In the Japanese language article 反米 (anti-Americanism), the United States is lambasted for its apparent "money-worship."
Money is often branded as the root of all evil, and the spending of it apparently demotes one to the status of "consumer," a moniker which in theory should be neutral, but has connotations of mindlessness, slavishness, sheepishness... basically, all the "ishness"-es.
On the other end of the spectrum from the consumer, you have the creator: producing value for all of society one good or service at a time. Without the creators of the world, there would be nothing but a flurry of lowly serfs without a master.
Yet, there comes a point when one hits creator's block; the urge to produce is there, but there is no "spark" so to speak. But, do we ever stop and unpack the reason(s) why this urge to create lingers so intensely?
Enter: Producerism
Herein lies the tension: we ostensibly value creation more than consumption, yet we are frustrated when our creations are not consumed. It is like having a group where everyone wants to talk, but nobody wants to listen. So, what is the value of talking in this case? Where does the urge to yammer come from?
I introduce the neologism ("producerism") to drive home a point: that creation in-and-of-itself is not a virtue. Creativity *is* perhaps, but creation without creativity is just drivel. And when we wire ourselves to reward creativity over consumption, rather than promoting balance, we end up in a scenario where we are highly motivated towards output, but the motivation is unfounded in anything substantial.
Aristotle
Aristotle made famous the idea of a "golden mean;" some goldilocks zone in between excess and deficit where virtue is found. If we tilt the scales too far to either side: producing, or consuming, than we risk either putting something out into the world or taking it in without actually digesting it; we're basically either just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, or ripping everything off the wall to see what doesn't.
My Personal Testimony
I've always wanted to get into computer programming; originally, I wanted to make video games, but then I realized that was too much work and decided I would probably never make a fully original game.
When I got into coding, I went through a ton of tutorials that taught me how to build boring stuff like calculators, and I didn't see the point.
Basically, I wanted to make something, but I couldn't think of anything that I could make that was worth the effort and non-trivial. Whenever I wanted to create *period*, I had nothing to create; whenever I wanted to create *something*, the something in question was oftentimes too impenetrable to dive into.
So, I guess, the goldilocks zone was finding something that motivated me to invest time, but where the time investment was actually realistic enough to leave room for "a life;" and I put that in quotes, because the irony here is that the good life for me looks like doing a whole lot of nothing. I guess that's what they call meditation.
The closest thing I've come to finding this zone with programming has been writing papers in LaTeX, and I guess writing this blog.
One thing I *do* like to do, though, when I'm playing a video game, is think about, "how can I program this?" Not, what exact code do I need to write, but, how can I write this game in pseudocode? Most games are remarkably simple when you boil them down this way. I find it to be a fun mental exercise, even if I'm not actually writing code; and on top of that, I like learning about various different programming languages, python and R packages, etc. Just knowing what's out there (consuming) feels just as rewarding to me sometimes as actually making something.
As an INTJ, I like to have a concrete plan for something, and work from first principles as much as possible. But as a former ENFP, there are a million things I want to do; so, my journey of transitioning from an ENFP to an INTJ came by swallowing the hard pill that what I can actually accomplish, especially if I'm going to try and be a polymath, is pathetically small in comparison to what I could do if I could either live forever or be a monomath.