“Better safe than sorry”? Thoughts on CEOs and intuition, false expectations of security, change, and our moral obligation to live up to our human potential. And then, 13 friendly anarchistic pointers to fix the world.

Have you ever seen Steve Jobs’ commencement address in Stanford? It’s basically the world’s most valuable CEO advocating to follow your heart and intuition, and a bunch of recently graduated yuppies listening to him in awe. Since then, they were joined by roughly three million people who watched the speech on YouTube. “Stay hungry, stay foolish”, Jobs ends, leaving the viewer inspired – and a little puzzled, maybe. Millions of people have seen this address? Why is this planet still a mess, then? Why didn’t they act on it?!

The thing is, old-fashioned rationalism and playing it safe is still cutting edge when it comes to making decisions. Intuition is neither taught nor listened to, even if people like Jobs talk about it. Many of the Stanford graduates can certainly relate to this: Law School instead of Art School, MBA instead of NGO, McKinsey instead of building a start-up in your garage. That’s where the money is, just look at the numbers! Keep in mind the statistics! Make a career, dominate, never look back! It’s only “rational”! Thoughts like this not only govern the economic and political spheres, but also our personal lives. “Stay hungry, stay foolish” is replaced by “Better safe than sorry” – not just for the graduates Jobs spoke to, but for most of us.

The Choice to Change

It’s not as if everybody had a choice, to be sure! I have to think of the little girl from the mountainous regions of Eastern El Salvador, who had to leave school at 12 years of age to help her parents till their land, in order to have something to eat, in order to survive. I don’t think Steve Jobs had this kind of hunger in mind when preparing his speech. I also have to think of my friend Luis who walked around the streets of his barrio even though members of the MS-13 gang had ordered him to stay at home. They didn’t want to see neutral people on “their” soil. He ended up being shot in his head, half his body is paralyzed until today. The offenders are still on the same streets, and he still walks around his barrio, as good as he can. Foolish, maybe, but certainly not the kind Steve Jobs had thought of.

In the meanwhile, we are sitting comfortably at our homes, trying to forget about all this in order to keep plugging away at our jobs or in our online businesses. We sit in our cubicle, worrying about that report we have to hand in. Or we sit in a coffee shop, worrying about how to grow our follower numbers on Twitter. We attend a meeting, showing off our shiny new Blackberry. We hack some boring numbers into a boring spreadsheet, waiting for the boring clock to turn 5pm. If we’re well off, we may leave earlier, making a living as micro entrepreneurs selling info products.

Stay hungry, stay foolish? It certainly doesn’t look like it! We can see all the motivational speeches in the world and still live life below our human potential. We can turn these presentations into just another commodity to consume. It’s true, we can watch every single TED talk ever recorded and still suck at life.

Motivation Alone is Not Enough

If we compare our opportunities – being literate, having access to a computer, living in a hopefully stable democracy (or living voluntarily abroad) – to those of billions of other people in the world, I think we should do a little more than that. In some sense, we have an obligation to do it, because we are part of the priviledged few. An obligation to change, because we can change.

Do we have to build a masterplan to save the planet right away? No. Do we all have to sell our crap and move to El Salvador (or India, or Sri Lanka), to help these poor people? I’m not sure about it. It’s an option, but who says “these poor people” want our help in the first place? It’s certainly not just up to us to decide on that, and history has provided some examples where our help resulted not being helpful at all. “The opposite of good is good intention”, as Kurt Tucholsky said. (Remember Haiti? The Western half of the island of Hispaniola, in the middle of the Caribbean? The first nation to declare independence in Latin America in 1804? The country where more than 230.000 people were killed in an earthquake earlier this year? After the catastrophe, Haiti was flooded by wanna-be helpers from the richer countries in the world that went there without having a clue on what to do. The water and food and shelter they needed was actually making things worse for the affected population. Not always well-intentioned help is the best solution.)

Fixing this planet is a big task to put on a single man’s to-do list. We may invest a whole lifetime and still fail. This is so scary that we prefer to fall into paralysis in front of our plasma TVs. But watching the whole Sopranos (again!) won’t make things better. What we can do is implement change in our own lives, one step at a time, and make a difference through that. We can start to become part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. We can consciously accept the limitations of our actions, the possibility of failure, and still listen to our hearts, listen to our intuition, and do the shit that has to be done. Stay foolish, even if this means leaving rhetorics aside, and staying hungry from time to time. Even if it means to risk being sorry rather than safe.

Fix the Planet (Yes, You!)

