Heroism

An interesting topic came up at lunch yesterday. Someone asked what exactly it was that makes our generation unique. My response was that we don't have heroes. At some point, someone else mentioned Steve Jobs.

This is actually interesting to me. I think after thinking more on it, what I really think is that we don't idolize the "heroic worker" anymore. We don't value hard, long hours as much, or voluminous output, or the personalization of work. In essence, we're the generation that has realized that applying linear resources to exponential problems just doesn't accomplish anything except frustrate the resources and annoy the problem.

So what does Jobs do that is heroic? The same thing Linus Torvalds does, or Mark Shuttleworth does, or any of a number of people who can lead intractable people to work together consistently for years, or to lead constantly changing teams, or even random collections of people never together long enough to bond into a team. They all are heroic because they don't do the work. They lead other people in doing the work. They delegate shamelessly, especially management and production. They have absolutely no fear telling people working for them what the plan is, and have no fear coming up with the plans and keeping the body of workers and managers focused. They have found a way to harness the boundless energy, talent, intelligence, and complete lack of focus and commitment that seem to be the hallmarks of this generation, and which will be the traits that finally moves humanity squarely in the new direction of construction instead of continuing down the path of destruction we seem eager to tread.