It’s now physically impossible to dissociate publishing from profit. Those wishing to create freely, of which no payment is a requirement because payment itself takes away freedom due to its influence on the creation itself.
Were now forced to have our bank linked to accept payments to have our book on Goodreads. As soon as I try to delete a book from Amazon, not only is it deleted from Goodreads… The entire Author page is then deleted.
This is happening in all areas of creativity.
Monetization shapes the art.
Monetization shapes the artist.
Monetization is the opposite of freedom.
Very rarely do people realize that money is only a social construct, and thus only socially real. In all honesty, you dont have pay anything. You dont have to buy anything. You don’t have to partake in the game that gets you nowhere but distracted from the core reality of life.
Take away money does society collapse? The Lenape lived so peacefully without money, that they hold the title of taking part in the first peaceful foundation of the Western World. Likely the entire world, but the Lenape originally being a part of the Eastern World, their preexisting peaceful foundation of which they already lived upon, is often overlooked outside of the Indigenous American Tribes themselves. There peace is recorded tribally, yet tribal recordings are considered of legend in the western world.
With that foundation, how do we get back to it? We look at all that money has done to us. We look at how money brings out the worst in all of us. We then see how intertwining creative reception with profit is detrimental to creation itself. We remember how creativity once served a greater purpose, with spiritual weight. We decommodify ourselves. We stop blending in. We stop competing and start smiling with thy neighbor. We realize each other is what makes this life special. We realize the magic of each other in times of grey. We realize that we’re not alone. We realize we can have fun and do what we want, and those that haven’t found their way out of the tangle, are free regardless to reach it much later in life, or while becoming the light itself.