The most destructive force a person can carry is unused creative energy.
Unused creative energy doesn’t disappear into thin air. It alchemises into poison.
Nietzsche called it ressentiment. When the creative force that cannot move forward, it moves inward, then outward as poison. He was watching artists who never made the work. The pattern has not changed.
When creative energy finds the wrong outlet, it turns destructive.
A person who should be writing starts overthinking. A person who should be building starts criticizing everyone else’s work. A person who should be making art starts becoming bitter toward people who are visible.
Seneca noticed it first in his students.
The ones who read everything and wrote nothing became the most sophisticated critics of people who wrote. He said they were mistaking the map for the destination and then blaming the destination for being far.
Jung called it the shadow.
The parts of the self that are denied expression don’t go dark quietly, they go sideways. The inner spirit that demands expression. He believed the creative daimon, when ignored, becomes a tyrant.
Daimon is the inner spirit, guiding force, or hidden genius inside a person.
The person who refuses to serve it consciously begins to be ruled by it unconsciously.
The bitterness, the envy, the paralysis are all different manifestations of the daimon.
“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.”
— Abraham Maslow