In Your Work, Your Leadership, Are You an Exploiter or Nurturer? Your Life, Livelihood Makes It Clear

When it comes to your leadership, your livelihood activity, are you an “exploiter” or a “nurturer”?

In his essay “The Unsettling of America” Wendell Berry writes about these two “kinds of mind” and thinking about them in terms of our current culture of technological and economic obsession is interesting. According to Berry:

Exploiters are specialists, experts. The nurturer is not. They acknowledge their limited knowing.

The exploiter’s standard is efficiency. The nurturer’s standard is care.

The exploiter’s goal is money, profit. The nurturer’s goal is health—the land’s, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s.

Exploiters ask how quickly and how much can the land be made to produce; nurturers ask what is the land’s capacity? How much can it be asked to do without diminishing it?

Exploiters want to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer wants to work as well as possible. For them, efficiency can be sacrificed for good.

The exploiter believes in organization, establishment; the nurturer has faith in human order.

The exploiter serves institutions, organization; the nurturer serves the land, household, community, place.

The exploiter thinks of numbers, quantities, hard facts; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.

Which describes the current EdTech industry and consulting industry? Which captures Big Tech today?

I think it is clear where the AI industry falls here, especially in light of their Data Center projects and the obsession with efficiency. Big tech is more exploiter than nurturer.

Exploiters care more about things and worship efficiency at all costs. Sound familiar? Nurturers care more about life, humanity, people, and well-being.

Your “kind of mind” is betrayed by you you engage in your livelihood and that which you do and advocate for.