Creation and Consumption
For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.
-Alexander the Great
My aunt chastised me for being on my phone during a family dinner in Ireland. She echoed the common complaint of people being on their phone instead of being in the moment. There’s truth in this. Every moment is unique and will never come again. It’s good to be in the moment, especially with family we rarely get to see, but… it depends the level of urgency, and whether one is creating or one is consuming.
In this case, I was responding to an urgent request from a colleague. I was only able to be at that dinner in Ireland because I could still do my job while at dinner in Ireland. If I had to be in person for my work, I wouldn’t have been in Ireland. Technology allows us flexibility.
However, if I was watching YouTube or browsing social media, it’d be a completely different story. It’d be rude. YouTube and social media aren’t urgent. They’re consuming. They aren’t even urgent forms of consumption, which makes it extraordinarily rude. As an act, consuming is more rude than creating. Yet consumption is necessary.
All technology is a double-edged sword. It can create, and it can consume. Fire kept us warm at night and created energy, goods, and materials. Fire has also consumed life, leading to destruction and countless human deaths.
Socrates decried the rise of books and the written word. He was correct. Our memories have become worse. People buried themselves in books instead of conversing with their fellow man. We have less respect and understanding of literature when we don’t know it by heart. When words are plentiful, less meaning is derived from each word. At the same time, books have passed down our greatest lessons for others to consume. Books freed up our time to do more.
Our lives need a balance of creation and consumption. Consumption is easy. It’s natural. I lean harder towards creation. Creation adds value to the world, and all forms of consumption inform our creations.
We consume via reading, traveling, eating, listening, and learning. We also consume by drinking, doing drugs, and partying. We create via writing, working, crafting, cooking, dancing, speaking, drawing, coding, sculpting, and filming. Depending upon your goals, different types of consumption are better than others and different types of creation are better than others. For a well-balanced life, one should at least dabble.
Zooming out, most of our lives are consuming. There’s value in our consumption as a release, and as a way to inform our creation. If one is writing, then one should read at least twice as much. If one is cooking, then one should eat to iterate on their cooking. If one is public speaking, then one should listen to other speeches. If one is filming, then one should watch more films than they create.
Even Buddha meditating under a tree for seven weeks was consuming. He was thinking and processing the world. Buddha only created once he began writing and speaking. All those days under the tree consuming were necessary to create powerful frameworks.
The same way we do calendar audits to see how we spend our time, we should audit our creation and consumption. Our consumption informs our creation.