What do you do?

 The following was a submission for 'Seniors Writing 2022' on the theme 'Diversity'

We’ve all been asked, way too many times. It’s a fall-back conversational opener, but it’s also a lazy way to think we ‘know’ someone when in truth it’s simply a means to mentally label and consign them to a metaphorical box. We’re expected to answer with a one word occupational ‘tag’; banker, teacher, mum, plumber, receptionist, CEO, nutritionist, lawyer, etc. as if it somehow summed us up. Is that all I am? Is that all you are? We are surely none of us so crudely and simply categorised? So readily consigned to a neat little compartment; the job title, the assumed stereotype, the preconceived notions, the cultural prejudices?

Many years back I was invited to submit a personal ‘update’ for inclusion within a small publication on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of my leaving high school – a place I had found largely pointless and from which I was only too happy to depart at the earliest opportunity on completing year 10 – a largely naive ‘boy’ of just fifteen years; so the anniversary year wasn’t even strictly correct as I’d actually left school two years prior to most of my soon-to-be HSC graduate ‘peers’.

With inspiration from something similar published in Brian Eno’s A Year with Swollen Appendices, I sent in a reasonably swiftly compiled and hence far from comprehensive, alphabetically arranged list of numerous ‘occupations’ or ‘qualities’ that I felt comfortable identifying with; that I felt might paint a picture of my various activities and evolving personality across the intervening decades. From artist, bisexual, curator and designer; through father, gardener, idler and liar; to motorcyclist, neuter, pacifist and reader; plus surfer, thinker, wanker, youth worker and much else besides. I think I hoped to subvert their expectations and shake up any residual mental pictures they might hold of their onetime classmate, assuming they remembered me at all which I felt was far from guaranteed.

We are all of us complex, multi-faceted individuals experiencing lives rich with variety and contradiction in every aspect of our being; tasks we undertake, thoughts we conceive, beliefs we hold, belongings we cherish, people we love, desires we conceal, habits we tolerate, actions we regret. Amongst his many insightful observations Albert Einstein once extolled, during a college commencement address in 1938 (please forgive the gendered language of his time), a desire that humanity exhibit “a sociable interest in a happier lot for all men” and “that every individual should have the opportunity to develop the gifts which may be latent in him. Alone in that way can the individual obtain the satisfaction to which he is justly entitled; and alone in that way can the community achieve its richest flowering” adding “we must not only tolerate differences between individuals and between groups, but we should indeed welcome them and look upon them as an enriching of our existence.” How simple it seems. Yet so far, and perhaps ever receding, from such a reality we still find ourselves.

I believe the simplest way to sidestep our lazy cultural preference for ‘black or white’ binary categorisations of our lived experiences and ingrained prejudices is to acknowledge, first within ourselves and then within all our fellow beings, the extraordinarily rich and complex amalgam of who indeed we are, and who perchance we might yet become. Rather than just me or you, us or them, Asian or African, male or female, Christian or Muslim, gay or straight, friend or enemy; recognise instead that every single one of these, and other, characteristics exist within a vast spectrum of complex possibility. A child of immigrants can be both Vietnamese and Australian; in Japan it is common to practice both Shinto and Buddhist faiths simultaneously; bisexuality may be widely misunderstood but is neither diminished nor negated through being so; and is an enemy truly anything more than someone we choose not to understand or over whom we wish to exert power? When we recognise the infinite complexity of ‘who’ an individual might be, we cannot but help to also recognise that we are all of us similarly, almost incomprehensibly, rich with a veritable kaleidoscope of variety and potential. We may have much in common, we may have much that varies, but every single one of us is uniquely suited, uniquely qualified, to be who we are. And if we are all unique, then surely we are united by that common possession of singularity?

Yes, we may form close bonds with others in whom we find one or two points of similarity with our own cultural background, philosophical beliefs, sexual preferences, occupational endeavours or sports of choice, but we and they are so much more than a handful of commonalities. The more we recognise the extraordinary richness of every individual, the more we see that indeed we are all united in and by our diversity. Plus the more it should be apparent that it is this very diversity that lends humanity, our individual and communal lived experiences, the sense of identity and belonging which at heart we all crave. We shouldn’t merely be tolerating difference and diversity but actively seeking, embracing and rejoicing in it. Our sense of self can at times seem intrinsic, ingrained, dominant, even supreme, but lets look beyond this learned individualist mindset and recognise the truth of humanity’s collective interdependence; the genuine strength to be gained from a unity of difference. A world rich and strong in diversity.

