It has been perhaps one of the greatest blessings of my life
to be surrounded by wise old men. The
wisest men I have known have also amounted to the simplest men of humble living
and means. Their advice is some of the
most convicting and straightforward. Even more poignant than many of the
statements, themselves, is their ironclad reasoning: “Because.” Yet as I grow older and experience more of
the world, I have come to discover that even some of the most revered sages of
my youth have offered misguided advice.
Their error is not derived from malice or ignorance, but from a bono fide
belief that reality was natural. This
belief is what makes the rationale of “because,” so apt and
effective—“because,” is simply the short-hand way of saying, “the reason is because
that is the way things are in the world;” (i.e. it follows from the Natural
Law). “Because,” may have been a
sufficient and useful method in bygone days, however, falsehood (i.e. unreality, unnature) has infiltrated our lives to a startling and hypnotic
degree that one would be loathe to be uncritical of the “because” explanation
anymore.
The
particular piece of advice I was given as a young man which seemed harmless
enough came from one of the many bosses of my past: Don Carnes. Mr. Carnes was the Ross County Engineer and
he hired me to build guardrail and pave county roads. He is a very good and decent man. He was very aware of why I was working for
him, what I was working toward, and often would mentor me over coffee in the
morning. I remember one morning when we
were drinking our sustenance that I revealed a hatching notion in my mind to
drop-out of school altogether and go work at the paper-mill. Praise God, Mr. Carnes dissuaded me from this
rash, shortsighted decision. The advice
he gave me was, “Your career will be based on your mind—not on your
hands.” At that time in that context, it
seemed like the right sort-of advice to give, but it was advice that echoed
through my memory and my life ever since and only now am I becoming more and
more aware not that I should have ever worked at the paper-mill, but that men’s
lives cannot be bifurcated.
Mr. Carnes
undoubtedly told me this not because he meant to mislead me, but because it is
advice that seems to follow from the way things are—the “because” factor. You shouldn’t make a career with your hands
because you won’t be able to use your brain.
This is what the world calls specialization. But is it natural to man—is it in his nature
to specialize? I say, “No.” Hence, I can only conclude we are living in a
lie, or a dream; we are constructing an unreality that even great sages have
trouble piercing.
Man must
use his hands. Man must use his
mind. He must be able to craft—combining
his intellect with raw material to create.
That is what being creative really is.
Modernity has confused creativity with productivity—but the results are
wholly different. Being creative gives
being and meaning to something that changes it through infusing one’s soul into
it—it is a very intentional activity.
Being productive, conversely, is merely repetition based on rubrics,
resulting in a very unintentional thing.
Productivity makes products, or produce, much like a mindless tree or
vegetable. That is why the road-side
vegetable and fruit stands are called “produce” stands. Creativity requires singularly invested
interest in the stuff and result—care and love— of the particular; this is what
begets Creation and creatures.
Productivity requires only the
hands. Creativity requires both. Insects and plants are productive. Man was made for more—in the likeness and
image of a God whose Word and Love creates and manipulates matter for good. Man is crafted with great care and raised
from the dust and very specially breathed into, distinguishing him from all the
rest. Our uniqueness is found in our
very origin—we were made to make other things, just as we were made—by molding other things from the dust and
depositing (or breathing) our own God-given soul and spirit into them. Just as it was fulfilling for God to have
been Creative, to relish in the goodness of His work, so it is for Man to
marvel at the work of his hands and soul.
But, this is the furthest thing
from reality. It is not surprising that
men have come to regard “souls” as some sort of cult-like superstition—they are
ever-packed into a church (called a factory) that preaches for the assembly to get
in lines, to forget how to pray in order to remember
only how to work. No one has the time or
opportunity in modern economic systems to consider their soul—it is not
valuable or productive; hence, “unnecessary.”
We deprive hands of heart and we deprive hearts of hands. You are called to be entirely dirty and
sweaty, or you are not—either you are ground into the dust (forgetting you were
once distinguished from it) or you are catapulted into the Platonic realm of
ideals (far removed from the dust). It is this widespread tendency
which bifurcates a man as merely hands or a mind; but never both. To be both is “inefficient” by economic
standards. However, “efficiency” meant
something before economic jargon hijacked it.
It is not as though economist invented the word “efficiency”—they have
only distorted it.
The first example of
“effectiveness” the world witnessed was in Genesis 1, when the Word uttered by
God initiates Creation as it prompts creative results. That is effective; that is efficiency. If modern-day economists were alive in
Genesis 1, I often wonder how they would have analyzed the situation. Would they have charts that compelled them to
hurry God into uttering more words on the First Day because it certainly didn’t
take 24-hours to say something? “Come
on, Lord, you're not being productive…you're cutting into our efficiency
model. Why put off for tomorrow what you
could get done today?” Or what about the
seventh-day?! “Get up, lazy bones! Back to work, time is money, you know!” Or what about when they saw the particular
utterance that created the gold of the earth or the diamonds? “God, forget about what you were planning on
doing—we can use this stuff. Whadaya say you just keep uttering that word,
again, and again, and again?” It is very
likely then God would have been merely a word-uttering assembly-line worker,
saying exactly the same thing, over and over…
Creation cannot contort into
productivity—not because it is inefficient, but because it is so proficiently
efficient. It is careful, deliberate,
concerned, and especially unspecialized.
For example, in Genesis 1 (among other places) there are Three Persons who
are all working on the same thing all at the same time! (What would the bean-counting, accountant and
payroll specialist say about that?!) A
Principle is using His Intellect and His Will to foster so much more than
something to slap a patent or a price-tag on.
Asking man to bifurcate himself would be like asking God to trifurcate
Himself. The effectiveness of both Man
and God lies in the unified nature of each.
And just like the whole divine economy is wrapped into the Three Persons
of the Holy Trinity, the economy of this earth depends on the unity of the
Man—body and soul, hands and mind. And
until we recognize this necessary unity, we will continue to live in a dream-world
woven by the Invisible Hand of the market—a “hand” I might add that has no
single, recognized “mind” guiding it. This will produce nothing more than grabastic idiocy, as opposed to creating progress.
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