Pink Floyd and Anarchy

Is unique ability and personality an obstacle to corporate power?

Pink Floyd’s song “Another Brick in the Wall” is one I should hate. It’s clearly a challenge to societal norms and conventions, particularly that of education. But I don’t. It fascinates me. The assertion of one’s own vision in defiance of the crowd. As artist/entrepreneur I am wholeheartedly in favor of this.

But is this really good for civilization?

Perhaps in primitive times, personal independence as far as one’s work was concerned was widespread. You farmed the land the way you best saw fit. But then a single brilliant mind invents a new method for farming that increases productivity. If you want to compete in the new agriculture economy, then you have to put aside your own methods and adopt the new technique.

In modern times, we have the idea of a “company”, where a group of people get together in order to accomplish something that is greater than they are. And in order for this to work, there has to be authority that determines what those under their commend will do. Those subordinates must sacrifice their individuality in order to accomplish a greater good in the world.

And then there’s education. The more things that have been figured out by people in the past the more it is important to learn those things and implement them if the progress in society is to be preserved. So a person must sacrifice their individuality if they are going to catch up to where society is now.

So what of the misfits? The rebels? The round pegs in the square holes, as the Apple ad says?

These people are outliers. But often the outlier is far more important than their small number would imply. Outliers bring about important innovations, such as Einstein and Edison. And there’s where you get the Pink Floyd song. The education system would force the outliers to be “another brick in the wall”.

But is breaking free good for everyone?

According to Myers Briggs, the innovative types make up only 25% percent of the population. According to the Big Five, people who are high in trait openness are much rarer than those low in trait openness. Society is mostly about the business of preservation, and thus the education and job systems should be created around preservation.

So is the Pink Floyd song wrong?

Maybe for most people. And while the mainstream education and job systems should not change, the innovators and visionaries should not be ignored. We should get better at identifying them and perhaps create a parallel system or a way for them to live outside the system. And not just innovators. Poets, artists, and prophets also find it excruciating to be “another brick in the wall”. These are the people who hold up a mirror to society. Innovators are often valued, but the mirror that tells you how awful you are? Ha.

Pink Floyd is a mirror.

But anarchy is not the solution. The song is conditionally good, not completely. Society often corrects in extremes, and that is exactly what is going on here.