Que scay-je? (What do I know?)

 Having first encountered and become intrigued by Michel de Montaigne in Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy, I was recommended Sarah Bakewell’s delightful and illuminating How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. I subsequently resolved that there was nothing for it but to read his own words, in full, and procured a copy of Donald Frame’s translation The Complete Essays of Montaigne. I am savouring the content and, as yet, have completed only two of the three original books included in this largish volume (just over 900 dense pages), but am thoroughly enjoying each new encounter with his thoughts. Even his odd, and yet therefore perhaps entirely apposite (as seemingly every essay deviates from its stated theme), inclusion of the ‘Apology for Raymond Sebond’ (Book II, Essay 12) which, at 140 pages, far exceeds the length of all other entries, is dotted with his acquired wisdom and self-deprecating observations. For me, the strength of so much of Montaigne’s writing is the genuine sense of its being truly ‘lived’ wisdom, despite his great fondness for his library collection. Following is just a small taste of my favourite excerpts from Book I. They are numbered by Book and Essay e.g. I:4

I:4

‘Anger at things that happen shows small wit;

For all our wrath concerns them not a bit.’

Attributed to an unknown poet in Plutarch

I:5

‘I put my trust easily in another man’s word. But I should do so reluctantly whenever I would give the impression of acting from despair and want of courage rather than freely and through trust in his honesty.’

I:9

‘We are men, and hold together, only by our word.

I:11

‘The frenzied curiosity of our nature, which wastes its time anticipating future things, as if it did not have enough to do digesting the present.’

I:14

‘I live from day to day, and content myself with having enough to meet my present and ordinary needs; for the extraordinary, all the provision in the world could not suffice.’

I:20

‘It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere.’

‘When death comes, let it find me at my work.’

Attributed to Ovid

I:24

‘An able reader often discovers in other men’s writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and aspects.’

I:25

‘We should [ask] who is better learned, not who is more learned. We labour only to fill our memory, and leave the understanding and the conscience empty.’

I:26

‘Learning, even when it is taken most directly, can only teach us about wisdom, integrity and resolution … Put [your] children from the first in contact with deeds, and instruct them, not by hearsay, but by the test of action, forming and moulding them in a living way, not only by precepts and words, but principally by examples and works; so that learning might be not merely a knowledge in their soul, but its character and habit; not an acquisition but a natural possession.’

‘For doubting pleases me no less than knowing.’

Attributed to Dante

I:30

‘The archer who overshoots the target misses as much as the one who does not reach it.’

I:32

‘Who does not willingly exchange health, rest and life for reputation and glory, the most useless, worthless, and false coin that is current among us?’

I:42

‘It is the enjoying, not the possessing, that makes us happy.’

I:53

‘Everything, no matter what it is, that falls within our knowledge and enjoyment, we find unsatisfactory; and we go gaping after things to come and unknown, inasmuch as things present do not satiate us. Not, in my opinion, that they do not have the wherewithal to satiate us, but that we seize them with a sick and disordered grasp … Our appetite is irresolute and uncertain: It does not know how to keep anything or enjoy anything in the right way. Man, thinking that it is the fault of these things, fills and feeds himself on other things that he does not know and does not understand, to which he applies his desires and his hopes, and which he holds in honour and reverence.’

I:54

‘It is a marvelous testimony of the weakness of our judgement that it recommends things for their rarity or novelty, or even for their difficulty, even if they are neither good nor useful.’

I:56

‘We must not ask that all things should obey our will, but that our will should obey wisdom.’

Therefore I must conclude this post with the following:

I:26

‘Since it is philosophy that teaches us to live, and since there is a lesson in it for childhood as well as for the other ages, why is it not imparted to children?’

Design

I have spent the greater part of my life as a designer (and so have you). However, though I make that statement with a degree of pride, I simultaneously do so with a degree of hesitancy, as I am certain that the greater portion of readers will not truly understand what I mean by it. This is no fault of theirs but the natural consequence of an almost society-wide confusion as to what ‘design’ actually is. And it is a confusion that I am sorry to say has been actively promoted for many decades and across many avenues of communication including, somewhat absurdly, design educators and the design media.

