The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

by Seth Godin

It’s not art if the world (or at least a tiny portion of it) isn’t transformed in some way. And it’s not art if it’s not generous. And most of all, it’s not art if there’s no risk. The risk isn’t the risk of financial ruin (though that might be part of it). No, the risk is the risk of rejection. Of puzzlement. Of stasis. Art requires the artist to care, and to care enough to do something when he knows that it might not work.

Today, in the face of the greatest revolution of our time, we are all artists. Or at least we all have the opportunity to be artists. The only thing holding us back is us.

Art is personal. Art is untested. Art is intended to connect. Personal because it must reflect the artist. Something the artist believes or wants to say or do or change. Untested because art is original. The second time is a performance at best. And intended to connect because art unshared is invulnerable, selfish, and ultimately pointless.

If your work can’t fail because it was never designed to connect, then I respectfully say that you might have had fun creating something beautiful, but it’s not art. Just as you can’t have heads without tails, you can’t have the bright light of artistic success without the scary risk of failing to connect.

One ghetto that we used to reserve for artists was the idea that they made luxury items, entertainments and objects that had nothing to do with productivity or utility.

not every organization gets it. Most are still stuck measuring the wrong things.

The linchpin is the cornerstone of a project, the responsibility taker, the one we would miss if she were gone. The artist is almost certainly a linchpin, but I’m adding another dimension here—it turns out that expending emotional labor, working without a map, and driving in the dark involve confronting fear and living with the pain of vulnerability. The artist comes to a détente with these emotions and, instead of fighting with them, dances with them.

While it’s human nature to ask for a guarantee that our labor will be rewarded, the emotional labor that needs to be done offers no guarantees. Which is precisely why it’s labor.

We accept the grinding banality of sameness, of compliance, of sitting still in a cubicle or swallowing our pride in a meeting. We call this work, and we’ve been told to suck it up, because it’s our job. But when the fear of art shows up, suddenly we panic and flee.

Let me show you how pervasive the industrial mind-set is. If I show you a political tract or a blog post or a remarkable new poduct with text that contains a typo, what’s your first reaction? If all you can do is say, “You’re missing an r in the second paragraph,” you’ve abandoned your humanity in favor of becoming a spell checker. Compliance over inspiration. Sure, yes, please, let’s kill all the typos. But first, let’s make a difference. Correct is fine, but it is better to be interesting.

One side of the line says, “I’m an artist, I’m okay with the pain, I commit to the strategy, I will make a ruckus.” The other side says, “Hide me.” I believe the line is an essential tool—it grounds us and gives us the leverage to figure out where to go next (and helps us get there). If your bias is to hide, then making art will always feel like an elusive goal, a temporary detour. On the other hand, once you’ve crossed over and agreed to live this life, then the only way to deal with art is to make more art.

I explained that she had already explored all the things that were inside her comfort zone, and in a competitive market she was going to have to stretch the boundaries of how she would engage the marketplace.

It’s what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view. Moving your comfort zone when the safety zone changes isn’t easy, but it’s better than being a victim.

Everyone you interact with is changed forever. The only questions are: How will they be different? and How different will they be?

Amazon turned its customers into people who are restless with online stores that don’t work quite as well or quite as quickly. Henry Ford turned his customers from walkers into drivers.

The industrialist doesn’t think a lot about interactions or change. He focuses on filling today’s need at the highest yield. The artist, though, is obsessed with connection and thus change. You are not the same person you were a year ago. Are you more cynical? More skilled? Who have you become?

Answering Schrage’s question honestly gives you a chance to describe the change you want to see in the world. Not at the Henry Ford industrial-scale level, of course. No, but even if you connect with six people, you are changing them. Changing them how? Whom do you want them to become?

I’d like you to become an artist. To make connections that matter. That’s my mission.

