Do-it yourself is a bad idea

Ever have a boyfriend write you a poem in high school? Watch American Idol? Read an amateur script? I don't have to tell you that some people are more talented than others. There are people who can do things that literally no other person on earth can do. Where did we get the idea that the world would be a better place if instead of celebrating the talented, we elevated the common person to doing whatever they want?

President Bush has said, in defense of going to war in Iraq, that he doesn't believe that the general population is qualified to decide what government should do. Frankly, I have to agree with him on this point. I mean, despite our country being "the land of opportunity", the idea is not that anyone can be president.

A candidate should have to be extraordinarily intelligent, decisive, rational, educated, informed and compassionate because that person is making decisions on a daily basis that far eclipse the weight of any decision the average person will make in his/her lifetime.

Certainly radical transparency and information sharing are very, very good things. We are no longer living in a world that can afford proprietary rights on anything that can save or improve the lives of others. But I ask you, should we really be allowed to collectively create our world? Look what happened to the Romans!


Today, the idea of gladiators fighting to the death, and of an amphitheatre where this could take place watched by an enthusiastic audience, epitomises the depths to which the Roman Empire was capable of sinking. Yet, to the Romans themselves, the institution of the arena was one of the defining features of their civilisation.

Sound familiar? We're getting giddy over Web 2.0, writing our blogs and then Time magazine declares us all the "Person of the Year." Meanwhile every show on television (including the news) is about tragedy and humiliation, the top story clicked on in The Seattle Times was about horse sex and YouTube and MySpace, while legitimately doing what they were created to do, are also cesspools of the obscene and violent. I'm surprised this didn't make it online.

Don Imus, in his apology, acknowledged that as a society, we need to consider the direction we're going:
Here's what I've learned: that you can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it. And because the climate on this program has been what it's been for 30 years doesn't mean that it has to be that way for the next five years or whatever because that has to change, and I understand that.

Marketing now is all about interactivity, personalization and relevancy. Some of it is just common sense: in a world where thousands of companies are marketing to me at once, I only want to hear about things I might actually want to buy. But a lot of it is just time-consuming crap that taps into our limitless egos. "Put your face on something and send it to all your friends - they'll love it!"

Are we really living in a more personalized world or are we just being duped into doing more ourselves? Self check-out at the grocery store, do-it yourself plumbing, "customer service" that requires you to be on hold for a half hour and then an hour troubleshooting some piece of electronic equipment are things we don't even blink at anymore. Now marketers want us to make their commercials, write their ads and even design their products!

Lynne Truss wrote a fantastically hilarious book that touches on it - Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. This is one of those those books that you shake your head, laugh out loud and say "so true" to yourself while reading it. Here's an excerpt.

The bottom line is, we're facing extremely tough and complex issues in the 21st century that the average person will not be able to solve, even if they desire to do so.

Here's an example from The New York Times:

- A Northwest power company owns four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, a crucial source of so-called clean energy at a time when carbon emissions have become one of the world’s foremost environmental concerns. Without them, they'd have to rely more heavily on coal or natural gas. The Klamath dams only provide enough power to serve about 70,000 homes, a small fraction of PacifiCorp’s 1.6 million customers, which span six Western states.

- The American Indians, fishermen and environmentalists want the dams removed. They say for the last 90 years since the dams were built, endangered salmon have been blocked from migrating, Indian livelihoods have been threatened and the commercial fishing industry off the Oregon and California coasts has been devastated. In addition the water in the river is filthy.

- Residents in Portland and Seattle are the most sympathetic to taking down the dams but they're the ones getting the cheap power hydroelectric provides.

- Farmers in the area rely on the river and its dams which support an elaborate irrigation system started by the federal government more than a century ago. It provides water for about 240,000 acres of cattle pastures, alfalfa fields and other farming and also flows through a wildlife preserve.

So what do you think? Leave the dams? Take them down? What kind of clean-fuel alternatives do you think we should be promoting in Oregon to take their place?

What we should be doing is recognizing, supporting, promoting and celebrating those talented and rare individuals who can actually solve our problems (and for that matter, write TV shows, make movies and run the country)!