Now this is a dangerous topic for me to commence writing upon, as I know I am susceptible to falling foul of my passion and ending up writing a manifesto, when what I intend this post to be is simply another loosely themed selection of quotations and observations I have gathered together in my various notebooks over the years, as mentioned in an earlier entry. (Beauty, June 2021)

I don’t delude myself that anyone actually reads this blog but, wordy as I can sometimes be, I do want it to have some semblance of brevity and focus. Plus I think clarity is paramount so I’m simply going to try, as succinctly as possible, to first elucidate what I understand design to be. These are not exclusively my thoughts; a great many very good designers would, I think, agree. I shall therefore be borrowing some of their words in my explanation, as follows: (Please accept my apologies in advance for the predominantly and unneccesarily male-gendered language of some of the quotations.)

Design is NOT styling.

Victor Papanek, in his landmark publication Design for the Real World (1974), states:

‘Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order’ and ‘All men are designers … for design is basic to all human activity’ because ‘It is the prime function of the designer to solve problems.’

He then explains that for a design solution to be truly regarded as successful it needs to meet six functional requirements which he labels; Method, Use, Need, Telesis, Association and Aesthetics. I am not going to explain them all in detail here but that last one, aesthetics, is important to my current discussion. Of aesthetics he asks ‘Does it appeal to our senses of beauty and delight?’ and he ranks it equally with his other five functional requirements. To be clear, he considers beauty to be an integral function of good design, and I agree with him one hundred percent.

So what then is styling and how is it different?

Robert Pirsig, in his equally landmark work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (also, appropriately, published in 1974) brutally but accurately describes style as:

‘Technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit.’

In other words, aesthetics are included as an equal functional requirement of good design, but a solution that is poorly resolved, perhaps difficult to understand or use, potentially prone to malfunction or breakage, and maybe environmentally hazardous to produce, could still find an eager buying public if it has been overlaid with a veneer of styling that conforms to a current ‘fashion’ or ‘trend’ created by marketers and promoted by multinational businesses as the ‘next big thing’.

Design is all about function; does it truly work, on every possible level? Styling is simply trying to sell something by making it conform to an evanescent desire; keeping up with the ‘new cool fad’ or the ‘latest craze’.

So, that’s my rant. I’m sorry it makes for such a very long introduction! Back now to my notebooks and some thoughts I have collected from numerous sources on the topic of design. What has any of this to do with the ostensible overarching intent of AEON: An Eternity Of Now? Simply that I believe truly good design can be an enabler. It can help us to create environments, processes, experiences, personal encounters and artefacts etc. that genuinely enhance our lives; that create opportunities for personal and communal betterment; that could potentially permit us to honestly consider ourselves worthy custodians of this beautiful blue planet we call home.

Contrary to my earlier notebook extracts, many of these are short and removed from their original context. Hopefully, perhaps with short explanatory notes where necessary, they will still stand as insightful observations or thoughts on the wonderful potentiality of good design in our lives. You may notice a couple of repetitions on the themes of experimentation and failure, questioning and responsibility, but I feel they add an important emphasis.

From Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness:

‘To design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know.’

‘What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.’

‘We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the buildings we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness.’

From the Gaffa Galleries’ exhibition Chromology:

‘Our goal is to prompt a pause. To create a space for the observer to question what exactly it is that they value about an object or thing.’

‘For us, design is not about production lines, it’s about human beings enriching the lives of other human beings. It’s about the energy invested in the creation of a hand-made thing.’

‘When the work moves from our hands to yours, it becomes part of your story. One that you create.’

From David Harvey discussing Rebel Cities:

‘What kind of city we want to make cannot be separated from what kind of people we want to be.’

From Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness:

‘“Fruitful Monotony”, when apparent boredom transforms the seemingly idle brain into a powerful tool capable of generating bold new ideas.’

From Douglas Adams’ Mostly Harmless: (Explaining the technology of Unfiltered Perception.)

‘It wasn’t a complicated technological idea. It was just a question of leaving a bit out.’

Note: Sometimes, indeed often, design wisdom can come from unlikely places. This typically concise excerpt of Adams’ prose beautifully captures an oft overlooked or ignorantly ridiculed design maxim – less truly can be more.

From Sir Ken Robinson’s The Element:

‘What is true is that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.’

‘Intelligence, applied to imagination, can lead to creativity.’

‘Creativity is the strongest example of the dynamic nature of intelligence, and it can call on all areas of our minds and being.’

From Shaun Usher’s Lists of Note:

Immaculate Heart College, Art Department Rules

Rule One ‘Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.’

Rule Four ‘Consider everything an experiment.’

Rule Eight ‘Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.’

Lesley Loko quoted in Assemble Papers Issue #11:

‘In the act of design there is an implicit faith in the idea of something that isn’t yet here, something that’s about to come.’

