‘What is a poet? An unhappy man who conceals profound anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so fashioned that when sighs and groans pass over them they sound like beautiful music.’ –Kierkegaard
You talk a lot in the book about the power of creativity and innovation, and I’m very sympathetic to that. But not everybody has creative jobs. What about those folks? Well, first of all, not everybody wants a creative job, either. I’ve met plenty of people in my life who really do want to come in at 9, be given a list of tasks they must accomplish; and they want to be able to go home when the clock strikes 5. They are not really interested in creativity. That’s fine. Or at least on the job. From your point of view, what about those who do seek to demonstrate their creativity and do not have an outlet in their workplace? As I say in the book, there are certainly plenty of people who have miserable jobs, miserable bosses. They may also have miserable home lives, as well. But when you look at the data, and if you take the United States in particular and ask, are you satisfied or pretty satisfied in your job, the numbers are pretty high. About 2/3 or more than 2/3 of the working population are satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs. Is it for me to judge whether you should be satisfied? The UPS man is trotting up to my door as we speak. He looks happy; pay is decent wages. Would I be happy? My back might ache after a couple of days on the job. The question is, in what kind of society, with what kind of political and economic system, are people given a greater choice among occupations? If you look back through history, we’ve been on this march towards more freedom; using Milton Friedman’s words, freedom to choose what sort of jobs. Back in olden times, if your father was a blacksmith, you would be a blacksmith; and your forefather was a blacksmith. Same is true of various vocations. We all know the reason families might have the surname Smith was because their entire family going back a thousand years in Europe were smiths and blacksmiths. We now no longer have those constraints, and I think that gives us greater opportunity for creativity, even if it turns out that there are discontented people, legitimately, who can’t quite figure out how to do it. I live in southern California, and they say every cab driver here has a screenplay in his trunk. He doesn’t want to be driving a cab. He wants Steven Spielberg to call him up for a meeting. Probably not going to happen. But is there another society, another form of economic matter that can make that more likely? I don’t really think so.
