Jordan Peterson is Right: Creative People Are Cursed

It can be tough to survive, never mind thrive

I watched a great video by the Canadian academic, psychologist, and YouTube personality Jordan Peterson where he argues that having a creative mind is actually more of a burden than a benefit.

This runs against the conventional view that creatives have a big advantage over others in modern society. I’ve been involved in creative pursuits and moved in creative circles for over forty years and my experience tells me that Peterson is correct.

A Controversial Figure

Jordan Peterson is a controversial figure, of course. There are many people whose blood boils at the mere mention of his name. He’s perceived by some to be a leader figure for angry, alt-right, incel-types. There’s little doubt that he’s become a lightning rod in the “culture war” and has strongly opinionated fans and detractors.

Although he certainly leans rightwards on many issues and I tend to lean the other way, I don’t see him as a simplistic conservative. Having read and watched Peterson, I see him as a more complex and interesting character than the caricature of him that’s sometimes presented. He’s worthy of being taken seriously, regardless of whether I agree with him on every issue or not.

Despite his writing career as a best-selling self-help guru, he’s certainly experienced his own share of challenges. In recent years, he’s been in the news regarding his battles with depression and his descent into prescription drug addiction following his wife’s cancer diagnosis.

The Basis of Peterson’s Argument

Peterson’s argument regarding creativity begins with him establishing that not everyone has a creative mind. He dispels the trite idea that “everyone is creative” and instead identifies the true creatives are distinguishable as a psychological type.

According to Peterson, people with creative brains are different because they are driven to invent, to have novel esthetic experiences, visit museums, listen to non-mainstream music, watch movies, read fiction and poetry. If they don’t realize their motivations, they feel unfulfilled and unhappy.

Peterson acknowledges that the creative traits do have the effect of opening up new avenues of thought and experience for people and are life-enriching. However, the big problem comes with monetizing the creative drive.

Creativity in the Commercial World

You have to be super smart to have any chance of being successful as a creative, Peterson argues. You have to push further than previous people have done previously in order to come up with something that’s new, interesting, and unique.

Creating an original product and then making a profit from it is high risk/high return. While a small number will succeed spectacularly, the overwhelming majority will fail.

“If you make a good creative product, you’ve probably solved about 5% of your problem. Because then you have marketing, which is insanely difficult, and then you have sales, and then you have customer support, and then you have to build an organization… And if it’s really novel, you have to tell people what the hell this thing is!”

Jordan Peterson

What’s perhaps even worse, Peterson argues, is that you have to raise money and that often means borrowing from friends and family and exposing them to financial risk. Even if your idea is exceptional, the odds of commercial prosperity are still small.

Any investors that you find will typically want a substantial chunk of any profits, as well as a degree of control. In the rare cases where the idea turns out to be successful, the original creator can easily become sidelined by the business people and still not make much money.

The Arts

The problems are just as challenging in the world of the arts. While digital technology has made it much easier for creative people to produce media and get their work out there, the competition faced has risen exponentially.

The sheer volume of media that’s accessible has also reduced the earning potential in many cases. Making money through creating music, for example, has become tough even for many established artists, never mind newer faces, with the arrival of audio and video streaming services.

In pretty much all branches of the arts, the chances of fame and financial success are slim and the probability of failure is high. It’s like a lottery: while there are certainly some big winners, there are many more losers.

The prospect of one day gaining big, combined with the innate desire to create, is what keeps many people going; plus, of course, creatives usually enjoy what they’re doing. The problems are usually financial and revolve around keeping body and soul together.

Jordan Peterson’s advice for wannabe novelists, song writers, painters and poets is to establish a solid way of earning money and then try to parse off some time for creative pursuits. Sensible advice, but not necessarily what many creatives are inclined to do in practice.

My Own Experience

Events from my own life have led me to reach similar conclusions to Peterson regarding the relative benefits of being creative. While it does open up your life to many wonderful experiences, it also provides a person with a lot of practical struggles that can be difficult to resolve.

While I’ve known a handful of creatives who’ve experienced spectacular success, I’ve known hundreds who’ve found it difficult to earn enough to live comfortably while pursuing their creative goals. It’s a challenge that just doesn’t present itself for non-creative people.

When I was a teenager, I fell in love with music and all I wanted to do was to make a living from playing in a band. Over the years, I discovered was how difficult that can be in practice, especially if you want to create your own, original music. You face a lot competition, some of it very high quality, and even the most talented usually fail.

Since then, I’ve engaged in writing fiction, poetry, and other pursuits. Whenever I’ve run with my creative side, I’ve been happier in some ways, but it’s always a strain to maintain a reasonable and reliable source of income.

The Misery of the Non-Creative Life

When I reached my mid-thirties, I became disillusioned with my Bohemian lifestyle and decided to seek out a more stable and comfortable life.

Consequently, I found myself undertaking a series of full-time jobs where I was doing very little that was creative. The combination of time constraints and tiredness meant that I was unable to achieve much that was creative outside of my work time either.

Although the jobs provided me with a steady income and an easier life, they made me miserable. I needed some creative expression to feel alive.

Inner Conflict

In some ways, my entire adult life feels like it’s been a battle between earning enough to keep a roof over my head and keeping my creative instincts happy. Some people are very lucky and can find a career that supplies both, but I believe that there are many like me who struggle.

I know a number of uncompromising creative people who give a 100% to their projects and just deal with any stresses rising from insecure housing, healthcare, and just the general costs of living, such as food and utilities, as occupational hazards. It’s certainly not easy to live like this, though, especially as you get older.

I think that most creative people end up either settling for some sort of compromise between creativity and practicality, or they just give up on being creative altogether, which is sad.

Conclusion

Perhaps, in some ways, there’s really nothing new in what Jordan Peterson is saying. Creative people have struggled to survive for centuries, often relying on the patronage of aristocrats, the wealthy and the church to carry out their enterprises.

This situation changed when capitalism, the industrial period and mass production arrived, but I’m not sure that things got better for most creative people. It spawned the world we live in today, where a small number do very well, but the vast majority struggle or fail.

Creativity is a positive thing for society overall, but those wider benefits rarely deliver a comfortable life for the individual creator.