this! :3



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Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:01 pm
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Authorian wrote a review...



Authorian here for a review~~

Excellent work! I got the sense that whoever was writing this was serious about it, which I'm sure, as a writer, wasn't overly easy for you to do.

I loved how I slowly got the sense that what they were suggesting was stupid and insane. Of course, from the very beginning, I disagreed. But I slowly got more against the whole idea as it went on. From banning color to performing surgery to remove color from our brains to just going blind? What an idea! And then finally boiling down to everyone being vegetables.

It was awesome how it was all to draw attention to the fact that humans breath in and out creativity in our daily lives. It's everywhere, uncontainable, uncontrollable. It's beauty and darkness and life and death. It's what inspires us to keep living, even when times are tough. It was an awesome reminder of how powerful us writers are through creativity.

It's also very cool how it gets you thinking of what you would be without creativity. I mean, even if you could see you could overlook the colors. Even when you can hear you can ignore the music. And even if you can move, you can still not dance.

As humans I feel like sometimes we forget to be free. I wish everyone could read this. Cause it also makes me want to sing and dance and create art because I want to defy this narrator.

And lastly, it interests me that some people would and do agree with this person. I doubt so strongly as to go as far as this person suggests, but there are plenty of people who dislike art and music and dance as it does, in fact, 'distract from education'.

This piece got me thinking a lot, basically. And I love how it can be taken so many ways! Or should I say, so many different messages come from it.

Thanks for giving me so much inspiration and food for thought!

Best regards,

Authorian~




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Fri Dec 25, 2015 2:44 am
Lightsong says...



Definiteleh agreh with dis.




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Wed Dec 23, 2015 7:54 am
emarko2 wrote a review...



The short story has a great moral reasoning behind it.
I feel that the message was very opionated.
I think the author needs to be a little more sensative to creative people because it will offend them. The world needs to focus on important issues not what what famous footwear is fashionable and the colorful Christmas trees and who has the best light displays.






Do you even know what satire is? It's SUPPOSED to be opinionated and occasionally come across as offensive lol The point of satire is to prove your point by making a joke out of the other side's argument.



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Wed Dec 23, 2015 3:48 am
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FeatherPen says...



Great price of writing! Of course, that may be difficult considering everyone would be blind, deaf, and possible paralyzed, but no matter. possible = possibly. the only fault I could find






Thank you! I will fix that right away!



FerranWright says...


You%u2019re welcome and thankyou for the follow. I%u2019ve been reading your other work, I particularly like 'On Stage' and might shortly drop by to review it.



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Wed Dec 23, 2015 1:48 am
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hermione315 wrote a review...



Hi! Hermione here for a review.

I enjoyed reading this. I especially liked how the narrator's ridiculous ideas for banning music, art, and dancing led to the human race becoming vegetables. Your message was effectively delivered, which is important for any good piece of satire.

It was pretty hard for me to come up with any constructive criticism to give you on this. It was really good! The one piece of advice I could come up with is that I think you could have added more examples for why creativity is dangerous for society. You hammered the point that it would leave more room for education, but I think it would have been in your narrator's character to complain about how the arts inspire emotion and "all the dangerous things it leads to". You could have further talked about how intelligence trumps emotion and why having strong emotions are bad for society. That's just my opinion though.

Since you did so well on this, I think you should continue writing satire. This was truly wonderful, especially for it being your first of its style. Good job, and keep writing! :)






Thank you for the review! ^-^



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Wed Dec 23, 2015 1:04 am
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felistia wrote a review...



Hi InfiniteRectangles, Felistia here with the review you requested.
Firstly I can't believe no on has reviewed you yet or given you more likes than you already have. Okay now one with the review. :D

Story: I have never read a satire before, so thank you for giving me a wonderful read. I have decided that I really like satires. So the over all story is pretty straight forward, where you take each individual thing that represents art and write a good amount of each topic. I really like the end part about the smart vegetables, it had me shaking my head and laughing at the madness of the idea.

Characters: The only really characters in here would be the narrator and art. I love that the narrator sounds like some take over the world and turn everyone into robots sort of person and the way he (I am guessing its a he) deals with the problem that art represents is hilariously funny and kind of mad. I like the way you represent art. Instead of just saying art you separate it into different things like dancing, painting and music though I think you forgot the art of working with you hands like pottery, wood work or jewellery.

Description: This story isn't really the type where you will find a lot of description, because it doesn't really allow for much. You still put in enough that I had a firm picture in my mind though, so well done.

Over all I really loved this short story and I really hope that you will write more satires in the future. Never stop writing and I hope you have a great day\night.






Thanks so much for your review! ^-^



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Wed Dec 23, 2015 12:12 am
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Down with creativity! Long live smart veggies!




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Tue Dec 22, 2015 11:55 pm
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FallWolf says...



Okay, this isn't anything really important but I just wanted to say, I started reading this and I immediately thought "High Priest Julius from The Unwanteds has started taking over our world!"

XD It doesn't actually have much to do with the series Unwanteds, I just though that was hilarious, and the satire takes on a whole new meaning when you've read that series =P




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Tue Dec 22, 2015 10:01 pm
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Codayy says...



If anybody comments without seeing it's satire I will laugh






Haha yes, there is always that one guy that takes everything a bit too seriously XD




"It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be."
— Albus Dumbledore