Why are we here? Why was I created? What's the purpose of this thing chosen life?

To artists, whose essential purpose is creation, these grand questions are felt profoundly — the human being condition is our stock in trade, even if it's incredibly privileged to ponder it as one's profession. As millions struggle to make enough money to swallow, nosotros struggle to brand art. This is why every serious artist, at some point, questions: is what I do useful, or relevant to everyone — or is information technology merely luxurious?

As a creative writing practitioner and teacher, I wrestle with this constantly.

Beauty, identity, discourse, documentation, exaltation, or fifty-fifty simply exposing a stink does indeed benefit humanity. Simply when the climate is changing alarmingly, and millions displaced by state of war are unwelcome in most places, and our leaders increasingly justify abusive power, it'south easy to question the value of telling stories or edifice sculpture. After all, what does a painting give to the populace? How tin can a writer have on a president?

Uncovering larger truths

The answers, perhaps, are found in fine art itself. I success proves the potential of all the rest.

If you remember in 2003, when U.Southward. Secretarial assistant of Country Colin Powell was to evangelize to the Un a declaration of war against Iraq, the tapestry depicting Pablo Picasso's Guernica was covered upwardly. It was said that the image of the fascist battery of civilians was too shameful to confront. How could we discuss an unprompted war in front of one of history's greatest rebukes to warfare?

The details, nevertheless, were apparently more mundane. Photographic camera crews had simply worried nearly the cluttered groundwork the cubist tapestry would nowadays behind speaking officials. And the number of journalists attending the printing briefing had swelled, requiring a more capacious venue down the hall.

Those facts, information technology is said, were backside why Guernica was censored (then to speak). Yet the roofing of information technology, for whatever reason, uncovered a larger truth that resonated around the world. The implicit irony became explicit commentary. Picasso had unveiled the epitome in 1937, yet 66 years later, and 36 years after his death, the painter was still speaking to united states of america.

A woman looks at Spanish artist Pablo Picasso's

A adult female looks at Spanish creative person Pablo Picasso's

Image: REUTERS/Marta Jara

A affair of words

At New York University's campus in Abu Dhabi, where I am a professor of literature and creative writing, i of my courses examines books that sought to reach what Guernica did. In "Novels That Inverse the Earth," my students wrestle with the few fictions that stretched beyond personal or literary influence and launched revolutions, addressed colonial abuse, improved public policy, forged cultural identity, or challenged repressive dogma. The 10 books span virtually a century and a half, past writers from around the world, yet, from Uncle Tom's Cabin to The Satanic Verses, each shares a vital characteristic.

In 1896, the Filipino national hero Jose Rizal was tried for rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy, for satirizing the abuses of the colonial Spanish friars in a saga that started with his novel, Noli Me Tangere.

We all know how that turned out — he was executed by firing squad on the eve of the revolution that ousted Espana merely was later hijacked by America.

In the early 1930s, Erich Maria Remarque'due south honest condemnation of state of war, All Quiet on the Western Front, resonated around the world — so much so that a club-footed, insecure fiddling man named Joseph Goebbels orchestrated mobs to attack the screenings of the flick-accommodation. It was one of the first displays of Nazi thuggery. Thousands angrily set upon cinemas across Germany and Republic of austria, which led to a ban on the film and the novel's burning. Goebbels dubbed such attacks as a "cleansing of the German spirit." Remarque's citizenship was somewhen revoked and he fled his ain country, while the regime pursued its lethal attacks on "non-people."

We all know how that turned out — millions were killed systematically as a continent was devastated by war.

In 1989, Salman Rushdie published a novel that, he said, criticized "a powerful tribe of clerics" who had "taken over Islam" — the religion of his upbringing. "These are the gimmicky Thought Police," Rushdie wrote even earlier a fatwa was declared by Iran'southward Ayatollah Khomeini, who was irritated at having his past exile satirized — portrayed in the book every bit an exiled imam aspiring to ability. Khomeini condemned the volume equally a tool of the "world devourers" with the "entire Zionism and arrogance behind information technology"— a "calculated" plot on behalf of "colonialism." Rushdie went into hiding, and those associated with the publication suffered murders, stabbings, shootings, arson, and bombs. This was, according to Khomeini, "so that no ane will dare to insult the Islamic sanctity."

We all know how that turned out — with many people now convinced that "free speech is responsible spoken language," despite the fact that what is supposedly "responsible" will always be dictated past the powerful.

In my form, my students discovered that each novel on our reading list spoke against the injustices of its time, and in doing and so highlighted the injustices of today. We found in every book a stubborn insistence on speaking out.

Everybody raise their hand

Silence, it is said, implies consent. Just that'due south only one-half the story. Silence also confirms oppression, because the ability to speak out is too often a luxury of the privileged.

The ambitious populism we come across today seems to be a attestation to people refusing to exist silent — and rightly and then. Our societies have largely failed to provide as for all, and technology now gives us new avenues through which to to exist heard, and with which to rebel against repressive ideas and structures. New leaders have latched onto that and now seek to speak for united states, even though many of them are rallying united states of america crudely effectually fright and mistrust.

