Creativity: Essential to the Human Condition

And just like that, another season turns.

​A few weeks ago, I wrote about the inundation of AI in educational settings and the many professionals bemoaning the prevalence of cheating with this new technology. In that piece, I placed the blame squarely on the system itself. Most simply stated, we have removed curiosity and creativity from our educational system and replaced them with compliance. Our young people are fed the correct answers without being given any context for the whys or hows. They spend their time focused fully on staying inside the proverbial lines, chasing carrots and avoiding sticks. Of course, they will use AI or whatever else to get the answer or the needed product with the least amount of effort. They have learned that creativity can be outsourced—not that it is an essential part of problem-solving, and thus human survival. 

Today, I am stepping outside of education to look at the ubiquitous use of AI in the workplace and in our private lives.

As an extremely independent-minded individual who takes great pride in being creative, I find the prevalence of AI slop appalling and embarrassing—especially when artists and other creatives use it wholesale to generate a piece from a few prompts, simply to save themselves a little time. AI-generated "art" is obvious even to the untrained eye. It's ickily slick and, at least to me, feels deceitful. When I see it, I am immediately turned off and distrustful of that company or organization—the opposite, I have to assume, of the effect they're going for.

With that said, I want to return to an important concept from that earlier post: AI is not inherently evil, and using it doesn't make you morally corrupt. It can be helpful, with the caveat that judicious best practices are applied. For example, I occasionally use Claude to polish a piece when I feel my grammar needs help or things can be tightened up. Once I get the recommendations, I use them as suggestions to revise my original piece. It's one more tool in my arsenal—not to write for me, but to make my writing the best it can possibly be. 
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On the other hand, I avoid using AI features when creating anything in Canva—a task made a bit harder now that they've fully integrated it into the platform. One of my pet peeves, and the reason I actively seek out other resources, is companies with once-great tools that devolve into peddling corporate garbage. Mailchimp and QuickBooks (decidedly not coincidentally owned by the same company) are two more examples, and why I switched to Substack for this blog and Wave for all of our accounting needs. If anyone has suggestions for a free platform similar to Canva, minus the AI slop, please let me know.

Bottom line: if you need a graphic or any other kind of art and don't feel confident creating it yourself, find an artist to make it for you.

If we continue as we are, we ensure the death of creativity, and ultimately the death of society—which may be exactly what the leaders of the AI companies were warning us about this third week of September 2026.
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Creativity is what sets humans apart. Without it, we are nothing. 

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DRC News

This week, the DRC Crew happily welcomed eight volunteers. On Monday, Raven and Hudson from the SLU CBL program and Pete, a community member and DRC supporter from the beginning, all came in. Between discussing cosplay and building cardboard gauntlets, sorting out hundreds of Magic: The Gathering game cards, and brainstorming carpentry and woodworking projects, such as fixing up our treehouse, with cool conversations swirling through it all, we had a busy and productive Monday morning.

On Thursday, Carol, our community volunteer for the day, arrived just in time to help make apple crisp from the two enormous bags of sliced apples that the SLU Campus Kitchens team delivered with our Bear Packs. Afterward, she and E & H went out to our woods to explore. They found some very cool items, including a Pepsi can from 1976.

On Friday, the DRC Crew welcomed four more volunteers. Ryan, a community volunteer, was a former student member and an apprentice for two years. He will be volunteering regularly to play chess and piano. Yesterday, he and T started investigating the piano in the garage to see why many keys aren't working. It seems that humidity, dust, and dirt are the culprits, not a rodent's nest as I suspected. They spent a couple of hours exploring the guts and learning how a piano works. 

Journeih, Sara, and Debora are SLU students in the Community Based Learning program. They are super excited to spend Friday afternoons with us. They created art, played music, sang along to the Hamilton soundtrack, and we happily discovered that Sara will take on the Dungeon Master role for D&D starting next week. I also overheard that they plan on creating a DRC Band. One of them said she would learn to play the electric guitar. Another had the violin out, tuning it. 

We are so very fortunate to be able to tap into the SLU CBL Program; it is an amazing resource. Our student members benefit greatly from spending time with young adults who eagerly and excitedly share their interests and talents with them.  

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DRC: In the Community
​I had the pleasure of tabling at the Potsdam Food Co-op’s Open House on Saturday.  Thanks to everyone who stopped by to chat.