How can this be put into practice? As a friendly anarchist I believe that the answer to this question can only be given by yourself. I’m not here to tell you what to do. But in order to get you started, here are some pointers:

• Listen to your intuition. I cannot repeat this enough. You already know what’s right and wrong, if you’re honest with yourself.
• Take one of 100 small steps to save the environment.
• Get rid of your car and walk, bike, or use public transport.
• Eat less meat. If you love the taste of quality meat (like I do), consider becoming a weekday vegetarian.
• Raise consciousness about the problems we have.
• Start with a one human revolution and see where it takes you.
• Lead by example, but don’t force people to follow you.
• Stop buying crap. And stop selling crap. You need to make a living, but you can do it ethically!
• Understand that money, power and health are only subordinate goals. To reach happiness, they matter to some extent, but they are not central.
• Happiness is not a fixed status in your life. It is reached and maintained only through activity that is in line with your beliefs.
• Thus, get active. Follow your passion! At least if it’s not about bombing foreign countries.
• Work to live rather than live to work. Find the balance between idleness and action.
• Use your energy to do good to other people, but respect their uniqueness and that their views and beliefs may differ from yours.

Defying Death

Is this the recipe for saving the Earth? I don’t know. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give it a try. As a minimum, we should get clear about one thing: Our expectations of security aren’t worth a damn. Just because a task looks too big to get it done in a day, it doesn’t mean we should procrastinate and ignore it forever. We can always start by changing our own lives. We can always start by building teams, groups, tribes and handle that thing together. But whatever way we decide to pursue, we have to start with one single step, or we will lose our lives about it.

In his commencement address, Steve Jobs is delightfully clear about one issue: All of us will die, rather sooner than later. At one point of the speech, he says: “We are already naked. We have nothing to lose.” This reminds me of a favorite saying of my Colombian buddy Juan, who celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year: “Yo nací en cuero!”, Juan says, “I was born naked.” We all were. And naked we will die. What we do in between is up to us. It might as well be something worth our while.

Did you enjoy reading this post? Sharing it won’t save the planet, but it would certainly brighten up my day. Thanks in advance!

Featured Comment by James: “I feel I should defend rationality […]. Businesses, politicians, etc. rationalize their actions and choices based on what they believe in, but that’s not the same as actually being rational, or logical. I actually think most people don’t think rationally enough (put their emotions or feelings to one side and actually look at the evidence in front of them). It doesn’t take much clinical thinking to see where your life, the life of others and the state of the world in general, can be improved. Yet most won’t make the changes because of fear, because it doesn’t match with their beliefs, because of the herd mentality, it clashes with their ideological values, it’s too hard, etc. […]“

There certainly is a case to be made for experts. When it comes to heart surgery, I absolutely want the doctor to be a specialist, an expert, and to know what he’s doing. I wouldn’t want to have it done by a heart surgery enthusiast that discusses days and nights in online bulletin boards about what scalpel to use for the cut, but doesn’t have the practical skills it takes to get the job done, i.e. my life saved.

On the other hand, not everybody wants to be a heart surgeon. Nor does everybody want to specialize in drinking water treatment or nuclear power plants. And while there definitely exists a justified need for experts in these and some other areas, if everybody in society decided to specialize in just one thing, we would be doomed pretty fast. People would get so involved in their respective fields of expertise that they wouldn’t be able to communicate with each other anymore, resulting in what the Germans call a world of “fachidioten”: Specialists that know more and more about less and less, and thus have difficulties to work in teams that treat larger issues.

So probably, there’s also a case to be made for enthusiasts, amateurs, and dilettantes, and it’s my hypothesis that it’s a great time to be one.

10.000 Hours of Dilettantism & 80% Greatness

The word “dilettantism” comes from the Latin “delectare”, that simply means “to delight”. Originally referring to a lover of the fine arts, a connoisseur, its neutral or even positive meaning nowadays got widely replaced by a deprecative one: The term dilettante is used as as an insult for someone dabbling in an art or field of knowledge outside of his main activities, and implies he’s doing it poorly.

Of course it’s true that you have to put a lot of effort into any given field to become good at it. Widely known is the “10.000-hour rule” presented by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. Gladwell claims that to excel in something, you have to put the hours in – that is, approximately 10.000 of them. If only after so many hours you become a master in a field, this is truly a strong argument for a world of experts.

Or – isn’t it? If we break it down, 10.000 hours can mean that if you do just one thing for ten hours a day for nearly three years, you’ll become great at it – but you could also put in only two hours a day into five different things and need less than 14 years to become a master in all five. Now, while you’ll get certainly even better in that one thing by doing only that for all 14 years, getting 80% great in many different fields may be an interesting alternative at least to some of us.

