(via ikenbot)

{ “The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In” }
by Elizabeth Barlow in New York Magazine (30 March 1970), p. 30

via { somewhatclever }

••••••

Reblogging as text:
for search optimization & because that blue, compressed jpg was awful.

(via somewhatclever-er)

olena:

This [title link] is probably the most real speech [/thing] I’ve ever read.

A piece of it:

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let’s get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

— DFW

••••••

But, there’s something else that needs saying that he didn’t get to, or maybe he hinted at it in mentioning our various “temples of worship”:

When you’re doing the daily thing, whatever it is you do, and tu fais your grocery shopping and dinner and unwinding, and you have to choose what to think about — whether or not you’ll succumb to those “petty frustrations” of crowds, muzak, monotony, tiredness, etc. etc. or whether you’ll reason, consider alternatives, think outside yourself…

If you can manage not to succumb, can you use that time (in lines, crowds, commuting, etc.) to do something more? Even if that something is yet another “god” to worship; if you choose one anyway, consciously or not, mightn’t it at least be something bigger than the self, something more far-reaching than the immediate/parochial wants/anxieties/honors/goals/etc?

I’m talking about, amidst all that mental and environmental baggage and commotion and grind and culture, reaching beyond it, throwing anchors out — far, far out. Can you keep at it, can you read on the train and learn things, can you do mental work and consider pertinent problems (whatever they are for you: are you a physicist, artist, sociologist, accountant, mother?), can you, despite being tired and hungry and dying to watch TV, decide instead to make a dent in that thing you thought (long or not so long ago) that you really really wanted to do? Despite, also, the fact that this thing might take very long and you may have no results at all, not for a long time.

They’re questions because it’s always a choice: to believe in the thing you set out for, even if you don’t quite know what it is or how to do it, or to hell with it and watch the telly or scroll down some really long website or other for a few hours before sleeping again, and doing the same things, again.

That’s the third part of learning how to think, or what to think about. Easier said than done.

This [title link] is probably the most real speech [/thing] I’ve ever read.

A piece of it:

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let’s get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

— DFW

I think about it sometimes — about people who get into the positions to talk to large amounts of other people, to talk about how they got somewhere and about their success and give advice, and how they never talk about that boredom, frustration, monotony, fear, uncertainty…

No, they do… but it just always sounds glamorous. Even when they say “this was a lot of unglamorous hard work” — it still sounds glamorous for some reason. Inspiring. It makes you think, “Gee, I can do all that hard work, too.”

But most of the time, you’re not sure if you can do it at all. It’s not obvious like they make it sound, like a timeline or something. You’re not sure if you’re working hard enough (even if it feels like that mentally or physically of both), not sure what you’re doing, or what you should be doing. And isn’t that most of life? But it usually just gets a sentence as a side-note, and they go on to talk about the success part, the fun part.

Finally someone, in 2005, talked about the water.

{ Are Jobs Obsolete? }
By Douglas Rushkoff, Special to CNN
September 7, 2011 9:33 a.m. EDT

Jaron Lanier’s article at { Edge }

The title a little far-sighted for now… but someone has to be.

Are Jobs Obsolete?
By Douglas Rushkoff, Special to CNN
September 7, 2011 9:33 a.m. EDT

The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with “career” be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?

Instead, we are attempting to use the logic of a scarce marketplace to negotiate things that are actually in abundance. What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff.

(or something like that).

A short essay, published on the Visual & Critical Studies blog.

Thanks, Jeff.

Why is Nature predisposed to indulging in vices? We hold on to that which gives us pleasure, even though it subtracts from our physical life. A system seeking life most pertinently would not engage in activities that negate it, so life doesn’t seem to be the top priority for our system. In looking to Physics for an answer, it’s deductible that the pleasure vice grants is actually excitement, which is energy — motion.
That means that vice puts the system into a state of instability; why would we seek instability? Instability, as the motion of energy as physical matter, is simply energy transfer, meaning that energy cannot be concentrated in one place for too long. If energy is concentrated, it “brews”, it creates an extremely volatile center which is another kind of instability. Therefore, is it possible to say that instability cures instability? That there is no stagnant state of balance, only ever a balancing act. There must always be motion within our Universe system.