TEJI TUESDAYS 
Issue #040 · 30th July, 2023

Hi All!

Here is your weekly dose of TEJI, a weekly round up of what I’m pondering and exploring. Feel free to forward along to a friend if you think they might enjoy.

The meaning of art

A few weeks ago my girlfriend Amber asked me what art meant to me. I didn’t have a fully fleshed out answer at the time but after some contemplation I’ve pieced some of my ideas together I’d like to share with you all.

To me art is simply how we connect as human beings. A good piece of art makes us feel less alone. It makes us feel like we’re being seen and heard. It validates our experiences through the eyes of someones else’s.

Without art we’d feel like aliens roaming the planet unable to relate to one another. When in reality we’re much more alike then we realise. We all have struggles, successes, desires, failures, things we’re proud of, things we’re ashamed of, the list goes on.

So to me at least, the purpose of art is to connect. This can be with yourself, an audience, a friend, a lover or even a country.

Anything can be art.

Moving forward in the face of uncertainty

I found an awesome clip the other week explaining how similar writing is to living life.

I’ve personally found that accepting this hard reality and being okay with the unknown has some what freed me of a lot of my worries. I’ve found strength in my powerlessness, by accepting the fact I can’t control outside circumstances only my own actions. Which is why as of late I’ve put immense faith into myself and controlling the things that are directly in my own power.

Stop listening

Right now we are living through an unprecedented time in human history. Never before has there been so much information and media out there for us to consume. I’ve been guilty in the past of chain smoking through hundreds of podcasts episodes in search of more information. When in reality most of the time we already have the answers. Yet we are too afraid (myself included) at times to sit alone with ourselves. We need to constantly be feeding our minds with some sort of stimulation or else we might need to actually confront who we truely are.

The minute we open our phones we are hit with peoples opinions on the internet. We are told how to think about whatever’s going on. No longer do people reflect on why they believe in certain ideas because its much easier to parrot something you heard on TikTok.

I personally think that we should all start listening to ourselves a little more than we already do. I know how scary it can be to sit alone with your thoughts but there’s a piece inside of all of us that craves silence.

Free $700

My friend known as “YOU” is a conceptual artist from Texas I met in New York a few years ago. I’m a huge fan of his writing and his physical art pieces and have followed his journey ever since we met that night in a Mexican bar in Brooklyn.

I still remember meeting him. He came all the way from Texas just to come out to an art show I’d been throwing with a few friends of mine. He’d stumbled in with his curly hair on a penny board and spoke of government conspiracies. I loved the guy from the jump. He’s recently become a truck driver and has been documenting his life on the road on his blog which I find really interesting.

However the reason why I’m featuring him this week is because he’s giving away $700 worth of art, literally. You probably don’t care about his art and think that the $700 is just some arbitrary number he’s pulled out as his ass but it isn’t.

Each piece has been done on a $100 USD bill. So if you didn’t care before, do you now? If you want to enter for the chance to win one of his artworks all you have to do is follow @youreadymades on instagram for a chance to win.

He’s not asking me to do this and he won’t even know about me speaking about his project until he reads this in his inbox. I just genuinely fuck with him and thought it would be cool to highlight one of my friends. It would be awesome if one of my readers could get a cool art piece simply from reading this unknown newsletter each week.

If you’d like to learn more about his project check out an article he wrote here.

5 Must Have Skills in The Age of AI

Right now you can feel the collective angst in the air as millions of workers are fired as more and more robots begin to enter the picture. Everything is changing so rapidly as the world begins to take it’s next form. People are unsure of where to focus their attention and are fearful of sinking thousands of hours into a skill that might very well become redundant with the next ChatGPT update.  

The answer?
The only way to prepare for a world living alongside artificial intelligence is to develop a set of timeless skills that will forever be important as long as human beings exist on this planet.

What are these skills?

1. Empathy: We need to be able to relate to and understand one another as human beings. We must have an ability to cultivate a visceral understanding of other peoples view points and opinions. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with everyone you come across, but it does mean you need to be able to think deeply about circumstances and experiences that might’ve formed someones worldview. It isn’t until we’ve done this before we can have open and honest discussions as two people looking at two sides of the same coin.

2. Critical Thinking: You need to learn how to think and form your own opinions. This might sound silly but most of our opinions have been formed from things we may have just heard loosely on a podcast, a tweet or even a tiktok that we have now accepted as truth. We have closed our minds to the possibility that we might be missing a piece of crucial information that might actually change our stance on any one person or situation.

3. Curiosity: We need to ask more questions and feed our curiosity as much as possible. For now the machines answer the questions and execute on the problems. Whereas we’re the ones who have to dictate to these machines what we want them to do. Which means we must learn how to ask the right questions. To cultivate the curious mind you must think deeply and have an interest in how and why things work the way they do. The sooner we begin to dive into deeper levels of understanding across different areas of life, the sooner we will soon be able to make the previously unseen connections that will drive true innovation.

4. Interpersonal Communication: Understanding how to actively listen and communicate yourself is one of the most important skills to foster. We need to be able to convey ourselves through speech, body language and text. It is our social skills that will unlock the deeper levels of connection with one another. If we are too afraid to speak we will never be heard.

5. Adaptability: Over the next thirty years you might work hundreds of different jobs. You could be a mechanic today and a blacksmith in the metaverse tomorrow, you literally never know. We may also reach a point of so much abundance where humans never need to work again. In either scenario how would you cope with either outcome? How would you get through your days and find meaning in what you do? If we are not agile and able to adapt to the ever changing landscape we will unfortunately be left behind.

Preparing yourself
As Heraclitus once said “the only constant in life is change” and there’s a whole lot more of it coming over the next few decades. So don’t be afraid, accept it and learn to shape and use it to our advantage.

Feel free to give me feedback on Twitter. What did you like? What do you want more of? What do you want less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @TEJITOPIA and put #TEJITUESDAYS at the end so I can find it.
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Hope everyone enjoys their week!
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Love
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TEJI (@tejitopia)

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