THE BUDGET FRIENDLY, THE SIMPLIFIED, AND THE USE OF TOOLS

A culture deficient in sincerity

The continued use of budget, simple, or beginner friendly options comes at the risk of a growing ego - you’re granted permission to think of yourself as the heroic underdog, or scrappy, resourceful character. The creeping growth of these identities and mythologies can hide the true identity of your outcomes, and therefore prevent you from knowledge and joy of your own complete actualization.

You might think you’ve protected yourself against the pain of failure by avoiding certain tools, but unwittingly, you’ve inadvertently protected yourself against the joy of success. Self-abnegation, in-it-of-itself, is not laudable. It does not necessarily show temperance. More often it indicates indulgence.

• Listen to this song. And can you believe I recorded it only using this microphone!

• Look at this video. And I edited it using the demo version of the software!

• Look how tall this mountain I climbed was. And all my gear is old and rotten!

• Look at this skateboard trick. And I found this board in the garbage!

• Look how far I’ve made it, and I’m not even using the (insert meta item or ordinary thing to do).

Okay, and what if you had? Can you see how much further you could’ve gone, or have your thick blankets covered your head and blurred your vision?

If you’re serious about something, and want to maximize the potential of your character or craft, why wouldn’t you invest your time, energy, and money in accessing the greatest material you can? Rather than the seemingly humble conservatism, a more productive path would be to invest and fail, because even in failure you are granted genuine knowledge of your limitations. In failure you are given truth. And truth is the necessary precursor to all growth.

It can be scary to invest in yourself because failure in the context of maximized resources completely exposes the faults in your character. There’s no hiding spot. Regardless, it’s a risk worth taking - actually, it’s the only choice you have if you desire a chance at maximizing your output.

Now, it’s important to note the difference between intentional limitation and unintentional limitation, because it’s true that infinite possibilities or infinite gear can easily cause decision paralysis and prevent you from production- i.e. achieving your goals.

Now, then, it might be a good time to define what is and isn’t a tool. I like this definition:

“A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task.” - Wikimedia

It’s of utmost importance then, to remember that a tool only leverages what is pre-existing in your mind. What often happens is a reversal of forms - that the prospective artist begins with their perceived capabilities of a tool rather than beginning with their imagined end in sight, and creatively using the tool to achieve that end. Thus you find yourself being a tool of the medium, rather than the opposite. It takes consistent effort and mindfulness to avoid this reversal. Here’s a quick heuristic: unless safety is involved, don’t read the manual.

I also like the heuristic that about 50% of the end product appears in course of implementation. I don’t believe that this assertion contradicts the previous paragraph. How’s that? These otherwise “hidden” aspects of creation still come from your mind. You have multiple aspects of your being and incomplete knowledge of its totality. I’m not saying that tools can’t shape or influence thought, they certainly can, I only stress that you aim not to grossly contort yourself or blur your meaning in response to your self-imposed limitations.

An example to illustrate my point comes from author George Orwell's essay, “Politics and the English Language”:

“In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning clear as one can through pictures or sensations.

It’s important not to reverse the relationship between the wielder and the wielded. There will inevitably be some disfiguration or noise added in the process of translation - that is the beauty of every artform, the unique way an idea is necessarily imperfectly captured and sublimated. But, for beauty to be found in the imperfections, perfection has to be strove toward.

Sometimes you might feel resistance to something that you think counts as “cheating”, or that you view it as wildly professional. It might help to remember that that whatever that object is will probably be seen as mind bogglingly primitive by future standards.

Tools can also exist conceptually. Maybe they’re better known as “toolkits”, or “frameworks.” I like the term “lens”. Relying on lesser intellectual tools and lenses also constitutes a form of escapism, and therefore another form of self-imprisonment and ensures failure of the maximization of your actualization.

Understanding that conceptual tools exist helps us understand why certain limitations, even those arbitrarily chosen, can provide a basis for production. Initially, that fact might seem sort of odd, paradoxical even. But, again, a conscious limitation is a tool, albeit a conceptual one. I will never say that you should eliminate all walls - infinite options cause paralysis - only that the walls you have should be analyzed, optimized, and understood.

Again, don’t have your takeaway from this article that you should go out and buy the most expensive versions of everything you own. I only aim to incite awareness of this subtle form of self-sabotage, and provide an opportunity for you to reassess your relationship to your tools and your medium.

I haven’t addressed lack of access to resources yet in this article because, generally, if artistic or design concerns are important to you, it’s much more likely that you’re facing personal problems than financial ones. I hesitate to address this because it’s very easy to falsely self-identify with it. Perhaps it really is true that you just don’t have enough money / energy / time / people / space etc.

Heuristic: if you don’t have a specific, actionable plan, nor are actively taking steps to ensure you get your materials, you can be quite confident that you are facing internal blockage instead of genuine blockage. You can be confident that you found it easier to blame something external rather than the (genuinely, incredibly scary) fact that with your perceived resources at your disposal, your success is in your hands.

FOR THE RARE, RARE TIMES WHEN IT IS TRUE THAT YOU GENUINELY CANNOT GET WHAT YOU WANT: Firstly, continue to try, you probably can. Next: as a tool is a form of leverage, even if you are in a position where you cannot access your dream supplies, you are always able to improve your own mind, and thus have further strength to leverage once you inevitably attain the thing you want. A microphone costs money, to sing does not. Perhaps you cannot afford a pen, but you can think and speak freely.

This article has provided you a tool: a lens through which you will see life. Will you allow yourself to use it? Will you allow yourself to see the places in which you are not helping yourself out of fear? Will you allow yourself the permission to fully actualize yourself?

---

Thank you Kirk Heaton for reading a draft of this article and providing feedback.