Just a little more design wisdom from Victor Papanek:

‘Design must become an innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the true needs of men.’

‘Design as a problem-solving activity can never, by definition, yield the one right answer: It will always produce an infinite number of answers, some “righter” and some “wronger.”’

‘The creative designer … must be given not only the chance to experiment, but also the chance to fail … Here, possibly, is the crux of the matter: To instil in the designer a willingness for experimentation, coupled with a sense of responsibility for his failures. Unfortunately, both a sense of responsibility and an atmosphere permissive to failure are rare indeed.’

‘Designers often attempt to go beyond the primary functional requirements of Method, Use, Need, Telesis, Association and Aesthetics; they strive for a more concise statement: Precision, simplicity. The particular satisfaction derived from the simplicity of a thing can be called elegance. When we speak of an ‘elegant’ solution, we refer to something consciously evolved by men which reduces the complex to the simple.’

And in closing, Peter Brook quoted in John Heilpern’s Conference of the Birds: (Discussing the creative process.)

‘The moment you arrive anywhere, you limit the distance you might have travelled.’

Travel well people. May your monotony be fruitful and your solutions elegant!

Freedom!

For many years I deliberately avoided active engagement with the daily news across pretty much all media sources; TV, radio, press, online. I considered, not without reason I still believe, the great majority of its offerings to be nothing more or less than glorified gossip; titbits of titillation to keep the masses suitably amused or outraged, principally for the true purpose of garnering advertising revenue and other profits for the owners and shareholders. My only concession was a daily free local newspaper that did indeed keep me abreast of issues of importance in my immediate community – plus served to wrap my minimal (non compostable or recyclable) household waste, start my winter fires, build my no-dig veggie gardens and provide some small entertainment with a daily crossword. But with the COVID pandemic and the loss of over 100 print newspapers in Australia, I relented and purchased a subscription to The Sydney Morning Herald. (Bizarrely, and greedily, my free daily local paper with all its stock, printing and distribution costs covered by advertising, is only available in its infinitely-cheaper-to-publish-online version though a paid subscription. Not bloody likely!) Despite its not insignificant cost, the printed edition SMH has obvious benefits: choosing which articles to engage with, advertisements are easy to bypass, the ability to suit my own schedule, etc. but, as Alain de Botton states in his book The News, ‘To consult the news is to raise a seashell to our ears and to be overpowered by the roar of humanity.’ Sometimes that roar lingers in my head and gives me no peace until such time as I give vent to my reactions by either ranting to poor, unsuspecting and undeserving family and friends, or sitting at the laptop to write responses such as the following. Please know that I do so principally to regain some personal mental and emotional calm. Still, I hope you might find perhaps a vestige of merit in this or other of my scribbles?

I grow so weary of the constant demands for individual rights and individual freedoms that daily grace our various media. Rights and freedoms do not exist in glorious isolation but are in fact privileges accorded to responsible contributors to a society. Such is even written into the perhaps lesser known Articles of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, whilst Article 1 states ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ which is loudly and arrogantly proclaimed from soapboxes across the world, it also states ‘They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.’ which often seems conveniently overlooked.

Perhaps more significantly, but equally frequently, disregarded is the context provided by such as Article 29 which states ‘1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.’ and ‘2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.’ So we must discard our immature notions of glorying in a hedonistic individualist fantasy and recognise that true personal freedoms and the granting of personal rights to certain behaviours or privileges can only exist within a responsible, mutually supportive, collectivist culture. We must give before we can expect to receive.

What we see occurring and condemn in China and Russia is really no different to what we also see in America and Britain, and what we are experiencing here in Australia. Putin and his ‘oligarch’ cronies are really little different to Australian political parties headed by a ‘boys club’ of well connected private school graduates funded by opaque donations from property developers and business tycoons keen to protect their personal interests, status and wealth. It is the natural consequence of any system wherein the laws are made by people who have gained power through wealth and privilege that they will inherently and principally make laws that protect their positions; it is a self perpetuating and indeed escalating system that only leads to ever greater division between the haves and have nots; the powerful and the powerless; those protected from the worst of COVID by their wealth and privilege and those at the mercy of job loss and poor governance, crying ‘Freedom!’

The promotion of a minority ‘elite’ and the concomitant persecution of the majority ‘oppressed’ can only ever lead to societal division and civil unrest. It is the principal recipe for social collapse and is sustainable only in circumstances of totalitarian control; exactly the situation we witness causing current global conflicts and precisely what was supposedly (or wishfully?) consigned to the dustbin of history by the decline of feudalism and subsequent rise of modern democracy, though it has reared its ugly head on numerous occasions since and seems ever possible, and likely, to do so again.

