We’ve forgotten how to build bigger than ourselves because we’ve forgotten how to think beyond ourselves. If we want to learn how to build cathedrals again, we have to break free of this self-containment.
It’s fashionable to reduce our identities in two interconnected ways: measuring our worth by what we make and limiting what we make to what we can create on our own. The first reduces people to machines of production; the second reduces culture to the sum of individual contributions. Both are life-sapping lies.
I don’t want to blame all the world’s problems on social media, but there’s an undeniable connection between its rise and the prevalence of hyperindividualized brand identities. So-called “personal brands” collapse self into work by design. When our work is inseparable from our worth, how could self-promotion still be considered a sin?
To be fair, one’s self should inform one’s work, but conflating the two in turn sacrifices self to work. This deteriorates human identity. We must restore the right hierarchy: properly ordered, there is one’s self and there is one’s work. The former should shape the latter so that the latter doesn’t distort the former.
We are more than we do. We’re also capable of building bigger than we are. But to achieve such heights, we must take great care to reset the boundaries between who we are, what we do, and our true value as human beings.
Our worth is immeasurable because of who we are, regardless of how much we contribute. We must remember that about ourselves and about others. When we do, we not only catalyze but elevate our collective work.
Friends, that is how cathedrals are built.
N.B.: I’m not blind to my own hypocrisy: this criticism has me in its crosshairs, too. Let’s remember who we are and then get back to work building something bigger than ourselves — together.