Create or Criticize?
In a recent fiery Email exchange with Gawker employee Ryan Tate, Apple CEO Steve Jobs closed with a bold and meaningful question. Tate had been arguing with Jobs over a number of Apple’s recent policies. In response to Tate’s critical opposition, jobs wrote:
“By the way, what have you done that’s so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?”
Regardless of whether you’re a fan of Jobs and Apple, the point stands on it’s own. Our modern society has created an overwhelming surplus of editors but a shortage of creators. This extreme imbalance between creators and consumers causes numerous issues. One is an extreme sense of entitlement which stems from a misunderstanding of the creative process. Since content is so easily and massively available, we assume that it is easy to create. We end up replacing respect for the creator with an expectation that our wants should be catered to without any contribution on our part. This disregard discourages today’s potential Einstein’s and Edison’s. We learn at a young age, in our modern world, that to create takes enormous (and often unappreciated) risk.
Many Consumers, but few Creators
Now, despite a desire to change the tides of our society, and aside from my own views of our degeneration, the real reason I’m writing this is because there’s a principal that all creative types have learned: creating is the most rewarding and fulfilling experience we can have as humans. Opposed to this is also the principal that to destroy is always easier than to create. Thus, we’re constantly betwixt two choices, namely happiness and ease.
Happiness vs. Ease
You can very easily choose to take the low road and use your energy to criticize and belittle. It takes little or no personal investment so you lose nothing. Where nothing is given, nothing is returned. Essentially, the creative process is a choice to live by the law of the harvest; you reap what you sow! Of course, you can decide not to sow, since that requires work, and perhaps failure. Then again, if you choose that route you can have no expectation of harvest. Thus, as any who’ve seen the fruit of their labor will tell you, the work is always worth it because some return is always better than no return.
Some return is always better than no return
An important consideration: we should plant the seeds that are going to yield a crop we desire. Nobody would plant a salsa garden if they hated Mexican food. In like manner, we do not all need to exercise creativity by becoming painters. Though for some painting may be the most rewarding endeavor, for others it may be just as fulfilling to write, to build, to invent, or to bring people together. Creating a solid human being by raising a child is just as much a creative process as writing a song, but they are very different.