Do not expect applause. Accept applause, sure, please do. But when you expect applause, when you do your work in order to get (and because of) applause, you have sold yourself short. When your work depends on something out of your control, you have given away part of your art. If your work is filled with the hope and longing for applause, it’s no longer your work—the dependence on approval in this moment has corrupted it, turned it into a process in which you are striving for ever more approval. This is tricky, so bear with me. There’s a huge difference between the shallow pleasure of instant applause and the long-lasting impact of true connection. It’s easy to market and manipulate your way into the quick smile or the Broadway-theater obligatory standing ovation. What’s more difficult is to do the less-congratulated work of getting under someone’s skin, of changing the conversation, and of being missed when you’re gone.

we don’t blame the nail for breaking the hammer or blame the water for leaking from the pot. If the audience doesn’t like this work enough to connect, there’s a mismatch. Perhaps this is the wrong work for the wrong group. Don’t fix it by pandering for a quick ovation. Fix it by going deeper.

If it’s finished, the applause, the thanks, the gratitude are something else. Something extra and not part of what you created. If you play a beautiful song for two people or a thousand, it’s the same song, and the amount of thanks you receive isn’t part of that song.

evanescent

Myths and dreams come from the same place. . . . A myth is the society’s dream. —Joseph Campbell

Myths aren’t about gods (real ones or imagined). They are about us. They are about humans acting human but doing it while wearing the cloaks of gods, of legendary figures. Myths highlight the very best of ourselves (and sometimes the worst). These stories don’t spread because a king or despot insists that we hear them and memorize them. No, we engage with and remember and resonate with myths because they’re about our favorite person, our best possible self. Myths aren’t myths at all. They are mirrors, paths to walk, and bars to be exceeded.

The forgotten part of the original story of Icarus was a powerful talisman, a reminder to avoid selling ourselves short, a reminder to honor the opportunities in front of us.

Our parents’ myths, though, came from a very different place. For them it was the threat of annihilation coming from the Kremlin, the bright promise of college, and the legendary power of the corporation that created the stories we were told. These new sources of power (and risk) led to a very different set of modern myths. We told stories of a different sort of industrial outcome, myths about fitting in and obedience and not getting too uppity. And these myths resonated with our parents (and with us) because they made us feel like there was a path available for us to take. They resonated because society reflected the modern myths at the same time that it enforced them. The myths of the company man and the college boy and the jock and the happy homemaker were swallowed whole. We saw in them the dreams society had for us, and we made those dreams our dreams. In fact, they were our faith. We believed in the promise and accepted the offer of the industrialist. “We will do this if you will give us that.” This is why Betty Friedan and George Carlin were such a threat. They had the guts to challenge the modern faith of the industrial regime. Within a generation, the Homeric myths of bravery and guts were supplanted by the workaday unbrave myths of Leave It to Beaver and Archie Bunker. Sure, there were still superheroes in the comic books hidden under our beds, but these heroes were never meant to be us—they were the idle pastimes of boys who hadn’t yet come to realize that the a...

Propaganda at its best is mythlike. Soviet posters urging hard work, Nazi films celebrating national unity. Corporate training films that soft-pedal but insist on compliance in the name of diversity. Modern, corporate stories are increasingly part of our lives, and the creators of these stories would like you to believe that they are just like myths—resonant stories about our true selves. It’s the opposite. These aren’t myths at all. Propaganda is a set of stories about what someone in power would like you to be. What they’re insisting you become. Propaganda in the industrial age has created generations who believe that consistent obedience to the powerful is part of who we are. One definition of propaganda: It benefits the teller, not the recipient.

Myths are about becoming more godlike and achieving our best. Propaganda, on the other hand, celebrates those in power and urges us to willingly comply with their desires.

Indian culture was manipulated, with a new ruling class inserted atop a millennium-old tradition of stratification. The English dominated India because they sold the Indians propaganda, not because they had better guns.

Popular culture as we understand it has been around since colonial times. It is informed by the economics that got us here in the first place. As a result, we have touchstones based on mercantilism, imperialism, and capitalism. The things that made us wealthy enough to have a pop culture also determined the way we see the world. Our factory-driven culture has worked overtime to sell us this propaganda: Don’t make trouble. Follow the leader. Fit in even when it hurts. Teamwork is what we call it when you do what the boss says. Settle down. Teach your children to obey. The tall poppy gets cut down; the tallest nail gets hammered. Trust the system to take care of you. Don’t fly too close to the sun.

