We're all being eaten alive: June 22nd, 2010

We're all being eaten alive. And so that's what I've been taught by my 54th birthday. "Dammit David, we taught you to play by the rules, we sent you to a Catholic school, and you still don't learn. You must be stupid - or the enemy", said society.

The enemy of a good idea is complacency. No idea at all. The enemy of good is not evil, but inaction - the art of going nowhere for years without ever taking a stand. Without ever knowing where you want to go. Our schools breed this in us.

"Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps."
~ H.L. Mencken

And I have not yet met a communist who has had a good idea. They have all been bred to believe the same old ones. Mao Tze Tung had good ideas when he was young, but his party institutionalized them and he was not allowed to adapt them to the present, although he tried. He died an unhappy old man, ostracized by the government he created.

"Every man is a reformer until reform tramps on his toes."
~Edgar Watson Howe, Country Town Sayings, 1911

Last year I met a woman who talked me out of getting a regular job, she even helped kill one for me, for the proposed valor of starting something new with her - and then she left that idea and me, when it proved difficult - because she needed a regular job and a regular guy, like 99.9% of the world. She had a creative idea, and then killed it herself, or let her society kill it for her. Trouble was, I believed in her at the start. Who was wrong?

"When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong, they taught me different was wrong."
~ Ani Difranco

An internet entrepreneur, recently, backed me off the idea that we should try to solicit advertisers for a site but what he didn't have was the money to support his idea through years of no income. People forget that Google and Twitter were started with piles of venture capital. Piles of money.

Being an individualist isn't worth a pile of shit if you can't afford it - rather society will take some other conformity and package it as maverick vision. And women who once fell in love with your individualism will abandon you for it in favor of what society tells them is correct.

"Every society honors its live conformists, and its dead troublemakers."
~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

The trick seems to be balance. How can we be creative and original without being victimized? How can we be responsible, without being complacent? And how can we find a partner who values and supports both?

I end today's rant with a clip of Todd Rundgren's 60th birthday bash two years ago. Todd and I share this day but also a number of ideals. He's raised two pro-ball players, another son in college and Liv Tyler as a step-dad, yet remained a rock star and a creative spirit at heart. And he maintains a successful career.

Toddstock Birthday Montage from Ed Vigdor on Vimeo.

Who the hell is thinking that at this age I should give up my ideas of being interesting, intellectual, creative and yes, profitable? I've had a life of all of that and can't imagine that it would ever be a good idea to turn a card and become a soldier - so much as others might want me to do. A lyric in a Todd song says, "Choose your heroes and choose them well, they could be leading you straight into hell".

"We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is. Someone - our parents, teachers, analysts - hypnotizes us to "see" the world and construe it in the "right" way.

The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we become undeaf, unblind and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meanings in the new book of our existence. Be careful in your choice of hypnotists."

~Sidney Jourard

May I be "18 at 80" and loved for it, instead of discarded for it before I even get there, at 54.

"Do our schools kill creativity" - Sir Ken Robinson

I talk about creativity, often - and education, sometimes - because I make a good part of my living from teaching creativity, in all aspects, much more than just the artistic. But rather than me going on about it, this talk by Sir Ken Robinson at the TED conference in 2006 does far better than I could ever do. Give it a look.




"Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."

A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009."

I wonder about the SDM conference coming up this week and had they thought to have gotten a speaker on this level, with an actual relevant topic, it might have provoked far more interest and excitement than the bulk of industry salespeople and hijacked model they've assembled instead - and been an educational networking experience, well worth the money. Thanks to Hugh MacLeod for reminding me of this film. Hugh has been a long time proponent of "Social Objects" - created things that get conversations started. This talk by Sir Ken is a bona-fide social object. It will get you thinking, then talking, and hopefully doing - digital or otherwise.

For more on Creativity, Education and the like, check below:

"Do Our Schools Kill Creativity?" - Sir Ken Robinson
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2009 Marketing Predictions
The Language Barrier - An Asian Business Conundrum