While there’s nothing wrong with studying an issue in depth (I did that for over a year with the creation myths of a Colombian indigenous community, becoming at least 1/3 of an expert), the world also needs people who are able to associate different areas of expertise and look at the wider picture. Maybe you’re one of them because the idea of doing one thing (and one thing only!) in your life just seems a bit too boring. Or maybe you’re aiming to protect yourself from falling victim to uselessness in the moment you get sacked from your present job: If you only know about the narrow tasks related to your current position, finding something new in case of dismissal can become difficult. So it’s probably good to widen your knowledge and become a happy amateur in different fields, not caring about the insults that you might have to suffer. But whatever your reason may be to become deliberately dilettante, chances are you fear not so much to be labeled as a one, but to die of hunger because of not knowing how to make a living.

The Dilettantic Blogger (And the Money Question)

Originally, dilettantes weren’t distinguished from professionals and experts by the quality of what they did, but by doing it without pecuniary interest. Dilettantic artists generally were noblemen that just didn’t depend on earning a living with their endeavors – which neither did mean that what they did was bad, nor ruled out the possibility of making some money anyway.

Nowadays, the money issue becomes more pressing. Most of us don’t have any castles to live in without financial problems, and while normal jobs may bore us, a monthly paycheck can be quite attractive. But in recent times some great opportunities opened up for dilettantic bloggers, artists, micro entrepreneurs and career renegades, resulting in a cult of the amateur that some see as an evil thing – while I personally couldn’t be happier with it. (While the naysayers worry about us being stuck in a world of dilettantes, my only advice would be to avoid jerks that call themselves experts while in reality just being … well, jerks. But that’s true for consulting companies all over the planet and certainly not a problem of web 2.0.)

Being a blogger often is a typical dilettantic occupation: We follow our passion and become active just because we want to express and discuss the things that occupy our minds and hearts. Interestingly, many bloggers have managed to convert their passions into hard cash, and this is something that fascinates and motivates many of us even further.

The thing with making money as a blogger of course is that it generally requires a specialization in itself: If you focus on a niche it becomes a lot easier to congregate an audience of potential clients. But the good thing is that you are the person to choose your niche. It can be anything that interests you, even if you’re not (yet) an expert. Also, you can write in more than one niche – ideally on different blogs. You can earn money with blogging itself, or rather use your writings to support your micro business. You can launch several products in several areas, as long as you have the willpower and the time. You don’t have to become a professional blogger or entrepreneur right from the start – or, for that matter, ever – either, as you can take it on while being employed, doing freelance work in other areas, or studying and living at home.

This means that you are free to decide upon your personal approach to pursue and how to integrate dilettantism into your life deliberately: Following the broader approach of 10.000-hours mastership in different fields outlined above would be just one of them. You could also excel in one field – and be a dilettante in some others, like Jacob Burckhardt suggested. Or you could even mix two fields of knowledge and become an expert dilettante in the combination of them.

Life as a Dilettantic Experiment

For me, the most important point of being a dilettante is the great opportunity to experiment without fearing the consequences – other than dying of hunger because of lacking a backup plan, that is.

On deciding to cut a path of dilettantic location-independent lifestyle design, I never know where I’ll be in a year, or even in a month. But at the same time, I am able to work towards my goals “from a whole bunch of angles in a whole bunch of ways” and have a deep trust in that something will hit. (If I end up starving on the road, I’ll let you know in a tweet!)

While it probably isn’t in line with the recommendations of your vocational counselors, this and other dilettantic approaches to life provide a great opportunity to live joyfully, instead of working as a money making machine for some shareholders you don’t really care about.
Especially thanks to recent developments on the web, dilettantes have a big level playing field and can make weird products, texts and artworks no company or gallery would ever back, without making bigger investments. Learning by doing has never been so easy.

As a dilettante, you work with a complete openness of results, like only few professionals do in well-financed lab or office contexts. But while a scientist has many lab rats to experiment with, the thing about life is that we only got one. This often prevents us from trying the things we are interested in, due to perceived danger. I think that taking a dilettantic approach towards it is what allows us to abolish what sociologist Richard Sennett calls “the great modern taboo”: Fear of failure.

On the one hand, a dilettante knows very well that he will suck at anything when he’s just starting out. On the other hand, even ultimate failure in one field won’t be the end of the world, because he always has other areas he likes to engage in, and other things that call his attention. Quite the contrary of the fear-paralyzed society, a dilettante can enjoy failure, because it allows him to refocus, learn something and further develop himself as a person. While he is indeed able to put all his energy into one thing, it’s not as if his life depended on it. Dilettantes are free to try, free to do, and also free to discard a thing if it doesn’t work.

