Today is Mahatma Gandhi’s 140th birthday. Gandhi is an amazing man who changed the lives of many people and single handedly spearheaded the Indian Independence Movement. He did this by pioneering a social revolution he named Satyagraha which is a resistance against tyranny using civil disobedience in a non-violent way; as an emodiment of compassion. This is amazing if you think about it. He rallied a nation to disobey what they’ve been told was the right way to live thereby giving them better rights and more freedom, and to top it off, he convinced them to do it nonviolently, sometimes staring directly in the face of violence.
Civil disobedience is awesome. It’s done a ton of good for nations (like India) and civil rights movements (MLK used it extensively) and it was even recommended by Al Gore for environmental issues. Just the thought of disobeying to make your situation better sounds like a good time.
Although Gandhi didn’t create the theory behind traditional civil disobedience he’s one of the most widely known activists to employ it. This is a man who was of tremendous value to his country and the world. He started small and got huge. Crazy huge…like Obama huge, but he didn’t have any money, and he didn’t have any primetime spots before the primaries. It was the definitive grass-movement movement. So of course I have to ask myself, can I be that valuable? Where the hell is my value? Can I make more of it?
Value is just as important today as it was 100 years ago, and once you have your ears open to it, it pops up more and more. How can we bring value to our lives? How can we be valuable to communities? How do companies create and distribute value and at what costs? Marx worried about value for almost his entire career.
But here’s the point, will our own personal civil-disobedience movement, personal as in the one happening inside you, give you more value? Will disobeying social norms in regards to what you have to do with your life (how you’re suppose to live, who you’re suppose to work for, how you’re suppose to earn your money, etc.)make you more valuable? I would argue it does.
I like to view value as possessing and being able to give something that is in short supply. Sure, there’s a ton of drummers in NYC, but I doubt any of them are exactly like me, just like I’m not exactly like them. My product is incredibly personal and by definition, one of a kind. When I was a bank teller there were hundreds of others just like me and most were probably better at the job than I was. Now that I have more time (a lot more time) to devote to this, I like to think that I, my product, my life, am/is more valuable. It may sound weird to call my music and passion a product, but if I want to do this professionally, it’s what it has to be. People don’t buy passions, they buy products, and I’m trying to get paid.
By breaking away from or breaking down certain ideologies that have perpetuated in our culture we can better free ourselves to speak more clearly what we wish to say. Becuase nobody can be us, nobody can put it just the way we can. That makes us valuable.
But back to me making money; that’s short-term value. If I’m hired for a gig and paid $100, once the gig is over that value is gone. To keep getting paid I need to create more value on other gigs. Gandhi had long-term value. That’s what I’m looking for. Not just the value you see in monetary returns (I’m looking for that too), but the value you can create in other people’s lives. It’s good to note that Gandhi started out as a lawyer, he got paid for cases, and he had a hard time finding rates he felt comfortable charging (something my friends and I are having to deal with a lot lately).
Of course, value judgements are sticky judgements. They’re like views on truth and beauty; all we know these days is that they are pretty much completely relative. (But the fun doesn’t stop there—poststructural critical theorist Jean Lyotard said that if all truth is relative than in return doesn’t that make the statement itself become relative? hmmmmmm.) But what we do know is that we’re in need of thinkers and creators; not just artists, but people who can create their own lives, people who aren’t afraid to go on their own to make and create their own long-term value.
Roommate update! Craig is now completely addicted to LOST.
GIG UPDATE! I’m playing upstairs at Pianos tomorrow night with Adam Shenk at 9pm!
