Transcriber: Alhassan Hamoud Reviewer: Keira White
Who are you?
Is your automatic response to that what you do for work?
And why is that our inclination?
To assert that we bring value is to make a bid for belonging.
Belonging is by no exaggeration, a necessity of survival,
and we show we belong by how we can contribute to our communities.
We’ve always needed each other; to raise children, to protect one another.
Dividing labor is one reason anthropologists believe we survived
while our Neanderthal cousins didn’t.
While both male and female Neanderthals participated
in dangerous big game hunting, leaving fewer women to rear children,
our predecessors delegated women to the safer task of gathering,
leaving more women to rear children.
And as our tribes grew into larger societies,
we carved out more niche roles,
like religious leaders and handicraft workers.
But at one point, the intensification
of specialized labor increased drastically.
The onset of colonialism and capitalism
marked the beginning of hyper specialisation.
As European forces swept through Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Caribbean,
they reorganized the global economy.
Suddenly, artisans and farmers with diverse skill sets were cornered
into producing limited raw goods for export.
For example, under control of the British East India Company,
Indian finished goods like cotton muslins were taxed up to 70 percent by Britain,
while raw goods like raw cotton weren't taxed at all.
This made it all but impossible for the Indian craft industry to survive.
And while this colonial division of labor stifled
the economic culture of the colonised,
it simultaneously grew European capitalist civilization.
And with the growth of capitalism
came the worship of productivity above all else.
It was far more productive for a man to lace a shoe
at the end of an assembly line than to make a shoe from start to finish.
It didn’t matter if it wasn’t as interesting or fulfilling,
it made profit.
And as Karl Marx said: “It encouraged the development of man,
of one single faculty, at the expense of all other faculties.”
This is how it begins.
This is how colonialism and capitalism taught us we can only be one thing
because it taught us we are most useful, if we are one thing.
But is that true?
And does being productive equate to being useful?
There is a famous story John Lennon told about his early education
in which a teacher asked what he wanted to be when he grew up.
He said happy.
She said he didn’t understand the question.
We ask kids this all the time,
we let them take art class and baseball and make science experiments,
and then we say choose.
Choose the one thing you’re going to be.
But we don't stop and wonder if they need to choose.
Now I chose very early on, as far back as I can remember,
I was singing and putting on concerts for my whole family.
I was fortunate to go to a public arts high school
where I studied music half of my day and continued
to the Berklee College of Music, where I got my bachelor’s of music.
All the while, I took private lessons and sang in up to four choirs at a time.
I believed that tunnel vision was the key to success.
Until one afternoon, a few years ago,
a mentor of mine asked if I made any visual art,
to which I promptly replied, “No. I can’t. I’m not good at it”.
It’s curious looking back as to why I said that
because I’d never actually tried.
She pushed further
so for the first time since grade school art class,
I tried to draw, and I liked it.
It was meditative, it helped me process the world
in a different way than music does.
So I nervously enrolled in community college drawing class
and something interesting started happening to my brain.
The way I saw the physical world
began to shift.
I started seeing faces as shapes and shadows.
I started seeing colors on a continuum. My whole perspective changed.
And contrary to my belief that spending time on art would detract from my music,
it actually made it better, more insightful.
I thought creativity was a finite well, when in fact,
it is this thing capable of regenerating itself.
And seeing the through line between my art and music,
helped me understand my purpose, outside of either of them.
Once I realized I could do this one thing, I wondered, what else can I do?
Maybe I can direct, maybe I could edit that music video,
maybe I can write that essay.
And once that mental dam was broken, there was no stopping the flood.
So I enrolled in more classes for the sheer pleasure of learning.
I took anthropology and philosophy. I wrote and published those essays.
I directed and edited that video,
and I showed my art in galleries across the country.
Now, dedicating your time to multiple disciplines is not a new idea,
but I think we often attribute it to something of long ago and far away.
Sure, Da Vinci could be a scientist and an engineer and paint the Mona Lisa.
But you couldn’t.
And Michelangelo could be an architect and chisel out David, but you couldn’t.
Or can you?
Do you know for sure?
Have you tried?
Being immersed in the entertainment industry,
I am constantly surrounded by people carrying on this multidisciplinary legacy.
Often out of necessity.
Bassists who manage coffee shops,
casting directors who are also rock stars.
But I'd like for us to challenge this idea of singular paths,
even among more conventional occupations.
Why can’t you be an accountant in the morning
and a yoga teacher in the afternoon?
Now, some would say we would lose productivity,
but the innovators solving the world’s most difficult problems
are those able to connect seemingly unconnected fields,
while a specialist’s narrow view
can stop them from seeing solutions in their periphery.
But even if it were true that stepping away from specialization
would decrease productivity,
I believe presumed specialization leads to something worse:
The loss of connection.
Specialization can disconnect us from each other and from ourselves.
Say there’s part of you that wants to take up photography but you ignore it.
This part of yourself exists, whether or not it is acknowledged.
What would you learn about yourself, if you did explore it?
And do you actually know yourself, if you don’t?
I believe there are also social justice implications
to this cultural emphasis on specialization.
Structural racism has made it so certain career paths,
and the education involved in them, are inherently discriminatory.
So often specialization is synonymous with segregation.
Do we want non-profits with diverse fieldworkers being directed
by disproportionately white leadership?
Do we want doctors who spent decades specializing in their fields,
only to ignore the concerns of their black patients
because of the implicit bias reinforced in medical education?
Do we want politicians spending all their time
at Capitol Hill with corporate lobbyists
instead of in the towns and cities they’re meant to represent?
We can better serve our communities if we are exposed to more perspectives,
and understand the difficulties that come with different lifestyles and labor.
Now, I’m not saying specialization is inherently bad.
I would say sometimes it is necessary,
but this idea that it is inherently good
and that it is a necessary path for all of us, that is false.
My music, art, essays, they all contribute to my greater purpose
of helping create a more socially just world.
My hope is if we stop focusing so intently on what we do,
we’ll think more about why we do anything in the first place.
And this why, will lead us back to ourselves and back to one another.
Thank you.
(Applause)