Saturday, 9.40pm
Sheffield, U.K.
The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become. – Jim Rohn
I think we are living through a change in the global system, one that could have profound consequences.
Or it could fizzle out.
But while we’re waiting to see what happens let’s conduct a little thought experiment.
Let’s think about a world where there are fewer jobs to do because of these new technologies that make people with jobs so productive that companies don’t need to hire as many people as before.
New entrants to the labour market find there are fewer jobs to go after.
The well paid ones, the few that lead to money and status, are hoovered up by the rich and connected.
The rest struggle to get anything.
That’s one view.
Or, the technologies allow us to do more than ever before.
Every single person has the tools to create something great – they don’t need the resources of a corporation to create a new product, find a market, delight customers.
So yes, there are no jobs. But instead there is an explosion in businesses – where people create value.
I started this post by suggesting that a world could exist where nothing has value.
Perhaps I should examine my assumptions there.
If a machine can do something in seconds that would take an artist days or weeks, and do so for free – what happens to value?
The value of the machine generated product is nothing.
The value of the artists work is something – to a person that values the artist – and nothing if not.
The art in itself becomes less important than the way in which its produced.
There is a market for free. And there is a market for handcrafted. And each of us needs to decide how we go after the market that works for us.
The drawings I make for this blog are stuck at a 4th or 5th grade level.
Look at the picture above. It’s not art. It’s just someone doodling with a pen. It’s not worth anything.
Except to me.
Because it helps me in my process – in the writing that I do next.
And the writing isn’t brilliant either – it’s rambling, informal, grammatically questionable, unedited.
Nothing that would make it into the New Yorker.
Except, I’m not writing for the New Yorker,
I’m writing to get my thoughts in line, because it helps me in how I live my life.
Culturally, I was brought up in a tradition that values work, not the results of work.
I don’t know how well that translates to you reading this, but it comes down to saying do what you must do, do the thing that you’re working on with no thought of reward, no need for gratification.
Do it because it must be done.
But why, you might ask? What’s the point of that. You may point to Samuel Johnson who said “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money”.
But if you live in a world where you cannot sell your writing, you cannot sell your art – because the machines do it instead – should you stop making art, stop writing?
Or are you now free – to do it because you want to not because you have to.
Because you value doing what you do.
And when that happens it doesn’t matter what happens in the rest of the world.
You just do you.
And figure out some other way to create value for others that brings in money.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 