For Individuals Only Answer to Conformity Classic Reprint

Excerpt from For Individuals Only: Answer to Conformity

But, says the author, this does not represent the human situa tion. Every person can be the manager of his own life. He likes that word - manager. It fits the context admirably. A manager cannot do whatever he likes. He must operate within the framework of the possible and with due reference to his resources and responsibilities. His equipment does not include an Aladdin's lamp. But within that framework he can and must make the decisions that spell success or failure for the enterprise. This is a good analogy for every individual's freedom and responsibility for the control of his own life. So, if one should and must manage one's own life, the crucial question is, How shall one do it? The book aims to make some contribution to ward answering that question. There is no magic formula, and the author does not oversimplify the problem.

To say that living is an art is only to repeat what has been said many times during the last twenty centuries or more. I will add - what has perhaps not been said quite so often - that the art of living requires the same two elements that are neces sary in the practice of any other art. The first of these can be variously described the creative impulse, the vision of an ideal, a feeling of the values that are involved both in the process and in the end that is to be attained by the creative effort. The second is the techniques and skills that are necessary in handling the materials through which the artist's ideal is to be realized and brought into 'concrete existence. The first is artistry; the second is craftsmanship. Craftsmanship is not art, but there is no art without it. The sculptor is not a mere stone-cutter; but unless he has the skill of hand and eye to draw and model and carve, he is not a sculptor. Great violin playing is more than digitaldexterity; but it does not occur, however the artist's soul may be filled with music, unless he also has the technique that en ables him to put his fingers in the right place at the right time.

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