First, throw away the "bust a cap" attitude, if you have any. Everyone who has this attitude is, deep down, a scared little kid whistling in the dark. They're terrified of the world, are afraid to meet the world on realistic terms, and want to destroy what they can't control. Be confident, not cocky. Cocky will get you killed, jailed, or, at the very least, have you worried every day of your life, and worry makes you old quick.
Believe in the healing power of art karma. Have some social responsibility in the media you produce. Help others. Question authority, but don't blindly hate it. Learn about the politics and laws of your country and of other countries. If you live in the United States, memorize the Constitution of the United States (All law in America is based on it.)
If you're in a hurry, just memorize the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution). Did you know that most of the rights that are commonly violated are the rights that are enumerated in these first 10 amendments? And, most important, did you know that politicians currently in high office in this land treat the Constitution as something to be changed, and many people don't know the Constitution well enough to know when it's being changed? And did you know that most don't care and would rather watch American Idol or movies with lots of car crashes?
Note
One of the many fun "gift to the world" little projects I've done with Debra Jean Dean was engineer and record high-quality files of her reading the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. We released the files free to copy, under Creative Commons, so you can share them with anyone and use them in any way you please. Put them on your pod and listen to and repeat them until you know them. Then remix them in videos if you'd like.
Wired Magazine's "Geek Dad" column called them "A portable civics lesson." http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/01/ipod-plus-delca.html (URL 14.8)
You can grab them here: www.debrajeandean.com/ (URL 14.9)
High school doesn't teach you the things you need to know to survive in today's world. Futurist Ray Kurzweil pointed out in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence that school teaches you to show up for years at the same place at the same time each day and sit in little rows and do what you're told. (I highly recommend that book, www.amazon.com/Age-Spiritual-Machines-Computers-Intelligence/dp/0140282025/ (URL 14.10).
Winning, or even surviving, in the economy of the present and the future does not involve showing up at the same place at the same time for 50 years. It involves small ad hoc companies that don't have to be in the same room (or even the same country) working intensely for a week, six months, a year, or two years, over the Internet, creating something great, quickly selling it (and outsourcing the manufacturing and distribution if it's a physical product), and then moving on to work intensely with other people on other projects. They don't teach that in school. In the old economy, an "expert" did one thing and did it very well. In the new economy, an "expert" needs to do many things well and be able to quickly and efficiently figure out new things and identify and solve new problems in new processes quickly and efficiently as they arise. The well-employed worker of the future is not a mighty giant. The well-employed worker of the future is a small, efficient, adaptable ninja.
Good further reading on this subject is The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Friedman: www.amazon.com/World-Flat-3-0-History-Twenty-first/dp/0312425074/ (URL 14.11)
To make it in the coming times, you need people skills. You have to be able to work well with anyone, at least over the Internet and the telephone. And it helps if you speak more than one language, although you need to have a functional command of English, because that is the international language of commerce, science, law, and computing. (English is not the most common language on Earth. It's the fourth most common. However, English is by far the most common second language on Earth.)
You need to be able to sort (tell the truth from the lies, the useful from the useless), and utilize (decide in unique ways what to do with information, media, ideas, processes, software, movies, images, concepts, and even people). And you need to be able to do this while also quickly sorting though mountains of commercial and personal spam. Being active on YouTube is great training for some of these skills. But YouTube as training, in and of itself, is not enough. You need to read constantly, talk, learn, live, and love. And lose. And gain again.
It should go without saying, but you also need to be able to do basic math and read and write. And you need to use any old and new tools available to you, in basic ways, but also in new and unique ways.
Never stop learning.
Hone your skills and remain teachable.
Prepare yourself with a wide set of skills.
Be compassionate, and show that in your art.
Conserve water. Use rechargeable batteries. Recycle.
Ignore advertising.
Become really good at whatever it is that you do that makes you unique.
Be patient.
Jobs I had that I hated (digging ditches and telemarketing) not only made me a better person and gave me a better understanding of the world, but they also made me a better artist. Every skill and every experience arms you to better deal with every other task and every new experience. Don't live an isolated life, and try to learn from anything you see or do. And try to learn from everyone you meet, even if all you learn from that person is what not to do.
Strife can create growth, so don't feel helpless when you experience bad times. I hate that fluffy greeting card sentiment "It's always darkest before the dawn," but there is some truth to it. Sometimes the greatest spiritual awakenings, even the kind that make sense to an agnostic (sometimes called "spiritual awakenings of the educational variety") come only after a great loss. After hitting bottom.
My daughter, Amelia Laine Worth (see Figure 14-1), died November 7, 2006, from leukemia. She was 22. She was a good artist and a great person, and she lost the luxury of time.
Figure 14-1. Michael W. Dean and Amelia Laine Worth. This was the day she got her black belt in karate, a few short years before she got sick.
Her death devastated me, and I thought I'd never climb out of that depression. But I did. A day doesn't go by that I don't miss her, but surviving the trauma of her death brought me some understanding of the world that I never had before. What's that saying? "You can't play the blues on a guitar that's never been in a pawn shop." It's true. I recorded a song for her and posted a video of myself singing it on YouTube.
| www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqZNMO3oIdc (URL 14.12) |
Doing this, and having her friends see it, was a small but important part of me healing some from the experience. I brought three positive lessons out of her death, after months of sleepless nights and more than a year of walking around in a daze, looking and feeling like a zombie:
There is nothing that can happen to me, absolutely nothing, that I cannot get through. So, life is all gravy from here on out.
There is absolutely no one alive anymore on the planet Earth who I am afraid of embarrassing, so I am going to do whatever I feel like doing. To live this way, you need to have a great internal sense of doing the right thing, and that comes with age, experience, and reflection. But I used to moderate my artistic output a bit, out of respect for my daughter. I probably didn't need to; she was a tough kid, very smart, and very accepting of opinions different from hers, but I did hold back a bit, for her. Now that she's gone, I am living in dedication to her by being even more of an unstoppable life force than before.
A long life is not a guarantee. Amelia was healthy a couple years before she died, and she had several remissions when we thought she was in the clear. She even looked relatively healthy a few months before she passed (see Figure 14-2).
"Live each moment as if it's your last," because it might just be. And create every piece of art with meaning, as if it's the last thing you'll be remembered for. Because it might just be.
Take your life experiences and reflect on them. Then reflect them back to the world, with your own unique additions, interpretations, and insight. Don't just make another cute kitty video or a nifty skateboarding accident reel. Have something to say, say it, and say it well.
You have the potential to change the world from your bedroom. Don't blow it.
Note
The first draft of this chapter was a lot longer, but I trimmed it for length. To read what I cut, go to: http://tinyurl.com/6n9kkf (URL 14.13)