Bless me, oh mighty noodly one for I have sinned...It has been 877 days since my last diary (someday I'll write why I've been gone, it wasn't by choice).
For the record, I am as nervous as a virgin (will they let me back? do they still like me?), but one does have to immerse the temperature sensitive portions at some point, so I guess I should just dive in.
First off, let me give kind thanks and undying gratitude to the person or persons who gave me a subscription. Personally speaking, it was one of the kindest acts I've ever experienced, and meant more to me than I am comfortable expressing in black and white.
But what really inspired me to take virtual pen in hand and take up the avocation again was another diary republished today...
Antons Diary
still with me? I'm headed down below his noodly chaotic appendages.
Anton had the same eureka moment (expressed quite graphically) That, apparently, an awful lot of us have had, to whit, "What the fuck are we doing in a culture that assumes, and is set up with money being the sole motivator". I don't know what that assumption says about us as individuals (I lied. I do.), but it sure doesn't say much for our culture. Says a lot about my lack of career "success" I guess, but I digress.
When I first started my working life, I was 12 years old, working on a neighbor's farm for a dollar an hour. Was I motivated by the money? Of course. But that couldn't be the whole thing, even back then. I put in vastly more hours than I was paid for, because of the sense of community, of being part of something. I learned a lot working there, both in the academic sense (I got to assist in my first vet surgery at age 13), and in the pragmatic sense...you gotta shovel the shit if your gonna spread it.
Time passes....
As a new college graduate, I am lucky enough to survive the interview, and get a job in the "Department of Cellular and Molecular Research" in the cardiac unit at MGH. Goddam was I green about the ears. I stayed there for 8 years of hundred hour weeks for a salary of 15-16K. Obviously I, and almost everybody else in the research community there were motivated by money, right? For the record, it was the most intense learning environment I can imagine. Wonderful, wonderful years, that I never would have experienced if I were only motivated by financial gain.
The last 20 years, since then, I have had 4 or 5 separate and distinct "careers" (I tend to be a bit "project", rather than career oriented)...The only ones I don't have fond memories of, are the ones that I took for solely financial reasons.
I know since I was rebuilt a few years back, my perspective has changed a bit, and I've become increasingly radical (and as OPOL and others will attest I was a fair bit left of center before that), but that doesn't mean I am wrong. I have worked with hedge fund managers, and plumbers, and found that one thing is universal. Unless you change the philosophy, you cannot change the path.
What I am suggesting is, unless we change how and who we follow, what we allow to motivate us we are headed for a culture where only corporations can and will be allowed to excercise free will. We have to look inside a bit (OWWW the light, it burns) and see what we allow them to motivate us, determine how they are steering us, and see if we can't grab our own rudders. One commenter to Anton diary said, only corporations have the resources to do the big projects. I think that's both sad, and wrong. If we can get makers, and open source hackers, and physicists and all the rest of the incredible talents of the 99% together, we could make the Manhattan project look like a bad joke, and we would finally have bargaining power against the oligarchy. I mean, imagine if labor controlled fusion power....