Seriously people! Put your adolescent acquisitive desires aside and recognise that we are all one – the totality of humanity, to again quote the UN Declaration ‘without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status’ and to which I might add gender identity and sexuality plus no doubt other attributes I currently fail to identify. We each share 99.9% of our genetic make-up with all other modern humans. Even more importantly, our very survival upon this planet requires not only that we need to collectively and collaboratively work toward betterment for all human kind, but that we must do so in concert with the recognition that our survival is intrinsically dependent upon the parallel survival of every aspect and component of our planetary host – every living creature and plant, every natural environment and process, every complex system and cycle. Every single day we destroy more and more of everything that sustains our very existence as a species and every single day we continue to increasingly fragment the potential unity of human experience by vilifying and persecuting anyone who is not one of our 'tribe', whilst simultaneously, ignorantly and vaingloriously proclaiming ‘FREEDOM!’

For fuck’s sake, grow up.

Beauty

 Who was it I wonder, who first voiced the now popular aphorism 'be careful what you wish for'?

Shortly after writing the previous post, three months back, about 'wide achievers', ageism and my lack of success seeking employment, I was offered and obliged to accept a position at a local hardware store. With my available time for reading, thinking and writing thereby dramatically shortened I am resorting once again, as was always my stated intention from the outset I concede, to publishing extracts from works by other voices than my own. I have, for a number of years now, when reading (or viewing) developed a habit of recording passages that particularly resonate for me. I am aware this is an activity rife with potential for the ever-present threat of the perceived ills of confirmation bias, but I like to believe that it is also frequently an exercise in recognising and indeed delighting in the discovery of new or even conflicting viewpoints to one's own; avenues into new potential directions of thought and belief.

Many of these notations of mine, in a small collection of hand-written notebooks, are brief phrases or short sentences that perhaps fail to stand alone in a forum such as this, removed from the context in which they were originally published. Therefore, I shall endeavour to focus instead upon longer passages and, where possible, bring together disparate sources which nonetheless share a commonality of theme. My first such theme, one which is of great importance in my life and to which I suspect I shall return, is beauty.

The following extracts are from three sources and move from reflections upon our built, physical, environment, through perceptual occurrences and responses, to some final lyrical and metaphysical observations.

Firstly, some passages from The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton.

Note: Points of ellipsis and square brackets indicate my own edits, for brevity and clarity.

'Yet if someone was to ask us what was the matter, we might not know how to elaborate on the malign features of our environment … However, these can in the end always be traced back to nothing more occult than a failure of empathy, to architects who forgot to pay homage to the quirks of the human mind, who allowed themselves to be seduced by a simplistic vision of who we might be, rather than attending to the labyrinthine reality of who we are.' (p. 248)

'In medieval Japan, poets and Zen priests directed the Japanese towards aspects of the world to which Westerners have seldom publicly accorded more than negligible or casual attention: cherry blossoms, deformed pieces of pottery, raked gravel, moss, rain falling on leaves, autumn skies, roof tiles and unvarnished wood. A word emerged, wabi, of which no Western language, tellingly, has a direct equivalent, which identified beauty with unpretentious, simple, unfinished, transient things … [By embracing it] we will have learnt to appreciate a beauty that we were not born seeing. And, in the process, we will puncture the simplistic notion, heavily promoted by purveyors of plastic mansions, that what a person currently finds beautiful should be taken as the limit of all that he or she can ever love.' (p. 260)

'It is books, poems and paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge … Likewise, there must have been little beauty in old stones before Japanese priests and poets began writing about them … The property developer's reflexive defence of existing tastes constitutes, at base, a denial that human beings can ever come to love anything they have not yet noticed. But even as it plays with the language of freedom, this assertion suppresses the truth that in order to choose properly, one must know what there is to choose from.' (p. 262)

'We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the buildings we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness.' (p. 267)

Next, two brief extracts from the wonderful In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki.

'The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty's ends.'

'If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty.'

Finally, the following two short monologues are from the cinema release version of the film American Beauty, written by Alan Ball. The first is voiced by the character Ricky Fitts as he shares with his neighbour, Jane Burnham, a video he recorded of a plastic bag caught in a small whirlwind on an urban street. It is perhaps, for me, the most beautiful and memorable scene in the film.

