Creation and Democracy: What Holds Us Together

In times of war, fragmentation and democratic distrust, it is tempting to treat information as strategic and creation as secondary. That distinction is false. Democracies need reliable facts, but facts alone cannot hold a society together when common spaces are disappearing. Information and creation have equal dignity and perform complementary functions: information helps us understand what is happening; creation helps us imagine what it means. Through stories, emotions, characters and shared images, works teach us to see, feel and imagine together. They make other lives intelligible, sustain a common world and preserve our capacity for empathy — and for disagreement. Creation is an essential infrastructure of democratic life.