From: bew@brahms.udel.edu (Ben Williams)
Newsgroups: alt.support
Subject: Re: life and work
Summary: What am I talking about?
Date: 22 Aug 92 04:44:13 GMT
Followup-To: alt.support
Organization: University of Delaware

In article <MURPHYG.92Aug19115537@peplinsk.Software.Mitel.COM> murphyg@Software.Mitel.COM (Gary Murphy) writes:
; 

  {Gary offering some good points that show what a dunce I am... sigh...}

; The world is not nearly so one-sided as you paint it ...
; 
;    What?  The dinning noise of the mega-machine going about its
;    business of destroying the world.  Its seems to me that the more people who
;    choose (or are forced to) not work, the better are the chances of the human
;    race surviving (note to prospective employers - just a little joke, eh :-).
; 
; Global hermitage is no solution.  But I will offer this: an economist
; once calculated nature's investment in each gallon of gasoline would put
; the cosmic-energy accounting cost at $1,000,000 (1980) per gallon!  It
; is certainly cheaper to encourage everyone _not_ to commute.  If you are
; interested in the alternatives (and also some more alarming statistics
; on the progress of industrialization, I highly recommend R.Buckminster
; Fuller's "Grunch of Giants")
;
Funny you should mention Buckminster Fuller, one of my alltime heros.
I haven't read his "Grunch of Giants" however.  What I was implying,
and what I am wondering, is what percentage of the things that people
do for a living are necessary for our "living" and what percentage is
the consumerist nonsense we have come to live with in America.  Maybe
there were 20 different people responsible for my last meal, but its my
impression that most of the things people do today we could easily live
without.  And think of this:  today 20 people to bring food to the
table, tomorrow 30.  WHY?  Well, the obvious next step is to have the
tractor computer-controlled as it goes around the field harvesting the
grains.  So people to design the computer-assisted farming equipment,
people to write the software, people to debug said software, etc.  Now
do you really think we need this?  We used to get our food from local
farmers.  Now when I buy something from the supermarket for all I know
it just came from the other side of the country.  Sure its cool to have
all those choices, but does it make sense to ships things across the
country, especially things that are grown right here where I live?
Well, it makes perfect sense to a free(of intelligence)-market
economy.  But it doesn't make too much to me.  Let's say tomorrow I, or
someone else, invented a device that would allow anyone to fly
unassisted to any other place in the country in a matter of minutes.
What would happen?  The auto industry would be finished.  How many
people would be out of work and with no means to survive.  Instead of
helping people, as the inventor of this device probably assumed, it
would be devasting to millions of peoples lives.  Is this an economic
system that makes sense?  A good exercise for an economic student would
be how our system would adjust to such a hypothetical situation  (or
maybe the answer is, our system could NOT adjust and so this new
technology would experience a quickly and quietly snuffed out).


; 
;    quit your job (if you are lucky enough to have one) and walk down the
;    street and think, I feel OK about my life, about who I am and what I am.
; 
; Why not?  I've done this several times, sometimes because the job wasn't
; worth the trouble, because I'd been asked to do things unethical, and
; once because of problems at home that required my full-time presence.
; 
;    Just don't talk to any of your friends.  They might ask you what you have
;    been "doing" lately...
; 
; All my friends know I am always in need of a job that doesn't interfere
; with my work ;-)  May I ask this (since this is alt.support): where do
; YOU _want_ to be?  How do you want the world to remember you and what
; achievements do you want to leave behind you?  Given these lists, what
; can you do today toward these goals?
;
These are good questions.  I wish I knew the answers.  If anyone would
like me to get into my long list of personal problems, I wouldn't mind
doing that too much.  Basically what I want to do before I die is to
experience life as a "real" human being, something I have never seemed
to be able to do.  To be able to feel alive, to be able to feel real
joy.  Which I think I am capable of but is locked up in me and I don't
know the combination and I don't have the key.  But as to what I was
saying in my previous post, I am putting forward the claim that the
people who go to the top, the people who are the big successes in life
(in the way success is defined by the popular culture) are the ones who
have a hole in their center.  They work so hard because they are trying
to make up for something missing in their lives.  Just the way there is
something very real missing from my life, but I think I am
sophisticated enough to realize it is not gonna be solved by making a
lot of money.  And the system is set up to reinforce/encourage these
people with empty/meaningless/without-a-substantive-center lives to
come into existence.  "where do YOU _want_ to be?"  -  I want to be
here, now and alive (real life to us empty meaningless people is a
frightening thing).  There are lots of things I would like to do, but
what difference does it make really.  I see your questions as an
indication that you have bought into this way of "living" that I am
talking about.  I recently went about a job and I was given a form to
fill out, and one of the questions was: "Where do you see yourself 5
years from now."  These kinds of questions really bug the heck out of
me.  For one thing, what goddamn business is it of theirs what I am
gonna be doing in 5 years.  It strikes me as these people who have
their whole lives planned out.  Like why don't they ask me "When do you
plan to die?"  I mean, give me a break!  I don't know what I will be
doing tomorrow, much less 5 years from now.  I mean, I know I am a
pretty screwed up person (if you are interested in how screwed up I am,
well, maybe later...), but I am not sure who is more screwed up, me or
people that ask questions like that. "How do you want the world to
remember you and what achievements do you want to leave behind you?
Given these lists, what can you do today toward these goals?"  Sorry if
this sounds like I am putting you down, but I think a real human being
who is really living does not need to ask questions like this.  Questions
like "Why am I here", something I seem to be saying to myself over and
over again whereever I go.  A person that has a goal in life, and then
proceeds to try to acheive that goal, is a good American, but he is a
slave to this idea that we are what we do.  Of course my hero Bucky Fuller
is someone who did exactly that kind of thing I think.  So I am not really
sure that you are wrong.

;    Ben (sorry, I tend to rant sometimes).  
; 
; No need to be sorry, Ben
; we are not responsible for how we feel, only 
; for what we do, and what you have done by sharing your views here is to 
; open the floor for other with your concerns and those like myself who 
; want to share their ideas of a way out.  Thanks!  
; 

Sheesh, I can't believe how nice some people are.  It makes it harder to
justify my ranting...

; --
; Gary Lawrence Murphy - Gary.Murphy@software.mitel.COM - (613) 592-2122 x3709 
;           "Forget about trying to cure yourself." --- Morita


Ben.


-- 
Ben Williams
bew@brahms.udel.edu

               What we got here is a failure to communicate... 
Newsgroups: alt.support