The “WHY NOT” In The Life Of A Person
In various essays and talks, Yves Klein talked about the barrier of convention—the norms, expectations, and patterns created by parents, peers, role models, environments, traditions, past successes, and so on. Despite a deep desire to try something new and unusual, for instance, Klein hesitated for nine years, held back by the influences and expectations surrounding him. “Until the day,” he writes, “when I said to myself, ‘Why not.’ The ‘WHY NOT’ in the life of a person is what decides everything, it is destiny. It is the sign that conveys that the archetype of a new state of things is ready, that it has ripened, that it can be brought forth into the world.” The “WHY NOT” in the life of a person—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
Don’t Submit Passively
Yves Klein grew up immersed in art, with both parents as accomplished painters—his father capturing landscapes with a rich palette and his mother creating abstract compositions filled with vibrant hues. Absorbing these influences, Klein studied the masters and honed traditional techniques. Over time, he became captivated by the idea of filling a canvas with “the sensuous pure space” of a single color. It was a radical concept and so he struggled to convince himself that a single-colored canvas could have “pictorial potential” or be considered a “real” painting. But then came the day when he said to himself, “Why not.” Klein began experimenting and in 1955, he presented twenty single-colored canvases, each a different hue, at an exhibit in Paris. “I immediately realized something significant.” Klein noted. Which was that viewers couldn’t fully engage with a single color when other hues were in the periphery. “This is what provoked my Blue period,” Klein writes. Guided by his studies of philosophy, psychology, and phenomenology, Klein came to believe that blue, more than any other color, had the capacity to evoke the boundlessness of pure color. This belief led to a January 1957 Milan exhibition featuring ten identical paintings in deep ultramarine blue, provoking controversy as critics grappled with Klein’s radical minimalism. Klein’s intense reactions, he noted, “proved to me…many people of good will submit passively to the sclerosis of learned ideas, familiar concepts, and established rules.” Over time, Klein’s blue monochromes challenged entrenched notions and became one of the pivotal moments in twentieth-century art. The Blue period, defined by the creation of International Klein Blue (IKB), shifted perceptions of art and its possibilities, and his influence continues to resonate today.
The Subtle Arts of Murder and Persuasion
One day in late 2014, Mark Manson was passively listening to music when a song caught his ear. It turned out to be a song titled “The Subtle Arts of Murder and Persuasion” by the heavy metal band Lamb of God. At the time, Mark shared links to his published articles on Facebook, and he had noticed that the platform’s algorithm gave posts with the word “Fuck” in the title about 50% more visibility. Always on the lookout for ways to use the F word effectively, the phrase “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” popped into his head when he saw the Lamb of God song title. He noted it in a document where he collected title ideas. A few months later, Mark was feeling down—his fiancée was stuck in Brazil due to visa issues, and so he was alone for the holidays. “I was basically just moping around,” Mark said. “And when I get mopey, I get very snarky and bitingly sarcastic.” In this mood, Mark looked through the document of title ideas. When he saw “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck,” it resonated with how he was feeling, and he thought to himself, “You know what? I am going to write the most offensive, profane thing I can possibly imagine, but I’m going to pair it with the best advice I can possibly imagine.” With that, Mark got to work on an article that combined raw, unapologetic language with meaningful insights. “My intention,” he told me, “was to push the limits in every way—absurdity, tone, style and everything.” After he finished writing the piece, it was so unlike anything he’d ever written that he couldn’t tell if it was brilliant or terrible. He sent the draft to his research assistant and said, “Warning: this is pretty ridiculous. I went nuts. I don’t know if I want to post it.” After reading the draft, his research assistant replied, “You can fire me if you want, I’m posting this fucking thing.” When I asked the research assistant if it was typical for Mark to ask for input on whether to publish something, he said, “No, he’d typically send me a draft when he thought it was ready. I don’t think he’d ever sent me anything before to see if it was worth publishing. I can’t think of any other time he’s done that either.” Mark said, Why Not, and published the article. The response was immediate and overwhelming. The article was read by millions of people worldwide within a few days of being published. It led Mark to expand the concepts and themes into a book that became a bestselling phenomenon, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
Avoid Getting Poisoned By Convention
Early skateboarders were mostly surfers looking for a way to pass the time when the waves were flat. They replicated the fluid, carving motions of surfing on concrete, so early skateboards were shaped like mini surfboards: asymmetrical, with a pronounced, kicked-up tail (the back end) and a flat nose (the front end). This design endured, lingering well past when skateboarding evolved beyond the simple, surf-inspired movements the boards were originally designed for. Leading the sport’s evolution was a skater named Rodney Mullen, who started modifying existing boards to better fit his more technical style of skating, reshaping them at home with a jigsaw. He eventually sought out a local wood shop and met a couple of old Italian craftsmen who specialized in furniture. Rodney worked with them to refine a design that was symmetrical, with both the nose and the tail curved upward. Initially hesitant to commercialize the boards—believing they would only appeal to a very small niche of skaters—Rodney eventually said, Why Not, and founded World Industries, the first ever skateboarder-owned company. The company’s revolutionary double kicktail design quickly became the new standard in the sport. After selling World Industries for $46 million, Mullen was asked to reflect on the company’s success. “It’s so easy to be poisoned by convention and familiarity,” he said. “I think people are naturally pack animals. You see that mimicking behavior in all sorts of ways. I think it worked to our benefit that we didn’t go to an established skateboard wood shop. We went to a couple of old Italian guys that just made furniture. So we weren’t poisoned by convention. We avoided getting trapped by familiarity.”