'It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there was this electricity in the air. You could almost hear it. Right? And this bag was just - dancing - with me. Like a little kid, begging me to play with it - for fifteen minutes. That's the day I realised that there was this entire life, behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid - ever. The video's a poor excuse, I know, but it helps me remember. I need to remember. Sometimes there's so much - beauty - in the world I feel like I can't take it and my heart is just going to - cave in.'

The second, which contains an almost identical phrase concerning beauty, is a voice-over by the character Lester Burnham at the conclusion of the film, seemingly during or after his death.

'I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes, the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a second at all. It stretches on forever like an ocean of time. For me it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars. And yellow leaves from the maple trees that lined our street. Or my grandmother's hands and the way her skin seemed like paper. And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's new Firebird. And Janey - and Janey - and Carolyn.

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax and stop trying to hold onto it. And then it flows through me like rain, and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about I'm sure, but don't worry, you will someday.'

Unwanted

 Like so very many others across the globe at present, one year into the viral pandemic finds me also one year into unwanted unemployment. Unemployed, but alive and largely otherwise unaffected means I am indeed one of the very lucky. We in Australia have been, by and large, very fortunate compared to the deaths and suffering we continue to witness on a daily basis elsewhere on our fragile and benighted planet. It has however allowed me opportunity to think and write once again for the first time in some while. The thrust of what follows may seem overly selfish in its focus as it is clearly driven by my own current circumstances, yet I hope its wider applicability may be seen and valued; perhaps even acted upon?

I think I may have touched upon this previously when mentioning Roman Krznaric's inspiring book The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live. In chapter four 'Work' he proposes 'that many people eventually seek jobs that provide a more profound sense of purpose; work which is an end in itself rather than a means to an end, and which helps them feel that they're not wasting their lives'. This of course overlooks the very, very many among humanity that have not the privilege of such luxury, living as they might in a desperate day-to-day struggle for their very continued existence, but for now I too am going to acknowledge yet, with apologies, pass over this aspect of lived reality.

Roman identifies and discusses four purposes that 'stand out in the history of work: being driven by our values; pursuing meaningful goals; obtaining respect; and using the full array of our talents'. The last of these four he discusses in the section 'Talents: high achiever - or wide achiever?' and it is this particular topic I will expand upon. Partly I wish to discuss the language we have employed around these two options but more so I wish to draw attention to the value judgements inherent in our language choices - the semantic history and connotations our words and phrases come burdened with and which can actually be to the detriment of an individual's self-image, self-worth and employment prospects.

Poor Adam Smith gets blamed for a great deal and whilst it is true he recognised the 'torpor of the mind' threatening 'the man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations' and who 'has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention', the fact remains that his seminal work The Wealth of Nations and its promotion of the concept of division of labour has at least in part driven our contemporary obsession with specialisation. Yes, there are benefits, both personal and cultural, to be gained from individuals pursuing a topic of study to its apogee, plus it has frequently been observed that the extent of humanity's knowledge is now so vast that even greatly sub-divided fields of study might contain single strands of interest that yet remain too large and complex for one person to master. But is this in itself sufficient justification for the apparent devaluing of those for whom such a singular focus holds no appeal?

My focus will be upon the language around Roman's 'wide achiever' but let's first make a simple list of some of the words we associate with the high achievers. A quick scan of entries for 'expert' in a thesaurus or two throws up synonyms such as master, adept, authority, professional, specialist, virtuoso, ace, giant, maestro, whiz, gun, hot-shot, prodigy, wunderkind, genius, boffin, scholar, old hand, veteran, connoisseur, elder, sage, oracle, philosopher, guru, dab hand, doyen and savant. Words that I think we might all imbue with principally positive connotations? In earlier times I feel perhaps we held a similar regard for those we believed excelled in a broad range of disciplines or occupations? I believe it was with respect or even awe that we employed expressions such as Renaissance man, universal man and polymath, but our language seems now to have slipped to the perhaps lesser regard we accord the current multi-disciplinarian, many-sided man or all-rounder. And does anyone really want to be considered, or referred to, simply as a generalist, jack-of-all-trades or Roman's cleverly positivised wide-achiever?

