Why I love innovation

Innovation produces many economic benefits. It generates many new products and creature comforts. On those merits alone it ought to be greatly valued.

But the truth is that although I enjoy these benefits of innovation, they are not the primary cause of my passion for innovation.

The reason I care so much about innovation is that innovation reflects the natural state of the human soul. (I'm using "innovation" as a verb here.) The human soul seeks to understand. It seeks to improve the world based on that understanding. It craves beauty, excellence, dignity and nobility. It pursues truth.

When people are stifled in their attempts to express the natural desire of their souls, they become depressed in a way. You can see them in their robotic drone-like state in many organizations. They become listless. They go through the motions but there is no real passion behind what they do. As Thoreau said "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." These people are more predictable. They are more easily managed. But they are barely human.

Setting up organizations to allow, or even encourage, people to pursue the natural desires of their souls leads to many salutary benefits. Most immediately, it breathes life and passion back into the quietly desperate. These newly energized people are happy. Not in some superficial sense of having the material comforts they need and a lack of external pressure. They are truly happy in the profoundest sense of the term. They are fully engaged. They are maximally productive. They might not be producing exactly what you wanted them to produce but, in the aggregate, they best contribute to human progress and towards the creation, development and maintenance of the most beautiful, noble, excellent and dignified world we can possibly have.

Oh yeah, they also turn out some really cool products and generate all that economic activity that makes the bean-counters happy.

No shoes

Something wonderful happened to me recently. It seemed too good to be true. And so I started thinking "when will the other shoe drop?"

So many of us spend far too much time wondering about when and how life will take a turn for the worse. This isn't healthy. And it's counterproductive.

Worrying about the future degrades your ability to live in the present. And not living well in the present degrades your future opportunities. So from a purely rational standpoint, it is far more productive to live your best now than to worry about the future. Let me be clear: I am not advocating an irresponsible worry-free life. This is not about "let us eat and drink for tomorrow we shall die." That is simply irrational escapism. It is no more intelligent than covering your eyes while driving so as to avoid an accident. What I am saying is that living life excellently will open up many doors to you and that you can only live excellently if you focus on what you are doing now. Distracting yourself with thoughts about future possibilities pulls you away from the very excellence that will ameliorate your future.

But worrying about the future does far more damage than simply to reduce your future value. Your present experiences are not just the keys to open doors you will chance upon in the future. Your present experiences become part of your soul. More accurately, your perceptions and interpretations of those experiences become part of your soul. When you are worrying about the possibility that there may be a chance that someday something bad might happen to you, you cast a shadow on everything you experience. You make it much more difficult to see beauty. And as life rolls on, your soul becomes gray and listless.

There is an alternative. You just refuse to focus on this. You take what comes your way and deal with it. When beauty crosses your path, you enjoy it. When you have occasion for laughter you grab it and shake loose every little peal. When love comes your way, you wrap yourself in it and luxuriate. And, when hard times come your way you deal with them too. But when you deal with them, you will be armed with a strong, vibrant soul.

And so, I have adopted a policy. The no-shoe policy. I will do my best to not think about or worry about any dropping shoes. I will live my life as best I can. Enjoy what the world graciously provides, try and accept whatever real limitations inhere in me or in nature. I will try and be smart and do what I can to create a better future but I will live in the world as it stands now and not in some imaginary world that might never come to be.

I invite you to adopt the no-shoe policy as well.

Of socks and the sublime

If you need your glasses or that missing sock, your best bet is to look for them.

But many of the most precious things in the world cannot be found by looking for them. In fact, looking for them almost guarantees that you will never find them.

You cannot write a beautiful poem by sitting down and searching for beautiful words and sentiments. You do not create beautiful music by looking for beautiful combinations of sounds. You cannot produce a beautiful photograph by looking for beautiful scenery. You do not experience transcendent moments of love, wisdom or the divine by carving out time and setting your mind to it.

These precious things flee from your efforts as fast as you try to catch them. While you are trying to hunt them down out there, they lodge themselves ever deeper in your soul - where they resided all along.

The poem, the music, the photo... they are not out there. You will expend your life in the search for this beauty if you look outside. They are inside of you. If you wish to find them you have to stop trying. You have to let go of your goals and objectives. You have to abandon your plans. You have to stop feeling so proud or confident in your skills. You have to take off the lenses that have helped you see so clearly the specks of dust that are on your eyes at the expense of the majesty of the world that lies just one inch in front of your face and stretches out forever within your grasp.

Yes, you have to prepare yourself for this beauty. To write a beautiful poem you must have a vocabulary. To produce a beautiful photo you must have a camera and know how to use it. But you do not find the scene that will become your beautiful photo. It finds you. It finds you if you are not looking. It finds you when your heart is open to it and your mind is clear.

When you quiet the voices inside your head that tell you this and that path to success, that encourage you to make your mark, that point out to you all of those people and circumstances that have robbed you of what should have been yours... Only then in the peace of not wanting or needing, of not looking for greatness and beauty, will beauty and greatness reveal themselves to you. It will come from within. You will know it right away. And whether you choose to share it with others in the form of a poem, a symphony or a photograph, it will be your beauty that they see.