Podcast Wednesday: On Being
We live in a world that is recreating itself one life and one digital connection at a time. On this landscape for which there are no maps, Seth Godin is a singular thought leader and innovator in what he describes as our post-industrial “connection economy.” Rather than merely tolerate change, he says, we are all called now to rise to it. We are invited and stretched in whatever we do to be artists — to create in ways that matter to other people.
“MR. GODIN: Exactly, Krista. So the Industrial Revolution paid this magical dividend, which is by being part of organization and by doing what we were told, which is inherently safe, we could get rich. I discovered a couple weeks ago the story of Yuri Gagarin, the first guy in space. And the thing that’s extraordinary about it is he grew up in a mud hut with no windows and no electricity. So in the course of one lifetime, in 30 years, someone goes from a mud hut with no electricity to orbiting the planet in a spaceship. And that for me is the promise of the industrial age. Which was we said to people whose parents or grandparents were poor — do this and we will make you rich. And it’s safe and school will support you and society will support you. So that’s what all of us have as our ancestral memory of what you’re supposed to do. And suddenly, really suddenly, we replaced this with a new order, a new way of doing business, where we’re saying to people, guess what those ideas we used to play with are more important than ever. And that coglike obedience that we taught you in second grade and fifth grade and 10th grade, that stuff we don’t think is valuable anymore. And what we’re seeing is that most people who are making an impact, they’re doing it despite what they learned in school, not because of what they learned in school. And if I sit down with a bunch of seventh graders, or first graders, and ask them to brainstorm or raise their hand or innovate or make something, they find it way easier than when I sit down with a bunch of college students.”