For our arts to be restored to a healthy degree of influence in the cognitive order, they will need the skills of people who truly know how to generate a potent symbol, rather than just engage a rarefied world of galleries and critics with their lofty arcanity. 

Such talents are always rare, and today they are scattered in areas far beyond the traditional fine arts.  This strongly suggests that we should stop disparaging creative people as not being "serious" just because they happen to derive their main income from, say, an ad agency or a packaging design firm.  The works that such people may produce on their own time can be as serious—and as potent—as Stealth fighter planes.

The only question is whether we want to use them to accomplish something that's desperately needed, or continue to abandon the field to others who are interested only in controlling us for their own profit and power.