Just Make What You Want To Exist
In the early 1980s, hip-hop music began emerging in New York City. New York City DJs started isolating and extending the most energetic parts of jazz, funk, soul, R&B, and disco songs, known as “breaks.” These breaks, where the melody and vocals drop out to leave a raw, driving beat, heightened excitement on the dance floor. Recognizing this, DJs started playing a copy of the same record on two turntables, switching back and forth between the two, looping the “break,” creating a continuous, pulsating rhythm that energized the crowd. As this technique, called “breakbeats,” evolved, MCs evolved from simple call-and-response routines to longer, rhythmic vocal expressions, eventually leading to the development of rapping. As a student at New York University as this was all emerging, Rick Rubin chanced upon a “hip-hop night” at a reggae club and was captivated by the interplay between DJs and MCs. As hip-hop’s popularity grew, New York City record labels sought to capitalize on the trend. Since R&B music had long dominated the charts, label execs, adhering to industry norms, paired the defining feature of hip-hop—the MC’s rapping—with the smooth, polished sounds of R&B bands when creating the first hip-hop records. When he bought some of those early hip-hop records, Rubin was stunned—they didn’t come close to capturing the vibrant, raw sound he experienced at the clubs. Despite having no industry experience, resources, training, or knowledge of music production, Rubin approached some of his favorite DJs and MCs about making a record in a way that captured what he loved about their live performances. A DJ named Jazzy Jay and an MC named T La Rock said, Why Not. In Rubin’s dorm room with minimal equipment and a makeshift setup, they recorded the single “It’s Yours.” To release it, Rubin launched Def Jam Records, listing his dorm as the address. The record was an underground hit. Aspiring rappers mailed demo tapes to Rubin’s dorm room, where so many crates of submissions piled up he was asked why he would put his dorm room address on the back of a record sleeve. “I never thought anyone would ever see it,” Rubin said. “The idea that it would sell outside of the circle of people I knew didn’t cross my mind.” One standout demo came from a teenager named LL Cool J, who became Rubin’s first official signing. LL Cool J’s debut album, Radio, released on November 18, 1985, sold 900,000 copies in its first year. In 1986, Rubin produced Run-D.M.C.’s Raising Hell, the first hip-hop album to break into the Top 10, and the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill, hip-hop’s first number one album. Rubin’s approach— driven by a pure love for music rather than industry norms or commercial expectations—not only propelled hip-hop into the mainstream but also shaped heavy metal history with Slayer’s Reign in Blood, revived Johnny Cash’s career with the American Recordings series, and produced landmark albums like Tom Petty’s Wildflowers and Adele’s 21. The approach doesn’t change, regardless of the genre, the artist, or the shifting trends, fashions, and market dynamics: “I just try to make what I want to exist.”
They Made Their Conventions. You Make Yours
In The Art Spirit, Robert Henri writes, “Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. They can help you. All the past can help you.” To think outside the box, it’s said, you first have to know what’s in it. Conventions can guide you, and everything inside the box can be a resource—just don’t passively submit under the barrier of convention. When the desire to try something new and unusual persists, when what you want to exist doesn’t yet exist, when the sign that conveys that the archetype of a new state of things is ready—ask yourself, Why Not?