merry christmas everybody hey tested patrons and others i am answering
your questions today and today's question comes from fix it tony who wants to know
what general definition of making do you subscribe to and when is someone considered a maker
fix it tony thank you for this awesome question you're allowing me to express
my hatred of gatekeeping gatekeeping is almost always a fool's errand or a cruelty
it is there's no utility in gatekeeping in my opinion uh and so
when i encounter people who say i'm not a maker it usually doesn't take me more than a minute or two
to understand that they definitely are we all are and it is not a uh uh
it's there's there's no water level i don't think that there's a water level to being a maker
i don't think that there's a ground floor
whenever you set out to make something from nothing
using your point of view
you are maker that might be a rhyming couplet a sonnet a dress a table a car a glass bottle
that's it it doesn't require any level of skill past the idea that you see a need in the world
you have a desire to realize something and make it extinct where it did not exist
again that could be a concept or a thing that could be a song or a house
i can't get any broader than that but every time you set out to make something from nothing
you are making you are not only making but you are participating in the great conversation
of culture and that's one of the things we're here to do we're here to share our experiences
and try and figure out what the hell is going on in this crazy mess
and i mean the universe right like why am why am i sentient and this roll of tape is not
maybe it is i just don't know how to communicate with a roll of tape that might sound like a
ridiculous question but frankly if the atoms that make up the colony of me have some ability
to be self-aware then i don't have much proof that everything else isn't that way it could be um so
years ago uh some friends of mine asked me to be the their minister and to marry them and um
i have since then over the past 25 years married about 20 25 different couples
and in every case i've done it under the aegis of the universal life church and the universal
life church is a wonderful organization that uh uh uh basically takes its uh its marching orders
from the bible and there's a passage in the bible that says if you think you are ready to
spread the word then you are ready to spread the word and while we have a separation of church and
state we do have a requirement that an ordained minister must perform a wedding but because of
the separation of church and state there is no rule saying what is an ordained minister the
universal life church which is a real church says will or date anyone who expresses the interest
and as a maker i will say i ordain everyone as a maker who merely expresses an interest
in making yes because that's all that it takes it takes an interest and you scratch that interest
and something interesting happens you make something from nothing and maybe it's really small
and maybe you don't show it to anyone but it feeds you and you look at it and you're like
i'm really happy i made this or i made this so i could make a little better so you make it again
you make it again and then you feel like you've made that thing so now you move
on to another thing and slowly you build this roster of tools for exploration an explanation
and exultation because when you make something that you love it's a really remarkable experience
and then you start looking out and then you make make something for somebody else and then when you
make something that somebody else loves holy hell the whole world cracks open man so i i i really
want to iterate that if you want to come up to me and say you don't think you're a maker i'm going
to engage in a conversation with you in which i convince you that you that you most decidedly are
it's not about tools it's not about materials it's not about knowledge it's about what's going on
here yeah fix it tony thank you so much for that awesome question tested patrons keep submitting
your questions i will continue to answer them thank you guys i'll see you next time you