"Meaning is the new money."
~Daniel H. Pink
According to Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (Riverhead Books 2005), it is now artists, creative writers, designers, and other so-called right-brain dominant thinkers who are winning in the market place.
In his well-researched and highly-accessible book, Pink asserts that this era of Abundance, Asia, and Automation has turned American "knowledge workers" into dinosaurs.
Because Target, Walmart, and our corner super-super grocery stores now offer us an overwhelming number of choices on the cheap, Pink explains that price point is no longer a major factor in the market place. It is not material quality that counts anymore, he says.
It is design. Art. Beauty.
Says Pink, in a world where Target now partners with bona fide designers to create its own lines of clothing (Isaac Mizrahi), home furnishings (Michael Graves), and make up (Sonia Kashuk), Kohl's and kmart (no longer the Big K) can only hope to catch up.
Then there is this: according to Pink, what was once considered a point of both pride and practicality--receiving a degree in math or science, before going on to become a computer programmer, a doctor, or an engineer is now not so smart.
Cheap Asian labor means American computer programmers who once earned, on average, $50,000 or more, are being replaced by college educated Indians who, with their $14,000 earnings a year, can live The Good Life in Mumbai.
And when an American accountant earns $5,000 a month and a Philippino one earns $300; when an American computer chip designer earns $7,000 per month and an Indian one earns $1,000; and when an American aerospace engineer earns $6,000 per month and a Russian one earns $650, says Pink, such outsourcing is here to stay.
Automation is the final peg to Pink's poisonous troika: computers now not only are capable of automating most rote functions, but can also be used to perform tasks as complex as writing software. Reports Pink, "Where a typical human being...can write about four hundred lines of computer code per day [the British software company] Appligenics applications can do the same amount of work in less than a second (p.44, A Whole New Mind)."
What is left, argues Pink, is actually what is right: Americans who formerly banked on their left brain lobe must now cash in on their right one if they are to succeed.
The so-called "left brain aptitudes", those easily sliced and diced units we love to measure with SAT's, LSAT's, and MCAT's before turning their owners into CPA's, JD's, and MD's, will still remain important, says Pink.
But, it's the marriage of these steelier qualities to the squishy portions of ourselves, or as Pink outlines them: design, story, symphony (seeing the big picture), empathy, play, and meaning, that will save the day.
He cites many examples of this "revolutionary" pairing, including how several prominant training hospitals have begun stipulating that medical students take art history and English literature courses because faculty have noticed that studying paintings develops an eye for detail and understanding narrative makes it easier to capture essential information when patients "tell their story."
Even though I am gripped with the urge to respond, "No duh!" when being told that listening to what people have to say is a way to know what they are trying to tell me, I agree with Pink that empathy's "time has come".
So then why am I, an unrepentant bohemian of the business world, wrinkling my brow instead of setting the Veuve Cliquot on ice?
First, there is this little matter of counting the costs incurred by the reflexive marginalization of at least half of the members of our society because of their softer sides.
In devaluing what is different and unquantifiable (everything right brained) about ourselves as a nation and as individuals for so long, we've created a class of people who have turned to entitlement for succor: artists who feel misunderstood; gays who feel alienated; minorities who feel unappreciated; women who feel used.
But it is not only the "special" people who pay the price for this social lobotomy; it is every one of us.
Here is why:
Since Merriam Webster defines insanity as the state of being "mentally disordered", it's fair to say that our national love affair with left-headedness has loosed a torrent of insanity that affects every level of government, business, and community relations in this country.
Rather than balance the schizophrenic set of voices searing through our collective head, where one voice shouts that all is relative and nothing is sacred, and another demands that there is only one fundamental answer, we have allowed claims from both sides that "life in America is unfair" to drown out the subtle, but deep and rich, voice of Reason.
If Reason could be heard above the din of our chauvinism (which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as "the prejudiced belief in the superiority of one's own kind) I suspect it would point out to us that despite--or perhaps because of--our nation's half-headed approach to solving problems, we've done our best to try for "fair"--as evidenced by the billions of federal, state, and local dollars spent on social programs every time people in our nation say they've gotten the bum's rush.
Public education, public broadcasting, public assistance, public housing, arts and humanities funding, Social Security--no matter how much money we throw at them, one side or the other remains angry and we grow further derranged as a country.
