Originally appeared October 16, 2002, in the Chicago Free Press.
FOR MANY YEARS, the small island nation of Singapore has been home to an uneasy combination of free market capitalism with rapid economic growth on the one hand, and vigorous government controls on social behavior, speech and artistic expression on the other.
Now, however, faced with increasing competition from China, India and other Asian nations, Singapore's government has realized that while free markets are essential, in the long run they are not enough, that something more is needed for economies to remain productive.
That something is creativity - a creativity that enables entrepreneurs to keep discovering and inventing new products or improving old ones, helping them stay competitive in a world economy where everyone else is trying to get ahead of them. Unless you keep inventing something new, you fall behind.
So Singapore's leaders realized that they needed to develop a teeming, vibrant social and cultural environment to retain and attract, entertain and stimulate the creative people who can contribute to Singapore's development. And to do this, they also needed to cultivate and encourage Singapore's own creative talent.
But you cannot just snap your fingers and say, "Be creative." You cannot make creativity happen; you can only let it happen. In Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" when seedy government officials asked archetypal inventor/entrepreneur John Galt what they could do to help him, Galt replied, "Get out of my way."
Creativity, in short, can only come from the free play of a mind unhampered by impositions and limitations. Creativity requires freedom - not just freedom in one area, but freedom period - social, sexual, political, cultural, expressive, etc.
Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong seemed to recognize this in a recent speech: "A culturally vibrant city attracts global creative talent. Singapore needs a few little 'bohemias,'" he said, where artists can "soak in the ambiance, and do their creative stuff."
And so, Singapore's government, which has long been socially and sexually repressive and barred public discussion of such topics as race, religion, and sexuality, is planning to cut back censorship and fumblingly trying to find ways to open itself up to more free discussion and artistic expression.
Fumblingly. Broadcast of "Sex and the City" is banned, but Singaporeans order videos and DVDs from Amazon and hold viewing parties. Censors cut the gay subplot in "Six Feet Under," but approved a production of the play "Six Degrees of Separation" in which the pivotal character is gay.
Cultural groups are pressing for more freedom: "We want no censorship. We want experimental groups taking more risk in arts programs here," one theatrical producer told Reuters, arguing very reasonably, "It's very difficult to be creative when you are scared."
All this will be familiar to readers of Richard Florida's recent book "The Rise of the Creative Class." Florida argued that economic productivity required creative people, creative people require a context of cultural vibrancy, and easy acceptance of gays and "bohemians" was an index of the requisite cultural vitality.
The nucleus of this idea was well-known to economist Joseph Schumpeter more than 50 years ago. Florida rightly cites Schumpeter's insight that "It is not (price) competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization."
Florida's important addition is documentation of the fact that entrepreneurial capitalism requires a creativity that in turn requires an openness and free play of mind that sees the presence of gays and lesbians as a positive indicator of a vibrant and interesting cultural mix.
But beyond that, there are several ways that capitalism, by the habits of mind it requires and inculcates, can specifically promote and encourage the acceptance of gays; so it is useful to sketch out the parallels and some actual connections between how capitalism functions and how tolerance is generated.
- For instance, a creative capitalism may well welcome a gay sexual orientation as a valuable added perspective for a cultural environment that requires a churning variety of ideas, approaches, and methods in order to break away from settled modes of thought and stimulate creative thinking.
- By stressing constant innovation, creative capitalism can lure people away from their old habits of mind and their traditional, unexamined loyalties, attitudes and assumptions derived from village, church and family - all traditional sources of hostility to homosexuality.
- By making production and consumption valued categories of activity, competitive capitalism creates alternative ways of evaluating people - as clients and customers, productive workers, skilled employees, etc. - and competing hierarchies of merit that challenge and reduce the significance of non-economic factors like sexual orientation.
- By producing a stream of new goods and services that consumers can - and must - choose among, capitalism gives people experience in individual choosing and bolsters their confidence in their ability to make competent choices on the basis of their own needs and desires - and their awareness that others are doing the same.
The book on how the psychology of creative, free-market capitalism - "as if by an invisible hand" - gradually produces tolerance then acceptance of gays and lesbians has not yet been written. Some day it will be.