The simple truth remains however that many among us are just not 'wired' for an enduring interest in, and prolonged pursuit of, a single passion or obsession. Their interests are many and widely varied. Some, it is true, may do no more than dabble in disparate fields whilst others might excel in many and even here our natural tendency is to value the latter over the former. Excellence is seemingly always regarded as a superior goal than that of 'mere' competence? What is it within our societies and cultures, indeed perhaps within human nature itself, that promotes a disregard for those among us whose accomplishments are 'good', preferring instead to always seek the 'better' and only truly value the 'best'? Surely within a global populace approaching eight billion, for the vast majority attainment of 'good' in one area of endeavour is commendable and to be 'good' within multiple disciplines equals or surpasses 'better' or even 'best' in a singular pursuit? I should like to be a 'good' partner, parent, friend, draftsman, cook, brewer, handyman, driver, designer, photographer, cyclist, swimmer, writer, artist, curator, consultant, builder, first-aider, gardener, teacher, salesman, manager, mentor, youth worker, lover, reader, researcher, printer, singer, student, surfer, philosopher … and so much more, before I would desire to be the 'best' at anything. Indeed, I have been 'good' at all the above listed occupations, though no doubt I could be 'better' at many.

And yet, in our culture's default determinant of individual worth, as evinced in the commonly accepted first question asked of newly met acquaintances, 'What do you do?', we're frequently encouraged to judge or rank their response according to their preferably high level of attainment in a singular occupation. Nowhere is this more evident than within the employment market. The entire ethos is one of seeking individuals who are the very best within the narrow confines of a highly specialised role or position description. Rare indeed is the stated intent that of finding a rounded and balanced individual, competent across a wide range of diverse skills, with understandings of and attributes applicable to multiple areas of a business's structure and undertakings. Today, even managers, directors and CEOs are appointed if they are perceived to be the best of their 'kind' that applied, though they may have little or no experience or skills beyond those attained in a management degree and frequently no knowledge whatsoever of the actual business of the company or agency.

Which leaves those of us, like myself, who have pursued a life wherein each new opportunity to broaden our range of knowledge, skills, experience and competence is embraced with wholehearted delight and enthusiasm, perceived as little more than ne'er-do-wells with limited focus or staying power and a complete lack of ambition. Rather than 'wide-achievers, we are labelled 'under-achievers'! Often this is far from the truth. Rather, it is simply that our ambition, focus and perseverance is not limited to, or constrained by, an almost obsessive compulsion to be the 'best' at a highly specialised pursuit. Just perhaps it might be argued that our very flexibility - of curiosity, capability and adaptability - is our greatest strength. Not constrained within the rigid confines of specialist dogma, we might bring new ideas and fresh insights to all we embark upon.

Certainly, over the past decade there has been an increased cultural curiosity in, and valuing of, multi-disciplinary, cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary working modes (see below for definitions) but these are still often seen as collaborative pursuits involving numerous specialists. Surely there is value also in finding this flexibility of thought, this neurological plasticity, within individuals also? But I fear such a desire is little more than a quixotic dream. The pace of change across an entire society is slow indeed, even when change is desired, and I for one perhaps no longer have the time to truly benefit from such a cultural shift. Whilst once we valued the wisdom of our elders - which was deemed of even greater value because indeed it was gained across, and applicable to, many aspects of life and living - the contemporary mindset values almost exclusively the perceived dynamism and potential of youthful exuberance and innovation; fresh ideas and constant 'progress'. Those, like myself, who have passed the half-century mark, are often judged principally by our age alone; falsely seen as being out-of-date and rigidly stuck in a rut of preconceived notions. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Despite all we have to offer, especially those among us who embrace our 'wide-achievements', we are indeed largely, and oh-so-wastefully, relegated to the employment scrap-heap. We are seen as un-employable. We are the unwanted.

 

Disciplinarities - Definitions by Alexander Refsum Jensenius

Intra-disciplinary: working within a single discipline.

Cross-disciplinary: viewing one discipline from the perspective of another.

Multi-disciplinary: people from different disciplines working together, each drawing on their disciplinary knowledge.

Inter-disciplinary: integrating knowledge and methods from different disciplines, using a real synthesis of approaches.

Trans-disciplinary: creating a unity of intellectual frameworks beyond the disciplinary perspectives.

Kung Fu

 Way back in the early 1970s I was, like many others, very taken with the TV series Kung Fu about the adventures and travails of an American/Chinese, Shaolin Monastery-trained monk and martial arts master in the often violent world of the 19th century American West. Utilising the classic dramatic device of a 'clash of cultures', the central character Kwai Chang Caine, played by David Carradine, attempted to live by and promote the essentially Daoist teachings he had acquired from his Chinese Masters.

