Table of Contents
The Icarus Deception is a call to make great art. Seth Godin makes the case that in our new information economy, your best hope is to find a niche audience and form a connection.
The End of the Industrial Age
There was a point in time – almost a century ago – where the smartest thing to do was to follow the rules. It was a different world, and people who survived in the old, industrial world were the conformists, the organization men, the employees. It was an age where creating an average product for a mass audience worked, because there weren’t that many products to begin with.
Standards were low, connectivity was weak, and choices were constrained. The strategy that paid off was the safe one. If you put your head down, did your job, and grinded it out for long enough – you’d be able to retire one day, headache free.
The Connection Economy
The world has changed since then. There is no shortage of options of thing to buy. The necessities have been provided. Today, what people need is art. And it’s your job to become an artist. There is no safe road anymore. The old world where a stable corporate job was the ideal has transformed into a vibrant, unpredictable, exciting connection economy. Stability has become an illusion, and corporations aren’t hiring.
You need to pick yourself. Instead of hoping to get picked by publishers from among a sea of thousands of competitors – you should skip the middleman. The modern world allows you to connect with over a billion people, and you have all the tools at your disposal to be able to do so. The people who have thrived in the new economy aren’t waiting in line, hoping that their resume is good enough. They took initiative and built something valuable – whether a company, book, music video, or app.
The standard of quality has gone up. The mass audience has disintegrated into niche audiences. The safe route, paradoxically, is to take a risk. To create something that can add a lot of value to some people’s lives. But that requires you to be vulnerable. It requires you to re-educate yourself and forget about what you’ve been told your entire life. And mostly, it requires you to aim higher – much higher.
The Icarus Myth
The phrase “don’t fly too close to the sun” has become a part every-day language and has its origins in the story of Icarus, a Greek myth. It has become commonplace to synonymize “Icarus” with foolish, unwise risk-taking. But Godin suggests that reviewing the story reveals that may have missed out on a key element of the story.
Icarus and his father Daedalus – a master craftsman – wanted to escape from Crete. Daedalus constructed wings made of feather and wax for himself and his son. Icarus was warned by his father to not fly too high nor too low since flying too close to the sea was a form of complacency, while flying too high was a form of hubris. But Icarus didn’t listen to his father. Instead, he flew too close to the sun, his wings burned – causing Icarus to fall to the sea and die.
But Godin reminds us that It’s not only hubris we need to be afraid of. Today, the prevalent message in society is that of obedience, and of not taking too many risks, and not being overconfident. The result can be equally catastrophic, if not more so. In a world that is constantly changing and requires us to take more risks, and learn more things, and be prepared to abandon the status quo – suddenly, hubris has become a far safer bet than complacency
The Icarus Deception is a good book for people who want to create meaningful art. If you’re in a job you hate, unhappy, and secretly wish you can do something creative and meaningful – this book will help you make a better argument to yourself and to others. Godin will show you why fear and vulnerability are the precursors to great art, and why you should create something new, every day.
If you’re an entrepreneur and you want a quick guide to know what to think about before launching you business, check out The Myth of Entrepreneurship.