The Importance of Thinking For Yourself
As people are becoming increasingly concerned about the growing power of big tech, many are leaving existing messaging platforms for ones that are focused on privacy and security. Recently there was a wave of people fleeing to a particular messenger called Signal, used for a long time by Edward Snowden and others who care about privacy.
We don’t know if Elon Musk was part of this wave, but he did send out a tweet — "Use Signal."
Signal was developed by a non-profit, so you can't invest in it on the stock market. Yet, the shares of an unrelated company, Signal Advance, soared in the days following Elon’s tweet.
The interesting thing here is not just that the stock price went up. People made a mistake, sure. It seems like many people realized it was a mistake, and the stock price went down immediately. The fascinating part is that the price is still 20x the stock price before any of this happened!
The company made absolutely no change and is now valued 20x higher thanks to a mistake, even after the mistake was acknowledged. Correcting the mistake does not change the events that were set in motion. And, for the record, the company’s valuation has remained largely unchanged in the four years prior to the recent event.
I believe this principle is at the core of more things than we like to admit. We prefer to see the world as a meritocracy, where the best things and ideas win out. The reality is often very different.
It's easy to see how this applies to art. Something gets mentioned, and it gains attention. The quality of the work, just like the real value of the company Signal Advance, may not be there at all. It's not hard to find examples of this all over Instagram.
Or, an alternative story is also possible — the quality has always been there and was greatly undervalued, and only later is it acknowledged. We all know the story great artists who never become recognized until after they died.
In fact, it’s easy to see how this applies to almost anything. A new product, a new technology, a political movement — it is difficult to know whether the thing in question is as good as the market suggests. Or, in other words, as good as society seems to think it is at a given point in time.
After all, public opinion is constantly changing and there is no guarantee that it is aligned with reality. In fact, given that the amount of money spent on marketing yearly is in the $5-600B range, it would be very odd if it did. One of the biggest industries out there exists only for the purpose of manipulating public opinion for profit.
And this figure does not capture all of the elements that influence our opinion. It doesn’t account for random tweets by people in our circles or people who are famous. It doesn’t account for obscene amounts spent on lobbying and other forms of shaping opinion not covered by the figure above.
To give some perspective, in 2019, Uber, Lyft, and Doordash spent $90M on lobbying against a legislation that would require them to provide employment benefits to drivers. (They won.) The US 2020 election spending was approximately $14B. (Why should an election ever have money behind it at all?)
Okay, so our opinion is largely influenced by friends, celebrities, and powerful entities with their own agendas. What does this have to do with landscape photography or art?
I think that if you want to create something new and original, you have to break free from the socially accepted idea of what is valuable and what isn’t. If you don’t, you will only create copies of work that already exists, work that looks like what is already deemed valuable by society. And, paradoxically, you add little value to the world by producing such work — people don’t want unoriginal art.
Of course, if you do not learn from art that already exists, you likely will not create anything worthwhile either. I started out in my photography journey by just playing around with sliders in Camera Raw without ever having seen a professional landscape photograph. Here is one of my early images:
Would I have benefited from analyzing the works of people who are actually good and incorporating elements of their style? Absolutely. Is this an “undervalued masterpiece”? Absolutely not — it is not a good image by any means.
So you have to learn from work that already exists. But, once you have done so, it is your job as an artist to question it. In fact, this is often what moves society forward as a whole. An artist creates a work that makes other people also question what’s happening. Opens their minds to it.
Well, perhaps I am getting carried away here. Art is not the only way to change the world, and not all great art has to. But all great art has to be original. You have to figure out what subject truly resonates with you, what processing style you actually prefer. You can’t look at portfolios of other photographers and do exactly what they’re doing.
Everyone these days shoots mountains, but do you even like being in the mountains yourself?
Is there somewhere else you’d rather be?
Do you actually like ultra-saturated tones?
Do you actually like the 4x5 crop, or are you only creating vertical images because they’re more visible on Instagram?
Questioning public opinion and thinking for yourself is not only important in art but in life in general. Making decisions based on what people around you seem to think can have much bigger consequences, from supporting a terrible industry to electing a political party that will do terrible things. Many products (e.g., tobacco) were widely accepted by the public. Many political movements that ended in oppression, war, or genocide were welcomed with open arms by the majority of the population.
If there's one thing you can take away here, it is the importance of questioning. Doing your own research. Thinking for yourself.
Do you actually need the product you’re buying? Is it actually better? Will it really make you happier or improve your health, or is the opposite true?
Do you actually like this piece of art or this song, or is it just what society tells you is good?
Do you know what went into the good or service you purchase? Was anyone hurt or exploited, and do you want to support that?
If you sat down with the CEO of every company you invest in as part of your 401k and learned about exactly what their supply chain looks like, would you still want to support them in exchange for a share of the profits?
Is what YOU are doing actually doing something good for the world?
I’ll admit, I struggle with many of these questions myself. My art is likely often just a copy, my choices often questionable. Finding the truth is difficult. So, this is not a judgment. This is an invitation to try to do better together.
“Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.”
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing”
A few relevant recommendations: