Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal thinks that the United States has “moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers”:

More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined.

I don’t know if big government is the problem, the symptom, or a bloated red herring rotting in the sun, but it sure seems to me that sometime, somehow in the last few decades, we the persons lost our Emersonian way.

But we haven’t changed. It’s only a sleepiness. Because at our core, at the very center of who we are as people, we are the same as we ever were. We are still makers.

Not just you and me. Everybody. Dale Dougherty explains:

Makers are enthusiasts. They are amateurs. They are people who love doing what they do. They don’t even always know why they’re doing it.

The key, I think, to being a prosperous, self-reliant, productive society again is to figure out how to make making things fun again. That means embracing the maker in you, not apologizing for it. It also means not taking your employees’ ability to make things for granted.

Be curious. Learn. Explore. And know when to ask fewer questions. Look at that ankle-level bar your teachers and bosses set, then jump over it as high as you can.

Confuse work and play – constantly.

Just start making time to make more. More technology. More information. More solutions. More connections. More mistakes.

Make more reasons to pay yourself in passion first, and especially, enjoy the process of making more than the thing you make. That’s what keeps you making.