The above is something of an infographic that I threw together to start modelling a ton of complicated questions that have been going through my head, when thinking about the complex ways that value and meaning manifest themselves in the world. As I think more on these things the nature of the above will surely evolve but I figure it's a good place to start.
The questions in my head that have driven the above come from a lot of places and my thinking on them I'll explain more deeply in future posts; some basic thoughts on it for now:
- It's not a perfect model for anything, but it has helped me frame things in a way that I've found useful. Certainly everyone fills these roles in different ways and incorporates combinations of characteristics into their own lives - it's not useful to think of anybody as falling into just one of the above, and its not useful to think that anyone falls into all four.
- I started by primarily trying to express the nature of how each role informs the others. The basic question here is: who is more valuable to the world: the artist or the scientist? The basic answer is: neither.
- Another basic question: how should we think about the different kind of value between things that are simple, widely-adopted and business-valuable as compared to things that are niche, difficult, and wisdom-valuable? @tylertravitz approaches the idea below:The thinking comes seeing a question many people have to ask themselves as they create things in the world: do I want things like more page hits (which genuinely leads to more influence) or do I want to express more insight at the risk of losing that level of influence? (On another level: is this a question of balance, or is this an arena where balance isn't the optimal strategy?)
- I've also touched on rationality/irrationality, beginning from questions like: how has 'irrationality' become a pejorative, and how can we model it in balance with rationality?
Lots more thinking to follow on all the above; stay tuned. On some level I've questioned that these things even exist on linear scales, but for the time being it's been a useful place to start.
[imgs by Hans and Carolyn, densitydesign]
