Seth ships

My friend Johnny Memphis, former DJ for WRSI (yeah, he was the one immortalized in the Dar Williams song) once noted about Bob Dylan’s song “Dignity,” that it was characteristic of Dylan’s unique genius to write a song on that concept. “Who else would think to write a song about dignity?” he asked with a laugh.

I thought of that while reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin, his new book in which he expands on what may be his central idea: that generosity is not just an admirable and nice thing, but that it is an essential aspect of creativity and making meaning in life.

In this 4-Hour Workweek world, it is moving (another unusual word in the business world) to have Godin write about how generosity brings us closer, and of how real artists are always generous, and of how we all have the potential to create art with our work, whether we teach or write or serve coffee.

This is Godin’s manifesto, his “What Now?” guide to a time in which the factory (in the broadest sense of the term) has failed us. The only rationale choice, he argues, is to become a linchpin: “an individual who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create, and make things happen.”

There’s no map here, no guide to living the linchpin life. But Godin builds a powerful case for why we must think of our lives and careers differently than we have in the past, for why our primitive “lizard brain” will try to keep us from considering this new way of being, and (critically) of how inhabiting our genius is more than anything a conscious choice to overcome the brainwashing that has taught us to stand in line, raise our hands, and ask permission.

This is the Seth Godin book most difficult to summarize. And there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s his most important and radical book. Don’t buy it for your college-age kid if you want her to work for one of the big accounting firms.

No, on second thought: please do. That world is dying and offers only the illusion of security. What we need to do now is become indispensable. This is a good place to start.