In the end, if you achieve stunning results in an area, that’s great – if not, you’re also fine, as long as you are able to sustain yourself somehow. When Cody McKibben writes about living a great life for little money in Thailand and I ramble about how to have a great time in the Caribbean on a 200 dollar budget, we’re exactly into this field of experimentation that I find to be so valuable.

Because of being open towards whatever may result, inventions, discoveries and ideas created by dilettantes can well bring a positive change not only in one limited area, but in a much broader sphere. In this sense, dilettantes may be the real experts of experimentation. If you have not already tried to live deliberately dilettante, why not give it a shot and dabble into something new today?

Recently, I enjoyed reading a critical post on the limiting definition of art as work over at The Department of Aesthetics. As you might imagine, I totally agree with the author’s rejection of understanding art merely as art-work. As Randall Szott outlines in the post, this restrictive view may well be a consequence of our whole work-centred mindset. In my opinion, this is leading to a partial blindness that may prevent us from experiencing not only art, but also life in general in its fullness.

Randall’s post also reminded me to idle-think a bit more about a topic that was on my mind for quite some time already. It’s the notion of the “consistent body of work” that artists are supposed to produce – and what’s all the buzz about it. Because fact is that critics, gallery owners and artists alike will glowingly praise the great consistency in the “work” of Artist X, while at the same time making fun about the pitiful attempts of wanna-be Artist Y to accomplish this, failing in executing and editing his stuff.

While I reject the concept of “wanna-be”, I’m certainly a dilettante artist. In fact, I’m deliberately dilettante. But this fact notwithstanding, I think it’s time to ask if absence of consistency always has to be a flaw. I personally don’t care about consistent bodies of art, not because it’s too hard to make them, but because they get damn boring all too fast.

Consistency and Commercialization

Why exactly is it necessary to be consistent as an artist? Is it because of an inherent constraint of beauty, or just because of some collector wanting to buy your stuff only as long as it fits into his living room, while assuring an ever-growing resale value?

In the end, if you create 20 pieces of art, mixing collages and paintings and illustrations (I call them skribbles) and diary entries and ready-mades and sculptures and performances and concept art and net art and a whole lot of other stuff nobody even has invented yet, and all of them merge different styles and techniques, bringing together a variety of materials and currents, and if all these pieces are excellent, who the fuck cares about consistency?

The money people do. The gatekeepers do. And they want you to care, too.

Gerhard Richter, one of the most successful living artists, describes his view on consistency and the consequences in an interview: “I always hated those artists who were so consistent and had this sort of unified development; I thought it was terrible. I never worked at painting as if it were a job; it was always out of interest or for fun, a desire to try something. […] When I was struggling financially, when I had trouble with Heiner Friedrich, I couldn’t be with the gallery any longer, and I had to leave. At that time, I became a teacher. I would do different jobs. I didn’t want to have to make paintings I would be paid for, nor did I want to have to be nice to a dealer-although I am very nice.”

Although you as an artist might reject the limitations imposed on you by the demand for consistency, it’s just a lot easier for gallery owners and merchants to pigeonhole you and say, “Artist X is the guy that paints impressionistic visions of LSD trips in oil”. If you’re not consistent, Richter noticed, don’t expect to make money with your art on the short hand. Galleries won’t support you anymore, and only teaching and other jobs will eventually allow you to make a living.

The Beauty of Inconsistency in the Internet Age

So are inconsistent artists doomed forever? Do you have to become a taxi driver wash dishes to support yourself, if you’re not willing to play by the rules of a work- and commerce-centred society?

Hell no! The good news is that we’re living in a Worldwide Wonderland. Each day, thousands of people get connected for the first time to the internet. So if you don’t care too much about gallery owners and merchants and money people and other gatekeepers, you may as well put all the stuff you do on some website and let the people decide. While this is not an easy route to take, it certainly is possible to earn some money and find your bunch of true fans through the web. (Or, if you’re not into money at all, you can just keep your art for yourself and burn it when it annoys you. Richter did that, after trying a whole range of styles and forms of expression many decades ago in Western Germany.)

Of course, the reasons for ignoring the critics are the same as they were before the internet: Trying to be consistent all the time can be to your creativity what’s a tin of bug spray to a cockroach. Fatally killing deadly lethal, that is. Photographer Guy Tal describes the implications of accommodating to the critic’s requirements on his weblog: “A sad consequence of […] narrow-minded criticism is that many would-be multi-talented artists end up crippling their own creative avenues under the dictum that they need “more focus”.”

