< Keeping a house (or mowing the lawn at the local church ... or any number of very useful, often unrecognized contributions) are at least as useful as what we normally call "skills". >
Take, for example, not mowing your own lawn. Some of your neighbors may want to see the neighborhood being manicured to certain standards, but for the sake of argument this hypothetical community has no formal rules -- the lots are just independent. So some of the neighbors that have these weird expectations may band together to attempt to pressure you into mowing and other things. Perhaps you are an adherent of a Plants Rights organization, and don't want to torture natural processes with high RPM rotors. Heck, you had no idea that people would do such things! Now you have become of a `member' of this grass-torturing-tribe. Why should you want to do anything `useful' for this tribe? Marcus ________________________________ From: Friam <[email protected]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, January 22, 2018 12:26:15 PM To: FriAM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Los "países de mierda" le dejan millones de dólares a EE.UU. I think most of us are entrained by the concept that one derives their identity from their *job*. But if we give it a fair bit of thought, it's insidious. To ham-handedly lob at Stanley again, it's part of the myth of the objective. Corporations definitely have charters, mission statements, for- or non-profit objectives, etc. So, it seems trivial to lump them into part of the problem, not the solution. But nation states? It's unclear to me what their purpose is (perhaps should be capitalized and pluralized: Purposes are). Beyond that, to what extent *can* we synthesize a collective purpose from the purposes of its parts? And to what extent can/should we design collectives as forcing structures so that all their parts "line up"? Opinions of the Dreamers and immigration, as a whole, seem categorizable according to opinions of how/when/whether collectives cohere. The point is also on-topic for the Women's March, perhaps peripherally to #MeToo, though, and more towards pay inequality. Being useful to one's tribe has absolutely nothing to do with what you think they want/need, job recruiters, or anything of the sort. Keeping a house (or mowing the lawn at the local church ... or any number of very useful, often unrecognized contributions) are at least as useful as what we normally call "skills". In fact, the very word "skill" is the fallacy of begging the question. And going back to my comment to Frank, in the same way those around us often *know* us better than we know ourselves, it's largely irrelevant what you enjoy or *think* you're good at. It's probably more useful to allow others to tell you what you should be doing. (Pick up those damned socks!) But more importantly, any *singular* assessment of need/skill/etc. will be false. What we need are estimators of collective parameters (to which our libertarian/individualist/capitalist/masculine values make us allergic). On 01/22/2018 10:32 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > It was confrontational to ask myself "who would WANT me, if I rejected my > country of origin?" > ... > Even if we are not "deported" from our own homelands, we may be "deprecated" > if we do not work hard to shape our society around this new reality. On 01/22/2018 10:32 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote: > I'm willing to be useful but my age is a problem. Not for my capacity to be > useful but because potential employers don't believe I can be. I still get > calls from recruiters but lately I say, "It sounds like a good match but the > hiring manager won't be interested because of my age." -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com Friam Info Page - Redfish<http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> redfish.com FRIAM Group is an emergent organization of Complexity researchers and software developers in Santa Fe, New Mexico interested in Applied Complexity, Artificial Life ... FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0175czWFt6A/U4YywKgpq5I/AAAAAAAAANI/69ySeWbfdUA/s1600/AgainSomeMoreForever.jpg]<http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> FRIAM: The Comic Edition<http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> friam-comic.blogspot.com or Dave "Wade right in"? (also seen "Give em enuff Rope Ropella", "Marcus Snarkus", "Smithereens" and "Nick 'Eyebrows' Thompson" )
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