The Icarus Deception
How High Will You Fly?
Seth Godin
Having read it
★★★☆☆
Of its time (and parts of it – the common sense and somewhat obvious parts – seemed a little more relevant to today’s world) and despite it reading a little like a series of blog posts (and bite-sized marketing nuggets) of knowledge and wisdom fused together in a book successfully funded (apparently in three days on Kickstarter) by supporters and enthusiasts of the marketeer’s attitudes and approaches to life and all that, it had some interesting perspectives and realistic views.
However, mostly skimmed its middle parts as I read (as I likely had when I first started reading this book back in 2013 and getting only about halfway through given where I had it bookmarked from picking it up and starting again in 2024!) because it gets a bit repetitive in some of its views and arguments, despite many being sensible and forward-thinking.
After all that it was finished by reading most of it in a sort of TLDR style (and not quite totally in order!) as a lot can happen in the ten years or so between buying a title and eventually reading it; with this one no longer really deserving any more attention from me, despite the few sound observations that don’t seem to have even been taken on board in recent times (if at all) by the powers that be (even those running organisations, companies, even charities)!
A good passage
The Perverse Irony of the Argument: People pick up business books (like this one) looking for a map. They pay attention in school because they want certainty: the certainty of a good grade, a good job, a good career. We transformed school from a place of inquiry into a facility optimized for meeting standards. This is something the industrial age taught us – that there are answers and that you need the answers in order to succeed. Memorize enough answers and you’re set.
The connection economy asks you to turn all of that upside down, to not want or need or seek a map. Your instinct to search for a sinecure (that thing that was a safety zone and is now merely a comfort zone) is proof that you’ve been brainwashed.
The brainwashing is subtle: It doesn’t change our basic human need for safety. In fact, it uses that need to convince us that the safe place (the comfort zone) is the place where we do what we know and do what we’re told.
Whenever you feel the pull toward compliance and obedience, feel it for what it is – a reminder of the way you’ve been trained, not a sensible or rational approach to the opportunity in front of you.
So here’s a book that instead of giving you a map (which business books are supposed to do), refuses to.
The most rational thing to do is the irrational work of art.
Seek out questions, not answers.
A second good passage
The Leverage of Limits: In a capitalist system, corporations are organized around creating more. More profit, more market share, more power. And the organisation will always want the shortest, fastest, most reliable route to more.
And so the corporation dumps chemicals in the river because it’s not against the law. The nonprofit raises money from the same donors again and again because it’s easier than finding new donors. The marketer spams a mailing list again and again because it’s easier than treasuring the attention of the audience for the long haul.
Organisations that are competing in a breakneck race to the bottom (lower prices, lower quality, less art) will sometimes get there, which does no one any good.
A third good passage
Art is a project; it is not a place. You will build your dream house and it will burn down. You will start your business and it will succeed, until it doesn’t, and then you’ll move on. You will stand onstage and speak from the heart, and some people in the audience (perhaps just one person in the audience) won’t get you, won’t accept you, won’t embrace you.
That’s what art is.
Art is a leap into the void, a chance to give birth to your genius and to make magic where there was no magic before.
You are capable of this. You’ve done it before and you’re going to do it again. The very fact that it might not work is precisely why you should and must do this. What a gift that there isn’t a sure thing, a guarantee, and a net.
It’s entirely possible that there won’t be a standing ovation at the end of your journey.
That’s okay.
At least you lived.