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