This silent death

On the majestic stage of time where once civilizations rose on poetry's wings, vision, and madness, now there arises a weird silence — subtly quiet. A gradual withering away of soul, an unaware funeral of novelty. Where, formerly, the brush shook with divinity and the pen bled truth, today there is convenience. The holy fire of creativity, once the keeper of human transcendence, is smouldering — not because it has lost its power, but because we, its custodians, have looked aside. We do not listen to its whimpering in the background noise of scrolls and simulations. And yet, in this silent death, is the most thundering tragedy: no one hears.

This is not an indictment of the age, nor a nostalgia for the past — it is an invitation. A challenge to those whose souls still bleed, whose eyes still cry at the mention of beauty, whose hearts still seethe with unuttered storms. Creativity is not a career or a luxury; it is the very cadence of life, the pulse of awareness, the breath of liberty. And it is being choked to death under the velvet straitjacket of security, copy, and applause.

We are in an era when access is limitless but imagination is shrunk. An era when the poet's anguish is duplicated by the AI and metrics dictate the canvas of the artist. Words are no longer born in pain but constructed like cold steel mechanisms — efficient, accurate, and soulless. Music, once a revolt of the heart, now dances to the rhythm of algorithms. What was once blemished and divine is now perfect and empty. In a culture crazed about perfection, the imperfect sincerity of art has lost its place.

We have moved from creation to curation. From soul to strategy. Humans once created with shaking hands and crazy brains; now we re-post, re-package, re-play. In the trend market, originality is not currency anymore. Social media, begotten as a blank slate for imagination, has developed into an arena where repetition becomes rewarded, detail gets punished, and uniformity is adored. Creators now produce material. Authors bow to keywords. Musicians pursue virality. The holy has yielded to the marketable. We act — not to speak, but to entertain. Not to wake, but to live. And yet, within this carnival of reflections, few question: where are the true voices?

Technology, in its greatness, has deceived us. The devices to construct have never been finer — yet we apply them to adorn illusions. The machine was meant to reflect the mind; now it imitates it, substitutes it, wipes it out. The artist is no longer a vessel of the timeless but a brand with a posting calendar. The thinker is an influencer. Probing sinks in scrolls. Sense chokes under indicators. The mirror has become a screen, reflecting not the soul but the image.

But the actual home of imagination — loneliness — has been destroyed. True imagination happens in silence, and silence hurts before it makes us whole. The loneliness that gives birth to vision. But today we run from solitude as from the plague. We're always joined, but never really with ourselves. There's no quiet for the inner voice to rise up. No darkness for the spark to ignite. In the noise of everything, we’ve lost the ability to listen — to the world, to one another, to ourselves. And in that loss, the seeds of originality rot before they bloom.

Perhaps the most devastating arena of this collapse is education. The cradle of curiosity has become a production line of obedience. Children are taught to answer, not to ask. To conform, not to question. The classroom, once a source of awe, now muffles the fire with rubrics and grades. Art is relegated as unrealistic. Questions are substituted with templates. Dreams are shattered to accommodate job descriptions. We raise generations schooled to read scripts and ask why no one authors new ones.

True creativity is holy. It is agony and victory, madness and miracle. It is the scream behind van Gogh’s brushstroke, the whisper in Rumi’s silence, the thunder of Beethoven’s despair. It is the burning that refuses to die. To create is to step into the abyss with nothing but a whisper and return with a world. But this sacred act has been buried under applause, branding, and fear. It is dying. And yet, it can be salvaged — not by the world, but by you.

This is not an obituary. It is a revolution. If you are a creator, be one. Not for the world's applause, but for your own freedom. Write what ignites. Paint what unsettles. Sing what shatters. Think what breaks. Be the voice the world didn't ask for, but desperately needs. Measure not your worth in clicks, but in the pain of truth. Be the one who bled, who took risks, who created — even if nobody noticed.

History recalls not the complacent, but the brave. The unusual. The misinterpreted. Those who had the guts to dance out of sync with the rhythm of the era. Creativity is not perishing as a result of weakness. It is perishing due to the fact that we have forgotten it is sacred. But sacred fires never really perish. They linger. They wait for a soul strong enough to resuscitate them.

So come back. Back to the empty page, the quiet room, the spectre of thought. Back to curiosity. To danger. To hope. Make your terrors your ink. Let your uncertainties give birth to your art. Let the untamed in you ripen into a tempest. This is not the end — this is the rebirth. If you've ever sensed that spark within you flame up — that pain to create, to shatter, to dream — then you are selected. You are the start.

Creativity could be dead.

But you —

You are its breath.

Let the revival begin.

Mohammad Arfat Wani, a passionate writer, social activist, and medical student, hails from Kuchmulla Tral.