Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [8]
suicide.
That's the labor market we were trained for.
Was the System Always About Obedience?
Imagine a stack of 400 quarters. Each quarter represents 250 years of human culture, and
the entire stack signifies the 100,000 years we've had organized human tribes. Take the
top quarter off the stack. This one quarter represents how many years our society has
revolved around factories and jobs and the world as we see it. The other 399 coins stand
for a very different view of commerce, economy, and culture. Our current view might be
the new normal, but the old normal was around for a very long time.
Telling your family that you had a "job" and were moving away to go work in a factory
of some sort was unheard of. Five or six generations ago, when it actually started
happening, it was a social upheaval of huge proportions. It changed the world.
Having a factory job is not a natural state. It wasn't at the heart of being a human until
recently. We've been culturally brainwashed to believe that accepting the hierarchy and
lack of responsibility that come with a factory job is the one way, the only way, and the
best way.
Art and Initiative and Who's an Artist Now?
I'm sitting next to Zeke on the plane.
Well, I'm sitting but Zeke isn't. Zeke is two. He spends the entire flight standing, walking
around, poking, smiling, asking, touching, responding, reacting, testing, and exploring.
Is it possible that you were like Zeke?
What happened?
Somewhere along the way, we baked it out of you. And that's a shame, because what
Zeke has (and what so many have lost) is exactly what we need.
We were all hunters.
Then they invented farming, and we became farmers.
And we were all farmers.
Then they invented the factory, and we all became factory workers. Factory workers who
followed instructions, supported the system, and got paid what they were worth.
Then the factory fell apart.
And what's left for us to work with? Art.
Now, success means being an artist.
In fact, history is now being written by the artists while the factory workers struggle. The
future belongs to chefs, not to cooks or bottle washers. It's easy to buy a cookbook (filled
with instructions to follow) but really hard to find a chef book.
The Myth of the White-Collar Job
Most white-collar workers wear white collars, but they're still working in the factory.
They push a pencil or process an application or type on a keyboard instead of operating a
drill press. The only grease they have to get off their clothes at the end of the day is the
grease from the take-out food at lunch.
But it's factory work.
It's factory work because it's planned, controlled, and measured. It's factory work because
you can optimize for productivity. These workers know what they're going to do all day-and it's still morning.
The white-collar job was supposed to save the middle class, because it was
machineproof. A machine could replace a guy hauling widgets up a flight of stairs, but a
machine could never replace someone answering the phone or running the fax machine.
Of course, machines have replaced those workers. Worse, much worse, is that
competitive pressures (and greed) have encouraged most organizations to turn their
workers into machines.
If we can measure it, we can do it faster.
If we can put it in a manual, we can outsource it.
If we can outsource it, we can get it cheaper.
The end results are legions of frustrated workers, wasted geniuses each and every one of
them, working like automatons, racing against the clock to crank out another policy, get
through another interaction, see another patient.
It doesn't have to be this way.
Average Is Over
Our world no longer fairly compensates people who are cogs in a giant machine.
There's stress because for many of us, that's all we know. Schools and society have
reinforced this