The Innovation Delusion: Why Undervaluing Maintainers (like Janitors) and Overvaluing Innovators (like Mark Zuckerberg) Is Destroying Society
COVID-19 & the Tension Between “Doing” & “Being”
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
— Kurt Vonnegut.
2020’s greatest gift is 20/20 vision. Because of COVID-19, we’ve suffered; because we’ve suffered, we see more clearly.
Once-blurred truths have sharpened. We realize that “unskilled workers” are “essential workers,” that lust — for money, status, fame — makes us more vulnerable to disease, that we are human, all too human. The smallest organism can kill at any moment, and those who cannot or will not abide by nature’s limits— who sleep too little, work too much, or otherwise abuse their bodies — are most vulnerable to death.
For years, American media has been dominated by innovation-speak. We celebrate bull markets, clap when Apple reveals its newest (slightly different) product, and feel our pulses race when young politicians promise to walk on water. Academics warning“slow down!” are derided as pedantic nerds. Pastors asking that as we rush ahead we don’t fail to help those left behind are scorned. The new is too shiny; time is too short.
This isn’t surprising. Western society values doing over being, dominating nature over experiencing nature. That’s why we treat our old so badly, preferring the potential of youth to the wisdom of age.
Luckily, some have begun recognizing the importance of both doing and being. The trend started long before COVID-19, when technocrats like Robert Reich, organizations like The Maintainers, and even workaholics like Arianna Huffington recognized the importance of slowing down and caring before moving forward and building. COVID-19 has accelerated this trend tremendously.
As professors Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russell point out in The Innovation Delusion, we’ve forgotten simple truths: (1) Maintenance matters more than innovation; (2) new things (from computers to puppies and newborn babies) break unless they are maintained; and (3) newer isn’t synonymous with better.
Forgetting these truths has led to a delusional mindset yielding disastrous results at three levels: (1) the individual, (2) the organizational, and (3) the societal.
As the professors write:
When things go wrong, the first place we should look is to see if the relations of care are healthy…. The excesses of capitalism and global economic catastrophes have a common theme: They are the costs of neglect, and the consequences of a society that values the individual accumulation of wealth above the common good.
The innovation delusion is especially dangerous because the failure to maintain things yields what one scholar, Scott Knowles, labels “slow disasters.”
Unlike “fast disasters,” slow disasters — whether they happen on a societal level (global warming, crumbling infrastructure) or an individual level (alcoholic cirrhosis, a shattered marriage caused by a neglected relationship)—are usually preventable.
Sometimes, slow disasters happen when we don’t care about an issue; usually, they happen when we do care but are unwilling to take care of— maintain — things that need repairing. “There’s always tomorrow!” we say. But tomorrow never comes.
If COVID-19 has made anything clear, it’s that this devaluation of maintenance cannot continue. Mark Zuckerberg famously quipped that Facebook’s aim was to “move fast and break things.” That might work for tech; it doesn’t work for complex societies or fragile human beings.
Organizations, societies, and humans all suffer unless they take the time to step back, reflect, and take care of what they already have.
Still, we persist on wanting to innovate, on doing things and doing them now. On an individual level, we work — “work, work, work!” — until the lack of self-care and healthy interest in others destroys any productive capacity at all. Or, on social media, we “post, post, post” and “argue, argue, argue” without educating our minds with books and experiences or our hearts with interactions with fellow humans (who are never quite so different as we think). Let’s do ourselves a favor: Let’s stop doing, just for a moment. Let’s simply … be.
The quality of our doing depends on the quality of our being.
Michael Elias Shammas is a lawyer, writer, and (hopeful) academic. He learned the importance of maintenance and self-care after too many sleepless nights during his first job as a lawyer in Manhattan, and recently finished a fellowship at NYU Law School. Feel free to follow him on Twitter or read his preliminary scholarship. You can also email him at mshammas6367@gmail.com.
