There was a time, not long ago, when the pursuit of that kind of satisfaction was considered morally dubious. Historically, bourgeois society regarded artists as disreputable and deviant, eccentrics doomed to the social margins. Our 21st-century cult of the creative reflects a shift in this attitude. Today, many haute-bourgeois people cultivate personas as artists and bohemians — even when they are marketing executives. This change reflects a broader transformation of the economy: the information-technology revolution and the reorientation of cities from manufacturing hubs to centers of knowledge work and cultural production.

But there is an airy spiritual component, too: a belief that anyone can be an artist and, ideally, everyone should be. This is the principle behind much of the self-help “creativity” industry — the notion, promulgated in best-selling books like Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear,” that every person contains vast reservoirs of creative potential. To access your creativity, Gilbert maintains, is to self-actualize. This, she writes, is “the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

It’s hard not to be skeptical of a sentence like that. In fact, the sickly odor of snake oil hovers over much of the “creative living” enterprise. It may be no accident that one of the most forceful formulations of this thesis arrived in Jonah Lehrer’s “Imagine: How Creativity Works,” the 2012 pop-neuroscience book that was recalled by its publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, after it was discovered to contain Bob Dylan quotes of Lehrer’s own invention. The prosyletizers for creative living proffer a slippery hard sell: You can tap into your creative side if you just learn how, preferably by buying this book or attending this workshop.

Of course, this egalitarian theory of creativity ignores everything we know about the apportionment of artistic gifts, the fact that some people are simply better at making things than others. It also elides the structural impediments — the lack of free time and ample resources and good education — that prohibit millions from pursuing an origami hobby, let alone finding a career in a creative field.

Faith in creativity can be especially robust among those blessed with talent. Consider Kanye West. There’s no doubting his creativity: He makes great records, designs strange shoes, summons outrages from thin air. He also maintains one of the world’s most arresting Twitter feeds, where he boasts about his sneaker enterprise (“the creative make the final decisions here”) and offers homilies to his peers: “As a creative your ideas are your strongest form of currency.” In October, he took to Twitter to renounce his high-profile flirtation with Trumpism: “I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing on being creative!!”

Many people would love to do the same. For millions, “creative” has talismanic allure. It holds the possibility of a more meaningful and exciting existence than what was available to previous generations. It points to a new kind of middle-class dream, one free from wearying manual labor or the white-collar drudgery of cubicles and spreadsheets. It promises a career, a life, that makes room for self-expression, imagination, even beauty.

But “creative” is often a red flag, a signpost marking an insidious trade-off. A “creative” job listing may lure you to pursue your destiny, freed from old social strictures — but also freed from traditional benefits and security. For the privilege of doing “creative” work, we are asked to accept conditions of financial anxiety and precariousness that in previous times were unthinkable to the gainfully employed. “Creative” puts lipstick — or, more precisely, a pair of Warby Parker eyeglasses and a sleeve tattoo — on a pig. It dresses up a ruptured social compact, the raw deal of the gig economy, as bohemian freedom.

The struggle to make ends meet while making good work has long defined the existence of those who choose to live as artists. Today, countless freelancing creatives are tasting that desperation, often while doing “creative” grunt work for big corporations. The repercussions ripple through the economy and through personal lives, and, yes, sometimes they pop up on the internet. Caroline Calloway has been cast as a villainous “scammer,” but the truth may be more complicated. Like so many young people — like, for that matter, so many middle-aged people and senior citizens — she is navigating a system that promises rewards it cannot deliver to people with entrepreneurial spirits and artistic inclinations. The message we are sending to creatives is clear: It may not do much for your bank account, but your work will enrich you emotionally. Besides, shouldn’t you be grateful to earn any money at all for doing something you love — something creative?

Jody Rosen is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of the forthcoming book “Two Wheels Good: The Bicycle on Planet Earth and Beyond.”