Undo

There is no way to gain wisdom but by making risky commitments and
thereby experiencing both failure and success. Unless the outcome
matters and unless the person developing the skill is willing to
accept the pain that comes from failure and the elation that comes
with success, the learner will be stuck at the level of competence
and never achieve mastery.

Commitments that are freely chosen can and should be revised from
minute to minute as new information comes along. But where there is
no risk and every commitment can be revoked without consequences,
choice becomes arbitrary and meaningless.

In order for something to be truly innovative it must be the result
of an evolutionary process: one that results from aberration,
mutation and adaptability. In this sense, a work has small potential
if it is necessarily free of all aberration and potential mutation.
In order to provide the opportunity of mutation, one must not only
adapt to risk, but even encourage it.

When we consider the evolution of an artifact, the workmanship of
certainty is static, whereas the workmanship of uncertainty is most
likely to generate innovation. Like any form of evolution, craft can
only advance through mutation. Risk provokes an evolutionary
mutation through the necessitated gesture of reconciliation of
accident.