Seth Godin had a post on entitlement versus worthiness a couple weeks ago. There was a lot in there to unpack and I am not sure I have wrapped my head around it enough to know if what he posits is entirely true or not, but I thought I would toss it out there for general discussion.
There is a lot in the post that is applicable to the arts. Perhaps most obvious is the following:
Both entitlement and unworthiness are the work of the resistance. The twin narratives make us bitter, encourage us to be ungenerous, keep us stuck. Divas are divas because they’ve tricked themselves into believing both narratives–that they’re not getting what they’re entitled to, and, perversely, that they’re not worth what they’re getting.
At first I wondered if it were really true that divas felt like they weren’t worth what they were getting. Then I thought about all the conflicting narratives associated with art.
On the one hand you have the entitlement ideas: the prescriptive view that arts are good for everyone; if people just saw our work once, they would be hooked; arts participation as a sign of maturity and culture; one’s practice being “true” art versus that of others.
Compare that with the sense of worth associated with the arts: low pay; suffer for your art; making money=selling out; arts education isn’t important in schools; arts careers are dead ends.
In that context, it is easier to see why you can feel both entitled to more, but worth less, than you are getting.
Godin continues with some concepts that have likely passed through the minds of many in the arts on more than one occasion. (emphasis mine)
The entitled yet frightened voice says, “What’s the point of contributing if those people aren’t going to appreciate it sufficiently?” And the defensive unworthy voice says, “What’s the point of shipping the work if I don’t think I’m worthy of being paid attention to…”
The universe, it turns out, owes each of us very little indeed. Hard work and the dangerous commitment to doing something that matters doesn’t get us a guaranteed wheelbarrow of prizes… but what it does do is help us understand our worth. That worth, over time, can become an obligation, the chance to do our best work and to contribute to communities we care about.
When the work is worth it, make more of it, because you can, and because you’re generous enough to share it.
Those last couple sentences about contributing to communities and making more because you’re generous to share it are essential cornerstone sentiments of the non-profit arts.
Where I pause is at the question of, “are you generous enough to share it” for free? There is a lot of debate in the arts about working “for the exposure” that Godin’s post brushes up against.
While his stressing the that hard work does help us understand our worth does imply that one should be receiving their worth, the way he ends his post doesn’t definitively settle the question about whether you should hold out for what you are worth.
“I’m not worthy,” isn’t a useful way to respond to success. And neither is, “that’s it?”
It might be better if we were just a bit better at saying, “thank you.”
I had a hard time digesting parts of Seth’s post, and like you I was not absolutely convinced of the points he seemed to be making. One issue his essay skirts around is the divide between intrinsic and extrinsic justification and the real world problems of making them work together rather than in opposition. It almost IS what he is talking about, but without stating it in these terms. You could say that entitlement is specifically an extrinsic concern, what someone else owes us, and that feelings of self doubt and unworthiness are often intrinsically defined. our own perception of worth. Issues like doing something for exposure, as you suggest, bring the tension between these things into uncomfortable proximity.
I think it is often psychologically irreconcilable to many folks working in creative fields that what they are happy doing for themselves is also something for which there is marketplace value. Sometimes for artists the things we make and perform are so personal, so intrinsically significant that getting paid for it is verging on offensive. Its not always natural that we make and perform art with some sort of compensation in mind. And yet we are compensated for our art all the time. The boundary between these things is often tricky.
One of the ways I sometimes think about this is an analogy with personal intimacy. We share kisses and embraces with the people we love, and occasionally strangers, because these are intrinsic goods to us, we are not looking for any reward. And yet there is a whole industry that puts these things on the market. Its the oldest profession, apparently. The question is, how would an ordinary person feel if their lover suddenly handed them a wad of cash after some love making? How would we feel about getting paid for our embraces? For some people kisses are seen through an extrinsic lens of commercial viability, but for others it seems purely intrinsic. For some, getting paid to kiss someone seems wrong. We share it happily with the people we want to, but making money doing it seems… icky.
Artists are faced with this same dilemma. Some are happy to exchange their art for whatever it can get on the marketplace and the extrinsic value is all that matters. Others are doing it because it matters to them, its part of their own self worth, and in this case our art is defined as an intrinsic value. Sometimes we can navigate between the two ways of looking at it, but is it any wonder that many artists have a rough time coordinating these values? Seth’s post raises some of these same questions, and you do as well. The truth is that for most of us these things are very muddled.
Fortunately there has been a bit of research in psychology and behavioral economics on this issue. The way it is often talked about is as the overjustification effect. One good review is this:
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/12/14/the-overjustification-effect/
These are important things for us to discuss. I’m glad you and Seth are out there wresting with it 🙂
Carter-
I think you have been commenting on my blog too long. Even as I wrote the entry, I was thinking if anyone would comment on this post it would be you. I took a quick scan of the Over Justification Effect article. Looks interesting. I will have to swing back to read a bit deeper.