Is Humanity more skilled in Creation or Destruction?

There is destruction in creation and creation in destruction.

Painting a canvas is creating a picture, just as it is destroying an empty space. Incinerating a sculpture in fire is surely an act of destruction, while it is also the creation of new art, in the form of ash and soot.

Is the canvas grateful that you have given her colors, shapes and textures, or did she want to remain untouched and unoccupied? A painted canvas is typically seen as complete, more or less permanent in the eyes of the creator and other beholders. A blank canvas, however, glows constantly with vast, spacious potential 一 one could even see the untouched-ness of it as being more beautiful than a finished painting itself.

Is the sculpture hurt that you have burnt him down, or did he wither away happily, willing and excited to transition into something new? A sculpture is bound to the ground or wherever its creator decides it should rest, while ash is free to fly in the wind.

A writer can create a book that heals millions of struggling souls. This writer may have created this book, created a newfound sense of joy in many hearts who read it, and created a fortune for herself... but she has destroyed some very necessary feelings of sadness in her audience, destroyed livelihoods of her competition, and destroyed some dependence on (and business for) other avenues of self-help, like therapists and gyms and health-food stores.

Rainforests are destroyed to create factory farms, childhoods are destroyed to create t-shirts, sharks are destroyed to create shark fin soup. We can choose to see any amount of creation in even the most soulless destruction. Though when it is the destruction of life for the sake of lifeless creation, it feels crucial to acknowledge destruction as the greater force at hand.

You might argue that a wooden desk has the same amount of life as the trees that were demolished to create it, as creating furniture is a form of artistic expression and artistic expression arguably does contain life. The same could be said for the t-shirt stitched by a child sweatshop worker slaving away their youth for pennies, or the shark fin soup made from the big murdered fish who did not want to die.

I can acknowledge this perspective, yet I acknowledge it as a desperate reach for optimism in a confused world.

Nuance of interpretation is only as malleable as our empathy for others. I do not think that life, nature, joy, any form of sentience, can be replicated or transcended by even the most profound human artistry.