Attention by other people is the most irresistible of drugs. To receive it outshines receiving any other kind of income. This is why glory surpasses power and why wealth is overshadowed by prominence

Whether the art is done for the glory or for the innate satisfaction it generates, art threatens those who would prefer to sell us a fear of hubris instead. We’ve been sold, and sold hard, on the appeal of the banality of factory work, and not just in our day jobs. While we occasionally celebrate the outliers, the mythological gods of our culture, it is always with the understanding that they are not us. You can be a fan of Prince, Leonard Bernstein, or Lady Gaga, but the rule is that you must understand that you have no chance of becoming them. They are gods of myth and you are merely a consumer.

The industrialist offers us a trade. We can trade in our loneliness for the embrace of the mob and trade our innate fears for a steady paycheck. We can trade our yearning for something great in exchange for the safety of knowing that we will be taken care of. In return, all he asks is that we give up our humanity. When you look at it clearly, it’s hardly a fair trade. Better, I think, to choose art, with all that it brings.

But pity the cute kid who gets anointed as the popular one or the class clown who discovers that a rude joke works or the facile actor who succeeds early and often in school plays. The feedback that comes from popularity in a popularity-obsessed system becomes an addiction. Soon the cuteness fades or the jokes get old or other, harder-working actors and musicians take the stage. Now what? How does the popular one stay popular? The cycle begins. Instead of artistry, she buys into the cycle of short-term pleasing. Instead of standing up for things he believes in, he calculates what the audience wants to hear right now.

The old system made you popular for fitting in. The new one gives you a chance to stand out.

Countless myths involve punishing a god (Loki, Satan, Theseus) for the sins of pride and disobedience.

Theseus,

It’s easy to see why those in power, those running the castle or the cathedral (or even the cottage), would want to spread the word about these disloyal behaviors, to warn us off from imagining that we could walk as the gods walk. Art, though, requires both pride and disobedience. The pride of creation and the disobedience of disturbing the status quo.

stultifying

Virtually every moment in industrial society presents another chance to be conditioned to do factory work, instead of challenging the status quo and making art that’s never been made before. All the immediate rewards go to those who increase productivity right now. If you want to find yourself making art, set up some new habits. Abandon the habit of avoiding negative notes in your e-mail (“Phew, everything’s still okay”), and replace it with the habit of measuring how many frontiers you crossed today.

Six Daily Habits for Artists Sit alone; sit quietly. Learn something new without any apparent practical benefit. Ask individuals for bold feedback; ignore what you hear from the crowd. Spend time encouraging other artists. Teach, with the intent of making change. Ship something that you created.

impresario?

If you owned a conference facility, what would you do with it? Of course, you could own it, at least a day at a time. If you could reach your audience, what would you say? Of course you can reach them, more easily and more effectively than ever before (not faster, though, but over time). If you could lead a tribe (customers, coworkers, fellow scientists), which tribe would you lead? The ability to create connections, establish events, and make something happen is more highly leveraged, faster, and cheaper than ever before.

The cog waits for instructions. The entrepreneur often needs an exit in sight. But the impresario takes what’s available and makes magic. It’s not necessarily about the money or even a business, and it’s certainly not about building an industrial empire. It might merely be about the joy of doing art. No, we’re not all entrepreneurs, not at all. But we are all able to be artists, and all artists are impresarios.

There are industrialists, who see the world as broken or fixed, and artists, who see the world as a series of projects to be built and connections to be made. Whether the projects work isn’t as important as how they’re built. Industrialists like things to be functional, and they admire competence, so the idea of breaking things on purpose by pursuing the new is threatening indeed. The industrialist asks, “How does this threaten me?” or perhaps “How can I use this to make gradual improvements in the systems I have?” Most of all, he asks, “Is it safe?” The artist wonders, “How can I break this?” or “Where is there an opportunity for me to change everything and make an impact?” Most of all, the question is “Is it interesting?”

Cassidy Dale

people are either knights or gardeners. The knights view the world as a cataclysmic conflict with winners and losers, with battles to be fought, and with right and wrong as the dominant drivers. Gardeners, on the other hand, have the instinct to look for ways to heal, to connect, and to grow the people they encounter. Thes...

Arnold T...

chronicled the dominant worldviews in dozens of civilizations over thousands of years and divided them into cultures that saw winners and losers and cultures tha...

The opportunity (and the challenge) is to temporarily suspend disbelief, put on the artist’s hat (beret?), and imagine what happens when you see the world of connection as an opportunity, as opposed to a problem to be solved.