Hidden power of artistic minds

Get in creative flow to deal tyranny a blow

- FRANCIS O'NEILL

IN 2020, the British government released a photograph of a ballet dancer with the caption 'Fatima's next job could be in cyber (she just doesn't know it yet)' followed by the slogan 'Rethink. Reboot.

Reskill.' This image seemed to clarify the intention of the state to drive those working in the arts into more prosaic occupations.

Lockdowns could not have been designed much better as a way of acheiving this aim.

In the UK, company employees received furlough that paid 80 per cent of their wages, but the self-employed (including many artists) received 80 per cent of their profits only.

These self-employed were asked to cover all their professional and personal expenses with less than their often meagre profits.

Those arts courses that did not fold moved to a much more unsatisfactory position, online.

It is clear that totalitarianism does not favour independent thought. George Bush Jnr made this clear when he stated: "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists." David Cameron referred to those who questioned government narratives as 'nonviolent extremists', conflating them with terrorists. More recently, London mayor Sadiq Khan labelled anti-ULEZ (ultra low emission zone) demonstrators as extreme when he denounced them as 'far right'.

The desire to eradicate independent thought was elucidated by World Economic Forum spokesman Yuval Noah Harari when he spoke of a "new era in which humans are now hackable animals... (and) the whole idea that humans have... this soul or spirit and they have free will... that's over." I previously questioned whether the general public's failure to recognise the authoritarian agenda could be related to a failure to cultivate creativity and imagination, due to narrow parameters of education and passive entertainment.