← index

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.