TOW: The Working Life

I think back, all the time, to two books I read in environmental philosophy back in my undergraduate degree.  The first was Ishmael, which I will always love, and the second is Small Is Beautiful, which is quite possibly the most boring book on the planet, but also one of the most applicable books to modern society.

You see, Ishmael is all about the culture of agriculture and modern society.  The book asks:  how many people can live on the planet and we all can still be happy?  The answer seemed to be, that we create more people than the planet can sustain, and we starve ourselves and our families over time.  In other words, most of the problems associated with famines is our own fault.  The book is fairly complex, but the gist of it is about how differently we live from people who first walked the earth...most of us have forgotten the principles of living well, both in an environmental sense and a cultural sense.  We don't value what we have.

On the other hand, Small is Beautiful is sort of like a next step up from that, a Jane Jacobian guide to how to create the kind of communities Jacobs envisioned as creating great urban living.  It talks about the value of work, and the value of having enough in terms of work....because work should be the focus of our lives, in the sense that work should be seen as a social good.

What I have come to realize is that a large portion of the industrial, and now the information age, are unhappy with the nature of work.  And more than that, people are generally unhappy with their lives.  While some would say it's because we work too much, I would instead say it's because most of us work too little.  Throughout the day, we all do tasks that have meaning for us, some more than others, but work means an act of creation, or even simply an act that has value to us and society.

Let me interrupt this thought with a story.  I used to work at a commerical grocery bakery.  Every day, I would create buns, pastries, cookies and other good for consumption.  I loved cooking and baking, and this had value to me.  Every day, however, at the end of my shift, I would throw away approximately 20 pounds of pastries, buns, breads, sweets, and generally anything else past its due date.  Those items were not allowed to be donated, given to charity, used, given to employees (that's actually considered theft in a grocery store) or otherwise consumed.  It was waste...in grocery terms:  it was "shrink." 

Throwing perfectly good food, food that was meant for pleasure and not neccessarily for nutritional value, killed my soul.  To me, there is nothing better in modern life than being able to do something, to have something, simply because you want it.  It's a luxury not many countries or people can afford these days, and baked goods are made to produce that feeling of 'feeling good' that has been gotten over years of hard work, work that actually mattered.


I think that, sometime in the near future, someone is going to stand up and say, "Hey, the way we work isn't valuable, and we're hurting our own people and culture by continuing to create line workers out of perfectly intelligent, vivid and interesting people."  Many movies have explored this problem, many books have explored this problem, but unfortunately, the words 'outsource' and 'downsize' are still a very large part of our vocabularies. 

I think my life changed after reading those books, but even more so after I saw their basic principles applied again and again. We're becoming so efficient that we're eliminating jobs as the population increases, and some people have simply given up on looking for work.  In other words, we're no longer starving people because of the inability to monitor the amount of food we have, but we're willfully creating a society where people are going to be unemployed for at least a larger portion of their lives.  And more than that, we're outsourcing the valuable, high level thinking work to cheaper companies, while keeping on the people who can do the mundane tasks that no one would do without the benefit, the value of creating something that work should give us.

VOW: If Homer Simpson were real

This.....creeped me out.

TOW: What Does a Father Want for Father's Day?

I remember, about seven years ago, probably the worst father's day I ever had to experience.

I spent days, weeks, looking for a gift for my Dad (stepdad) that he would like, and it would be from all of us, me and my brothers.  I ended up buying him a Swiss Army Windbreaker, that came with cologne.  (Or was it the other way around?  I think you can see where this story is heading.)  My dad could not have looked more disappointed.  I couldn't have been dumber.

It's a hard lesson to learn that dads, in general, don't want gifts.  They want many things, but they don't want things.  Like most Hallmark Holidays, it's hard to understand why men would want useless gifts at all. 

Perhaps there are some sentimental dads out there, but most dads just want quality time and quality experiences with the people they actually value.  I know both of my dads just like a little time to relax, do what they like, and a 'Happy Father's Day.'  That's good enough.

So, this Father's Day, I called both my dads (I do double duty on Father's Day)  and talked with them the same way I always do.  The funny thing about special days is that most people don't want to be treated special, they just want to know that you care, and that you thought of them, and remembered.  Most people don't want the kind of special treatment we see on tv.  Granted, there are very materialistic fathers out there, but they are always pretty clear what they want.  =)

A dad just wants what any man wants:  to feel needed, respected, useful and proud of himself.  Anything you do to forward that sort of feeling, is certainly a gift of high price.

VOW: I'm Not Gonna Pee My Pants

Words cannot describe.  ^_^

TOW: Dating and Relationships

Dating is complicated.

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine, who said, "I'm glad I'm in a committed realtionship with someone because I'm terrified of dating again.  It's a good thing I'm in love [with the person I'm with]." 

Another friend of mine is constantly having issues with a new boyfriend.

The rest of my friends are terminally single (comme moi!) or married.

The more I think about it, I wonder...why do we date anyways?

I've been on a couple dates recently, some planned, some not-so-planned (don't ask...sigh) and my reaction has been, "What am I doing here, again?"

I have had fun, but no, I haven't really been attracted to anyone, or even, like, cared, really.  For me it's been a social exercise. (Which should say a lot about me to begin with.  Heh.  Ah well.)

I have gone on a lot of dates/planned a lot of dates in the past,  (With about somewhere between 50-60 people over the last four years) sat through a lot of awkward coffee conversations, had more than my fair share of horror stories.  In fact, minus one or two pleasant surprises, I think it would be fair to say my dating life is sort of like going to the zoo.  You meant to just peruse the attractions, but you end up among a bunch of baboons and apes for no particular reason you can recall.

We always seem to go through these sort of exercises, minus those who marry their high school sweetheart or equivalent therein.

After all the lost cash on cheap martinis and fake emergency phone calls to get out of awkward situations, why do people still do it?

I kind of feel like people date because they won't lose hope, even as they hope against hope. 

More than anything, I think everyone is afraid of feeling alone.  And it's hard not to once you get to the age where everyone starts getting busy and unable to return your phone calls.

Even more than that, it has been described to me as that kind of feeling you feel right before you go to sleep.  It's cold, but not from the temperature, but it's cold because it feels empty and you maybe wonder if there should be a person laying beside you.  Or maybe at least a cat.  (Or, if you're really desperate somewhere between ten to twenty cats.  Because, well, it worked for this lady)

I think humans are really resilient, really social creatures.  And to us, even those who are fairly introverted, being tired because we're with someone is always preferable to being alone all the time by ourselves.  We have social needs. 

And I think those social needs are what propel all of us to reach out and communicate with people, especially people we can call 'on our side.'

In more ways than one.

VOW: Very Angry Cat

This kitty is lovely.