How Colonialism Capitalism Taught Us We Can Only Do One Thing

[Music]

who are you

is your automatic response to that what

you do for work

and why is that our inclination

to assert that we bring value is to make

a bid for belonging

belonging is by no exaggeration a

necessity of survival

and we show we belong by how we can

contribute to our communities

we’ve always needed each other

to raise children to protect one another

dividing labor is one reason

anthropologists believe we survived

while our neanderthal cousins didn’t

while both male and female neanderthals

participated in dangerous big game

hunting

leaving fewer women to rare children

our predecessors delegated women to the

safer task of gathering

leaving more women to rare children

and as our tribes grew into larger

societies we carved out more niche roles

like religious leaders and handicraft

workers

but at one point

the intensification of specialized labor

increased drastically

the onset of colonialism and capitalism

marked the beginning of hyper

specialization

as european forces swept through africa

asia the americas and the caribbean they

reorganized the global economy

suddenly artisans and farmers with

diverse skill sets were cornered into

producing limited raw goods for export

for example

under control of the british east india

company

indian finished goods like cotton

muslins were taxed up to 70 percent by

britain

while raw goods like raw cotton weren’t

taxed at all this made it all but

impossible for the indian craft industry

to survive

and while this colonial division of

labor stifled the economic culture of

the colonized it simultaneously grew

european capitalist civilization

and with the growth of capitalism came

the worship of productivity above all

else

it was far more productive for a man to

lace a shoe at the end of an assembly

line

than to make a shoe from start to finish

it didn’t matter if it wasn’t as

interesting or fulfilling

it made profit

and as karl marx said it encouraged the

development of man of one single faculty

at the expense of all other faculties

this is how it begins

this is how colonialism and capitalism

taught us we can only be one thing

because it taught us we are most useful

if we are one thing

but is that true

and does being productive equate to

being useful

there is a famous story john lennon told

about his early education in which a

teacher asked what he wanted to be when

he grew up

he said happy

she said he didn’t understand the

question

we ask kids this all the time we let

them take art class and baseball and

make science experiments and then we say

choose

choose the one thing you’re going to be

but we don’t stop and wonder if they

need to choose

now i chose very early on as far back as

i can remember i was singing and putting

on concerts for my whole family

i was fortunate to go to a public arts

high school where i studied music half

of my day and continued to the berkeley

college of music where i got my

bachelor’s of music

all the while i took private lessons and

sang in up to four choirs at a time

i believed that tunnel vision was the

key to success

until one afternoon a few years ago a

mentor of mine asked if i made any

visual art

to which i promptly replied no

i can’t i’m not good at it

it’s curious looking back as to why i

said that because i’d never actually

tried

she pushed further so

for the first time since grade school

art class i tried to draw

and i liked it

it was meditative it helped me process

the world in a different way than music

does

so i nervously enrolled in community

college drawing class

and something interesting started

happening to my brain

the way i saw the physical world began

to shift

i started seeing faces as shapes and

shadows

i started seeing colors on a continuum

my whole perspective changed

and contrary to my belief that spending

time on art would detract from my music

it actually made it better

more insightful

i thought creativity was a finite well

when in fact it is this thing capable of

regenerating itself

and seeing the through line between my

art and music helped me understand my

purpose

outside of either of them

once i realized i could do this one

thing i wondered what else can i do

maybe i can direct

maybe i could edit that music video

maybe

i can write that essay

and once that mental dam was broken

there was no stopping the flood

so i enrolled in more classes for the

sheer pleasure of learning i took

anthropology and philosophy

i wrote and published those essays

i directed and edited that video and i

showed my art in galleries across the

country

now dedicating your time to multiple

disciplines is not a new idea but i

think we often attribute it to something

of long ago and far away

sure

da vinci could be a scientist and an

engineer and paint the mona lisa

but you couldn’t

and michelangelo could be an architect

and chisel out the david but you

couldn’t

or can you

do you know for sure

have you tried

being immersed in the entertainment

industry i am constantly surrounded by

people carrying on this

multi-disciplinary legacy often out of

necessity

bassists who manage coffee shops

casting directors who are also rock

stars

but i’d like for us to challenge this

idea of singular paths even among more

conventional occupations

why can’t you be an accountant in the

morning and a yoga teacher in the

afternoon

now some would say we would lose

productivity

but the innovators solving the world’s

most difficult problems

are those able to connect seemingly

unconnected fields

while a specialist narrow view can stop

them from seeing solutions in their

periphery

but even if it were true

that stepping away from specialization

would decrease productivity

i believe presumed specialization leads

to something worse

the loss of connection

specialization can disconnect us from

each other

and from ourselves

say there’s part of you that wants to

take up photography

but you ignore it

this part of yourself exists whether or

not it is acknowledged

what would you learn about yourself if

you did explore it

and do you actually know yourself if you

don’t

i believe there are also social justice

implications to this cultural emphasis

on specialization

structural racism has made it so certain

career paths and the education involved

in them are inherently discriminatory

so often specialization

is synonymous with segregation

do we want non-profits with diverse

field workers being directed by

disproportionately white leadership

do we want doctors who spend decades

specializing in their fields only to

ignore the concerns of their black

patients because of the implicit bias

reinforced in medical education

do we want politicians spending all

their time at capitol hill with

corporate lobbyists instead of in the

towns and cities they’re meant to

represent

we can better serve our communities if

we are exposed to more perspectives

and understand the difficulties that

come with different lifestyles and labor

now i’m not saying specialization is

inherently bad

i would say sometimes it is necessary

but this idea that it is inherently good

and that it is a necessary path for all

of us

that is false

my music art essays

they all contribute to my greater

purpose of helping create a more

socially just world

my hope is if we stop focusing so

intently on what we do

we’ll think more about why we do

anything in the first place

and this why

will lead us back to ourselves

and back to one another

thank you

[Applause]

you