Over many years, I often recalled my fondness for the show, it's central character and general ethos. I sometimes found myself wondering about its potentially formative influence on my own philosophical leanings. So earlier this year I decided to re-watch some of the episodes to see what 'lessons' they contained. To date I've only completed the entire first series but there are still some wonderful quotations to be found in its scripts. Following are those of which I made particular note. I hope you might enjoy them as I still do?

Kung Fu: Season 1

Pilot
'If one's words are no better than silence, one should keep silent.'

 

Episode 1 - King of the Mountain
'Only acknowledge [needs], and satisfaction will follow. To suppress a truth is to give it force beyond endurance.'

 

Episode 4 - An Eye for an Eye
'He who knows how to live, need not fear death. Because a man who knows how to live, has no place for death to enter.'

'To hate is like drinking salt water [your] thirst gets worse.'

'Hate is the tomb you weave. It will not save you from suffering '

'What kind of man are you?'
'A man. Like other men.'

 

Episode 5 - The Tide
'If a man dwells on the past, then he robs the present. But if a man ignores the past, he may rob the future. The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past.'

'Where's your horse?'
'I have no horse.'
'How do you get around?
'I walk.'

'Those who value freedom most, must sometimes choose to lose it.'

 

Episode 6 - The Soul is the Warrior
'A tree falling in the forest without ears to hear, makes no sound. Yet, it falls.'

 

Episode 7 - Nine Lives
'To go anywhere, begin by taking a first step.'

'Is it not sad master, that the hands of a man may strike a blow, as well as caress?'
'Pain and pleasure are like two bells, side by side, and the voice of each makes a trembling in the other.'

'In his own time, each man finds a place to stand.'

 

Episode 8 - Sun and Cloud Shadow
'I have three treasures which I hold and keep. The first is mercy, for from mercy comes courage. The second is frugality, from which comes generosity to others. The third is humility, for from it comes leadership.'
'Strange treasures. How shall I hold them and keep them? In memory?'
'No, not in memory, but in your deeds.'

 

Episode 9 - Chains
'We are one, yet we are not the same. Ten million living things, have as many different worlds.'

'Do not see yourself as the centre of the universe, wise and good and beautiful. Seek rather wisdom, goodness and beauty, that you may honour them everywhere.'

 

Episode 10 - Alethea
'To say and to listen. To teach what we know truly to those who do not know. To send peaceful thoughts over the bridge of words.'

'Reach out, but be wary of what you allow yourself to grasp.'

 

Episode 11 - The Praying Mantis Kills
'I do not do it. It is not done … It is only experienced. It happens … The pole [target], the arrow, the bow, are one. Not many things. Not different things. One.'

'It is good, it remains a puzzle. When you cease to strive to understand, then you will know, without understanding.'

 

Episode 13 - The Stone
'So is truth, hard to understand, except that which cannot be spoken.'
'But should I not always speak the truth, no matter what the consequences?'
'Recognise that all words are part false, and part true, limited by our imperfect understanding. But strive always for honesty within yourself.'

'What is cowardice, but the body's wisdom of its weakness. What is bravery, but the body's wisdom of its strength. The coward and the hero march together within every man. So to call one man coward and another brave, merely serves to indicate the possibilities of their achieving the opposite.'

'To fight injustice anywhere, is to fight it everywhere.'

 

Episode 14 - The Third Man
'What's your name?'
'Caine.'
'What do you do Caine?'
'I work, eat, learn.'

'In every loss there is gain, as in every gain there is loss.'

'It is a fact, it is not the truth. Truth is often hidden, like a shadow in darkness.'

'Love cannot measure itself until the hour of parting.'

'Is not to trust, to rely on someone of whom you know nothing?'

'You've learned to trust people, but doesn't it hurt you?'
'And you, not trusting, are you not hurt more?'

'I seek, not to know all the answers, but to understand the questions.'

 

Episode 15 - The Ancient Warrior
'Can't I be of help?'
'Any man can be of help to another man. What have you to offer?'

'Master, what is the best way to meet the loss of one we love?'
'By knowing that when we truly love, it is never lost. It is only after death that the depth of a bond is truly felt, and our loved one becomes more a part of us than was possible in life.'
'Are we only able to feel this toward those whom we have known and loved a long time?'
'Sometimes a stranger known to us for moments can spark our souls to kinship for eternity.'
'How can strangers take on such importance to our souls?'
'Because our soul does not keep time, but merely records growth.'

'It is better to cover the land with love than to let it cover you with hate.'