Question The System, Solve The Symptoms

The world is desperate for a coronavirus cure — we want life to get back to normal, but I can’t help but feel like we haven’t exhausted all options.

Has no one tried leeches?

If you think that sounds absurd, you’re right: leeches would only alleviate the symptoms of COVID, and not address the cause.

Many of the solutions to problems that our government, medical professionals, and workplace leadership propose involve treating symptoms of problems, rather than addressing the causes. This is just as effective as using leeches to cure, well, anything.

Addressing symptoms creates short-term results, and it can serve as a stopgap to solving the actual cause of the problem, but it won’t actually solve the problem.

When I was in college, I smashed the transmission of my Saturn driving over a curb on a night of bad decisions, causing a massive fluid leak. Instead of paying for a whole new transmission, I decided to pay a mechanic to weld it back together, which stopped the leak, but a few months later, the transmission completely blew and I had to get a new car altogether. Because I wasted my resources on a short-term fix, I ended up paying more in the long run.

Now, I don’t know what “getting to the core” of our world’s health crisis is, but I do know the long-term solution to most societal problems is to overhaul our education system. Did that solution come out of left field? Maybe in terms of this post, but our current education system as it stands is hampering our human potential. We can ban guns, offer universal basic income, and elect different representatives all we want, but these are addressing the symptoms of an even greater problem.

Why?

Our education system is designed to meet the needs of the Industrial Revolution, a time when humans took on the role of robots in factories to complete specialized tasks, so schools taught students how to be compliant and fit into those roles. Now, we’re entering the automation revolution, where actual robots are taking those jobs and creating a more efficient production process. In the short-term, this may seem like a bad thing: “THEY’RE TAKING OUR JOBS!” But in the long-term, this can be an amazing development in human history because it frees up millions of people from doing repetitive, simple tasks that numbs their brains, allowing them the chance to engage the natural human inclination to do creative work. But if schools keep producing compliant humans, the only solution humans will see is, “WE NEED TO GET OUR JOBS BACK!” This outcome is nothing more than addressing a symptom created by the obsoleteness of our education system.

Humans aren’t meant to work in factories. We operate at our best when we’re working together to find novel ways to solve problems, but today’s education is a one-size-fits-all system that emphasizes output over creativity, and the importance of the individual over the group.

If you work in a factory, and an employee has a creative idea to make work more fun, the manager is bound to shoot that idea down because it means a shift in roles, and perhaps short-term losses. In fact, that employee may be viewed as a troublemaker. Our society questions the innovative individual, rather than the system that stifles their potential.

We’ve confined ourselves to a system that works against us in a 21st century economy.

We’ve confined ourselves to a system that demeans anyone who dare question that system.

We’ve confined ourselves to a system that steers people away from doing jobs that are mentally and spiritually engaging to jobs that are mentally and spiritually draining.

And this isn’t even an issue in this year’s presidential election.

Me when I came to the above realization

Billions of people around the world don’t think they’re talented, intelligent, or creative, not because they aren’t, but because they’ve been shoved into a system that tells them they’re not.

The world is changing so rapidly that, if there isn’t a fundamental revolution in how we educate ourselves over the next decade, problems like climate change, equality, and pandemics will make today’s problems seem like child’s play. This isn’t meant to be foreboding and apocalyptic, it’s meant to be a call to action.

Education reform begins with learning how human beings think and behave, then leaning into our natural inclinations and creativity to address the problem with an actual solution: teach students how to think, howto work together, and how to engage their creativity. Once we do that, there’s no limit to our potential.

Until then, we’re stuck in a system that emphasized job titles, individualism, and output as metrics for success, while we argue over which symptoms to solve by throwing stupid amounts of money at them… we might as well be using leeches.

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If You Have Writer’s Block, Just Start Writing

If you write creatively, you’ve experienced writer’s block.

About a week ago, I sat down to write new stand-up material and drew an absolute abyss of a blank. It got to the point where I was referring to my tweets from three years ago for new ideas. A gem like “When it comes to wearing a black belt, black shoes matter,” is NOT making into one of my sets today.

When we get writer’s block, all we tend to think about is the fact that you have writer’s block, so no wonder writing is hard.

Then comes the brilliant thought of, “I need to write something brilliant and hilarious.”

No pressure, David.

One of the biggest obstacles to writing something creative and funny is the thought, “I need to write something creative and funny,” because the first thing that we type out is going to be weighed against those lofty expectations. For this reason, the creative process is stifled, and you’ve created an uphill battle for yourself.

The last couple of months have been a bit of a letdown on what I’ve written based on my own standards, and the longer I go without writing something that gets my creative juices flowing, the higher I set my expectations. Because I’m overthinking everything so much, instead of just writing, I look at the pen and paper in front of me as an enemy, as something that has to be overcome, rather than embracing the moment and running with it.

Three nights ago, I sat down with a basic idea I’ve been kicking around in my head for a good two months, and instead of overthinking what I would write, I just started typing.

I didn’t write an outline, I didn’t demand myself to “write something hilarious,” I just started writing. At first, the act of typing inspired a starting point, but the more and more I began to give into my thoughts without judging them as good or bad, the clearer I could see the direction I was heading. Once I made it from the starting point to the conclusion of the bit, I read through what I had written, deleted what wasn’t truthful to me in the moment, rewrote some sentences that would disappoint my high school English teacher, and re-read it out loud. I had to stop a couple of times to laugh.

Success!

For two months, I had refused to elaborate on an initial idea because it wasn’t perfect, but all it took was three hours of just writing without judgment, refining what I had written, rehearsing the bit, and making final adjustments, I had a working bit.

Get out of your own head and just write. That’s it.

The only secret is to just keep writing, whether it’s a comedy bit, a blog post, a journal entry, a policy proposal, a product or marketing idea, a poem, a research paper, or a script – IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT IT IS. JUST START WRITING AND SEE WHERE IT TAKES YOU.

Creativity is messy. To strive for perfection means to judge, but judgment and creativity don’t work well together.

Remember: you can’t be creative by telling yourself to be creative. Just start writing and allow your creativity to flourish.