The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

Art is not a gene or a specific talent. Art is an attitude, culturally driven and available to anyone who chooses to adopt it. Art isn’t something sold in a gallery or performed on a stage. Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another. Most painters, it turns out, aren’t artists at all—they are safety-seeking copycats.

If you use your money to buy advertising to promote the average products you produce for average people, soon you’ll run out of money. But if you use your money to make exceptional products and services, you won’t need to spend it on advertising, because your customers will connect to one another and bring you more.

If your factory burns down but you have loyal customers, you’ll be fine.

The Internet wasn’t built to make it easy for you to watch Lady Gaga videos.

We need you to provide the things that are unexpected, scarce, and valuable.

Art is what we do when we’re truly alive.

We don’t need to be taught to make art, but sometimes we need permission to do so. Following instructions is overrated.

But most of us have no idea that we’re no longer fenced in. We’ve been so thoroughly brainwashed and intimidated and socialized that we stay huddled together, waiting for instructions, when we have the first, best, and once-in-a-lifetime chance to do something extraordinary instead.

experience a different way of working and thinking about the work they do.

The industrialist needs you to dream about security and the benefits of compliance. The industrialist works to sell you on a cycle of consumption (which requires more compliance). And the industrialist benefits from our dream of moving up the corporate ladder, his ladder.