“High Concept, High Touch” is an article I found fascinating, innovative, and full of foresight.
I went to a high school that focused mainly on science and math. Many of my classmates asked me why I was there if I wanted to be an artist, and many others would just comment “okay, well, I’d like fries with that”. I’m obviously not the only one who goes through this, but it made me really think about myself and my goals. I was in a school that valued “L-Directed Thinking” 100% above “R-Directed Thinking”. Our art program had suffered severely and my classmates’ spitefulness towards the artists ended up pitting us against each other instead of bringing us together. I couldn’t see why one couldn’t love science and art.

I considered merging these two loves of mine by studying biology and becoming a scientific illustrator, though I knew this wasn’t something I really wanted to do. It certainly helped in my classes though, as my teachers praised my diagrams, clear posters, and my classmates owed their non-failing grades to the illustrated study guides I shared with them.

The notion that artists aren’t here just to make the world pretty is something many people reject. They don’t see us as something functional and useful. The only thing of worth to them is something that doesn’t fulfill our humanity.
Reading this article reminded me of what a friend of mine who graduated art school a few years ago told me. Everybody went into STEM degrees thinking it would lead them to money, but they were wrong and now many are still unemployed. All the candidates for hire have the same qualifications, which is sad considering the entry level jobs are outsourced. The ones that stand out and that can bring something new to the table are the only ones that will ever rise in STEM fields. What a lot of people don’t realize is that you stand out and you bring in new ideas by having creativity, vision, and good intuition, all of which Daniel Pink says in this article.

That Ivy league schools are having their med students work on their empathy and attention to detail is fantastic, and something I feel would be logical. Our society has been built to think that only L-Directed Thinking will produce results, and I’m glad that research is now proving this is not the case. I was also really interested in how the retiring boomers are now turning to art and seeing the world for what it’s really worth. Solely being in an L-Directed Thinking mode all your life doesn’t bring happiness because the emphasis is on “money” and not on feelings or meaning, as Mr. Pink puts it. Humans are not machines, we cannot live without empathy, compassion, and creativity, so why is our society structured against it?

I feel like Mr. Pink is right and that it is a great time to be an artist once again.