This is not to say there is no pain and suffering in our world or our nation. We Americans know that and so we continue turning to our uniquely humane spirit of goodness and compassion in an attempt to make life equitable.
But, as Albert Einstein, who arguably walked that diaphanous line between genius and insanity, said: "Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result." (With apologies to the 12 Steppers, Bill W. did not say this first.)
So, then isn't it fair to say that our methods of trying to make life fair in this country are insane?
Perhaps, Reason might gently reassure us, what we seek is not for life to be fair, but even. Maybe it's time to even the--no, not the score--the tones, like in a picture. Not all black, not all white, but a blending of the two for shades of gray--and a more real picture.
That does sound reasonable, doesn't it?
Better hold off on that bubbly.
Until we honestly acknowledge the consequences, good and bad, resulting from how we've chosen to think--or not to think--as Americans, we risk losing the real opportunity before us: determining what matters most to us as individuals and as Americans.
Put another way, if as Pink asserts, meaning is to be the new money in America, we might want to have some way to describe it.
How's this: a wholly-functioning brain, and thus, a wholly-functioning economy, and--dare I dream it?--a wholly functioning government.
Enter design. Art. Beauty.
But, after decades of half-baked thinking in this nation, are we really prepared to integrate the mystical and mysterious powers of our collective right brain in this new era in Humanity's Search for Meaning?
I don't think we have the tools.
In our narrow-minded (or, shall we say, "demi-mindedness"?) state, we have removed any traces of who we are as a people in this country. Whether it is by turning over our fairy tales, including our Native American and other indiginous creation stories, to Disney; or by decimating any reference to our shared Christian, Judeo, and Muslim Abrahamic heritage by practically outlawing the Bible in our public schools, we have very little available to help teach us about our common humanity.
In addition to forever implanting only Hollywood's mostly vapid images of our common stories into the imaginations of our children, rather than empowering children to read for themselves the words on the page in order to stir the pathos in their secret souls, most commercialized renditions of who these blockbusters tell us we are usually paint a picture of shallow, wise cracking know-it-all "heroes" who might undergo an epiphanal experience.
Even so, much of the story's intended wisdom is either made overtly literal and thus overtly sappy, or is missing all together.
Along with Greek classics, Norse myths, and our own American legends like Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed, Bible stories were once commonly read to our nation's children because they contain the wisdom of ages, not just of a specific religion. Educators once freely relied upon these stories to help students mark their place on the continuum of human experience.
Such tales once assured us, however consciously or subconsciously, that we are not the first to ask about the meaning of life. They taught us that if we pay attention to the details, we can find the clues and symbols that help us find the answers we seek.
But in the interest of being meticulously fair (How left brained!), not wanting to appear biased towards one faith over another, rather than deepen the wealth of our own traditions by incorporating the "newly discovered" tales of others, we sterilized our curricula and washed away the collective byways we once traced between our hearts and minds.
What remains besides legions of dry, uninteresting textbooks that assure students that the world is filled with insurmountable problems like global warming, over-population and nuclear proliferation but gives them no psychic tools--our myths and legends--with which to cope with the despair this view of the world causes?
The answer: a generation of people who, because they have been given precious little to help them establish value and meaning in their lives, now largely rely upon anti-depressants to staunch the flow of anxiety they feel that perhaps in life, there really isn't any meaning--no matter how much money they have.
We are numb, and waking up is hard to do.
That's why, despite being largely impressed with Pink's book, I believe his dilettante-ish exercises (Write a mini-saga! Consume experiences! Tell someone a story!) intended to meld the Left with the Right, fall short of preparing readers for the bigger implications of his claim that the Conceptual Age will transform the world.
Put another way: as the Right Brain elbows her way into our collective consciousness, America is birthing a new way of being.
And, uh, giving birth hurts. (Especially without the drugs.)
But birth also has the potential to strengthen the resolve and maturity of the ones who create the new life.
And, since the strongest relationships are the ones where both sides agree about what role money, er, meaning, plays in the mix, perhaps the marriage of Mr. Left Brain to Ms. Right Brain will make for innovations in how our national commerce is spent on making things "fair."
This might take a while. Better pour myself that drink.
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