But at that place is promise where there is life, fifty-fifty such as it is now. Because it reveals potential. This is where, counterintuitively, literature and creative writing come up in.

In 1969, Lee Kuan Yew, the president of Singapore, famously said: "Verse is a luxury we cannot afford. What is of import for pupils is non literature, merely a philosophy for life." In this, the founding male parent of that impressive small-scale nation was wrong. A philosophy for life is precisely what literature teaches us.

You need only open a book, from oldest scripture to contemporary novels. Moses refused to be enslaved, Odysseus spoke truth to power, Atticus Finch did not compromise justice, and Hermione Granger showed us how things are washed. Plato imagined a only nation, Thomas Paine proved the importance of universal human being rights, and John Stuart Mill empowered the individual and revealed the necessity of freedom of expression.

It's all at that place on paper and in the ether. The self and order, tragedy and triumph, right and wrong, values and ideals — Lee Kuan Yew'southward philosophies for life are easily accessible through bookshops, libraries, and the internet.

Notwithstanding while it's conventional that wisdom exists in literature, creative writing has always been seen as more than rarified or intimidating. It has been celebrated as personally palliative, yes, but it's never been considered a method to increase participation in society. After all, what good is composing poetry and writing stories when y'all need a job, or a nation must exist founded, or a war has to be won, or cancer is ravaging the bodies both human and politic?

But creative writing can be anyone'southward best training for speaking out — and if you've ever read novels, heard scripture, watched movies or TV, listened to songs, or learned folklore, then yous've been studying your entire life how storytelling works. Past applying your manus at creating it, you are not just attempting art, you are learning vital skills and life lessons.

Fiction teaches us near characters and empathy, plot and consequences, and the value of nuance to truth. Poetry teaches us how to dribble language, value silence, and understand metaphor. Non-fiction (which certainly includes journalism) teaches united states of america accountability to facts, critical thinking about the systems in society, and the importance of getting out into the world to listen to others. These are only a few of the skills i learns from writing creatively.

Are those life lessons not vital to democracy? To take a voice is to have a vote. To have a vote is to exist represented in club. To represent ourselves clearly and confidently empowers us citizens to air our ain concerns and our customs's grievances, to be answerable for ourselves, and to demand the accountability of our leaders. If we are not trained to articulate our arguments properly, we volition never be heard legitimately, and we tin be ignored too conveniently.

Speaking of commonwealth

My ain philosophy for life comes from the art of storytelling. I persevere in participating publicly in a hostile world by knowing that adept always outweighs evil. This seemingly naive notion is proven by the stories every despot or mass murderer must tell of themselves.

Adolf Hitler, for example, was convinced of his righteousness; he loved his domestic dog Blondi, was proud of his country, and thought noble ends justified his tearing means. Similarly, the terrorists who flew airplanes into the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, did so for a glory they believed was far greater than themselves; they must have thought they were heroically righting a historic wrong. The notion of skillful always prevails, even in warped minds that are objectively proven to be evil.

What's perilous, nevertheless, is when such corrupted stories are believed past others. In the Philippines, where I am from, a subtle war is taking place — one of narrative; righteousness is its constant theme.

The dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who stole billions of dollars and denied democracy for more than a decade, is having his story posthumously recast by his children and their allies who benefit from his undemocratic legacy. Fake news sites and online propagandists are existence recruited by the powers that exist to undermine human rights, due process, and the checks and balances required for commonwealth — that system that still remains our best class towards equality and the only method to ensure the anemic removal of leaders who may turn abusive.

History, information technology's said, is written by the victors, and in so being it all but guarantees that they remain the victors. This is why information technology'due south estimated that some 80% of our higher elected offices in the Philippines remain in the hands of dynasties — which are family unit businesses that will ever present a conflict of interest between kin and country. The story is theirs to tell.

This is why I write for newspapers, write novels, and teach creative writing. I see it every bit the long game — a dialogue with the subsequent generations who will hopefully learn from our mistakes of the by. Notwithstanding sometimes it feels that our leaders are then entrenched that an creative person's only recourse is to have the concluding word — to be brutally honest and mocking in judgment in works that we hope will outlive even the bronze statues these leaders erect to themselves. But in that location'southward defeat in even that; in the Philippines we'd call that konswelo de bobo — the consolation of the stupid. The last word may exist consolingly and powerfully concluding, but it's still retroactive.

What would be proactive is helping others develop potent voices and so that we citizens are no longer just arguing fallaciously on Facebook and Twitter over the daily outrage, while unsatisfactory leaders ride our sectionalisation towards the next election.

The antidote to dispensation is accountability. We all know that. Simply accountability tin can simply be demanded if our voices have upshot. A alone voice, or the voices of the educated elite, cannot legitimately speak for the voiceless, and so cannot be truly consequential. If a vocalization is a vote, then they must be raised, equally a majority, in demanding truer representation and better leadership.

And so there is clearly work to exist washed. Not all art must be inclusive, but no fine art should be exclusive. Neither literature nor creative writing must always be privileged equally a luxury, for our story volition be too easily controlled that way. And while fine art itself might not change the world, it's abundantly clear that it can empower those who will.