As a business person, the difficulties in establishing long-lasting credentials that will lead to a credible reputation at first seems relatively undaunting. You have an idea, you expand upon it and deliver it to the wider World so that they can either embrace it, or reject it wholeheartedly; hopefully, you imagine, they will embrace it.
Enthusiasm is at an all-time high in the early stages; after all who wouldn't want to learn about your idea, or better still, be part of it? So much time and energy has been invested in that dream that it seems incredible that anyone, let alone other business people, would attempt to sabotage it.
However, in business there are many, many others with great ideas. Naturally, you might believe your idea is the best, but likewise everyone else imagines their idea is the more superior. Creativity is a process that requires so much of it's originator that it understandably engenders all-consuming pride and a maternal/paternal instinct that forces us to protect it at any cost. The idea is our child and in it's first faltering steps we are there to guide and save it from harm.
In the world of ruthless dog-eat-dog executives and entrepreneurs, the rules of existence lean heavily towards survival of the fittest. If the scales can be tipped in favour of one idea at the expense of all others it's creator will generally not baulk at the opportunity to do so. It is how businesses - who adopt new strategies & those that cannot adapt - attempt to survive. Their is little or no cooperation with others and any altruism is reserved for self-centred sycophantic progression. Today, sadly, that is the way that many businesses operate...
It is not surprising, therefore, to find the same behaviour manifest in other spheres of human interaction, including the arts.
Today, I read that the price of Damien Hirst artworks have tumbled dramatically, but rather than attempt to understand the reasons behind this phenomena, a number of tabloid hacks, his critics (and others who have nothing invested in him personally on any level) have immediately gone on the attack. 'His work never really was art', they bleat. 'Hirst always was overrated' and 'his art, at best was a cynical manipulation of a market already saturated with similar pointless dross'.
In their attempts to destroy the concept of modern art as imagined by Hirst - undoubtedly, an innovator and inspiring voice for thousands of aspiring artists the World over - they have no idea of what they will unintentionally and inadvertently create. The destructive processes unleashed were not formed as a result of carefully considered critique, but jealous spite borne out of a desire to see the successful creation of another utterly devalued.
It has happened many, many times before and, will continue to do so as long as man remains the so-called dominant species on this planet. Destruction is not the final process however. Perversely annihilation makes way for new life. Destruction enables creation. Already new forces are at work, ready to step into the space that will left void by Hirst's exit from centre stage.
Nature abhors a vacuum...
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