Dedicating ones time to optimize a certain technique is one thing. Experimenting another. And probably it’s just me, but I see no evil in doing the latter and following your muses. I don’t get the point why even art schools force their applicants to be consistent, if what they should be doing is to encourage experimentation. Only by trying new things and by producing as relentlessly as they possibly can, young artists will be able to bring some change and excitement to the art world. And when you think about artists like Picasso or Rauschenberg, did they care about consistency? Or did they just keep moving, putting out stuff, and kicking some ass?

These actions are certainly easier to take once people already pay millions for your stuff. But it’s nonetheless true (and probably even more so!) for beginning and emerging artists. If the critics hate you, they may be right. Or they may be completely wrong. Think about that, and if you come to the conclusion that the latter is true, just follow your gut and forget about consistency. Because once you look back in life, the greatest time you have is when you forget about trying to please others and just go for the things you really care about. In the end, this will not only make you a better artist, but also a happier person.

Personal note: I am happy to announce the release of my newest photo series, “The Vacations you always wanted: An Inquiry into Escapism”. It was shot between 2003 and 2009 in Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, El Salvador, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, the Netherlands, the USA and Venezuela. Taken with a bunch of different cameras in a bunch of different occasions, I tried to avoid consistency as much as I could. You are cordially invited to view the series over at BLUE LIES. (Due to the large amount of data, please allow half a minute for preloading. Consider it the time you would spend in a traffic jam on the way to a real-world gallery.)

I would love to hear your opinion and thoughts on the series and this post in the comments.

This morning, I enjoyed reading a post by Oscar Del Ben about the necessity of providing value in blogging. Think twice about what you want to write, think twice about how to write it, think twice about hitting the “Publish” button – and always have in mind the value you provide. Because people are receiving way too much information already, and you don’t want to mess with them. If you ask for their attention, better bring something noteworthy.

Although I generally agree with this recommendation, it also entails a problem: Value lies in the eye of the beholder. While I enjoy surfing around the comic section of Arthur Magazine from time to time, others may find it completely stupid. But then, I am not much into buying penis enlargement pills, while apparently a lot of other people are. So if you only focus on providing value to other people, you can easily become predictable and boring. I think that’s because everybody is trying to find out about this value thing – and often draws some inspiration from other blogs. While this can lead to the creation of great content, it also may result in producing meaningless repetitions of old stuff that was useful once, but is not anymore. Carlos Miceli referred to this when he advocated to avoid echo online. If your post is just a repetition of a repetition of a repetition, it’s meaningless. Provide a new angle or trash it. Or better still, don’t even start to write it.

This means: Learn to be silent. Silence is the way of the idle blogger, and silence may provide much more value than you think. It saves you work and it saves people time. It’s a win-win situation.
Of course you want people to come to your site, you want to engage in the discussion that’s going on. That’s fine. But be sure to provide new insights. Don’t get distracted by some bloggers that are repeating themselves over and over again. Don’t get dazzled by large numbers of subscribers. Start an information diet, blind the noise out, focus on signals.

And if you decide to really raise your voice, don’t just focus on providing value to others. Because you cannot always know what will be valuable to them. You’re not a market research department. You’re a blogger. And as a blogger, you have the right to be deliberately dilettante and do what sparks your interest. As long as you’re original and honest, and as long as you focus on the quality of your texts in a sense of craftsmanship, you can do whatever you want. (Well, you actually could also copy stuff, be dishonest, and write in an ugly style. But then you would be a spammer, not a blogger.) As Oscar puts it, don’t be afraid of change. Move into new directions and provide new points of view, even though they may appear ridiculous at first. I’m an idler that engages in activism. Is this a contradiction, is it derangement? Or is it a paradox you can live by? Who am I to tell? I just seek to write good posts. Give it a try. If it doesn’t bring you more readers, it will make you a better writer at least.

At the beginning of your blog, you just don’t have a clear readership. Many business bloggers recommend focussing on your target audience. I say: Forget your target audience. People are coming to you from everywhere and you don’t have much control over it: They may be friends looking what you’re up to. They may be employers checking you out before hiring you. They may be twitterers that have never heard of you before. They may be lonely Googlers that yet have to start to engage in a community. Be open to them. Be original. Be honest. Maybe they will connect and maybe they won’t, but in the end, you will never know if you don’t give it a try. You can never be sure what synapses get stimulated by your writings in the brains other people. Just avoid endless repetitions, provide quality over quantity, lay back, and look what happens. This might be a valuable approach to Idle Blogging at last.