Workplace Observations

Often, you hear people lament the lack of any tangible output as a reason for their cynical view of corporate/office life, but I think such an explanation for their malaise is really just a convenient explanation, not an accurate one. I have found that even when given a task with measurable, tangible, and appreciated output, it doesn't significantly alter my perception of my work. Why would this be? For me at least, unless I'm working on something important to myself in a personal way, it doesn't really matter what I'm doing, and the more painless it is, the better. I cannot convince myself that anything I will ever do at my current job is actually important in the grand scheme of things, no matter who at the job has told me it is, or how much they have deluded themselves into thinking such a thing is true.

An old dream

The following is a transcription of a dream that I recently recovered from a long lost external hard drive. The dream was originally had on Monday, May 2nd, 2005. Editing was only done to correct typos and ambiguous sentences. The names of the people within the dream have not been changed, and anything that doesn't make sense now probably never made sense to me in the first place. In instances where only a first name is mentioned, I cannot remember to whom I was specifically referring, and anyone I knew at that time who had that first name may be the person mentioned in the following account.

I was on campus for this dream. Kristin and I rode around on a school bus which ran on something that looked like wet newspaper mush. It was our job at certain bus stops to pump more mush into the bus so it could keep running. At the Washington Avenue west bank bus stop, I made a huge mess, which was going to require me to shovel the slop into the bus, but the bus driver, resembling Otto from The Simpsons, told me to just leave it.

I was in a cafeteria prior to this, and noticed Marcus Leary sitting a few tables away. This cafeteria was one of those elementary school style cafeterias with long tables with benches. I heard him say that he found out when he graduated high school that he only had two years to live, so by today's time, he only had a few months to live. He didn't notice me, so I somehow mentioned I was a Park graduate loudly enough to be noticed. This guy sitting across the table from me was apparently some kind of liason between myself and Marcus and set up a meeting time for me and him before I could meet Marcus. This girl was to meet me later and discuss something with me.

I was again at the bus pumping job, and Kristin accidentally lost her bathrobe or something, and since bathrobes were our uniforms, it was a big deal if you lost yours. I told her it was no problem and gave her mine, and told Otto that mine was stolen. Kristin got really mad at me for screwing over the bus company and I was worried she was going to tell someone what I did, which may have been a felony in the dream world. I then met up with the girl from the Marcus scene and she was very demanding and specific about how to interact with Marcus so I kung fu chopped her neck, and while she was gasping for breath and rolling around on the floor, I kicked her in the side, and jumped up and down on her until her insides were pulverized and she was dead.

Intermittently throughout the dream, I was in a big gymnasium where people in martial arts got together and fought. It was strange because you could bring weapons, and even if somebody didn't have weapons, someone that had them could still use them against you. The last time I was at the thing, this asian guy with twin Tai Chi swords challenged me, and early on I managed to get a hold of one of the swords. The contest then became whomever could touch the other person with their sword first would win, and if I won, I got to keep his sword, which was apparently a nice expensive sword.

I managed to tag him before he could get me, and I got the sword. At another point, perhaps in a separate dream, I was in a crazy underground facility between China and Japan, and I am not exactly sure what is was for or why I was there. I just know at some point in the facility, we flooded the place, but I had made sure to lock some guys who worked there in these wall tubes so they wouldn't suffocate. In that same room, my team and I also released some type of chemical into the sea or the sewers or something, which then crystalized and turned into some valuable mineral. I was at this facility more than once. I also think that before I ever went to this facility, I was on some sort of boat between China and Japan with some foreign dignitaries.

Current mood: am drunk, lawlz!!!1!one!

Many people seem to operate on the assumption that either there is some singular meaning to all life, or all things, and once it is discovered, happy and fulfilled lives can be led. Others think that meaning and purpose may differ from person to person, but regardless, there is one primary purpose for any given entity, and once discovered, it can also allow that entity to have a happy and fulfilled life.

What those who put stock in these ideas tend to neglect, is that meaning is generally conferred by some external source, rather than internally. It is in conscious beings only, that meaning is had and given by the same entity (or is it more than one entity?). A block of wood has no inherent meaning. If I use the block of wood to pound down several nails, I have conferred meaning to the block of wood. It's purpose is now to hammer. If I no longer have need of a hammer, does the wood again become purposeless, or does it retain its former meaning, despite not being used for that reason any longer? What if in the future, I take to using the piece of wood as a door stop? Now the piece of wood has a new purpose, but is that purpose only present when it is actively stopping the door from moving?

In this case, there is an entity, the block of wood, with no inherent meaning, which is given meaning by a user/owner. This is fine, because although some confusion can arise as alluded to above, things are more or less straightforward: one entity is given purpose by another entity. But what if I had purposefully carved a piece of wood for the express purpose of using it has a hammer? Would the situation actually be any different? Aside from the origin of the wood, in the former situation being unknown and unimportant, and in the latter being created to serve a particular purpose, nothing in it's 'life,' post-creation, will ever differ.

This is getting long, so let's have a short intermission:




Now, let's look at the case of a human being taking the place of the block of wood as the object of attention in our thought experiment. In the case of a human, let us start with ignoring some original purpose of that human's creation. If no initial meaning is explicitly given to them by some external force, are they not the same as the block of wood? The only reason the person earlier was able to confer meaning to the block of wood, was that block of wood was an inanimate object, incapable of deciding it's own path. Only through being 'owned' by a person does it even have the opportunity to gain meaning. Is the same true of a human? If it is, then who can be said to be the human's owner?

Different people deal with this issue in different ways. Many believe in some higher power, positioning themselves as the block of wood, and imagining some incomprehensible being positioned above them, giving them different reasons for existing. What would the atheist, someone with a more scientific understanding of the workings of the world think? As a conscious entity, can one assign one's own purpose? If so, what criteria do you use in order to choose a purpose?

All if the consideration thus far has assumed that the human is purposeless, searching for reasons to be. However, it is not entirely true that you are born completely without purpose. Barring conception by complete accident, two individuals on some level purposefully created you. They may have created you to fulfill social expectations for having a family, or to satisfy some deeper desire to procreate. In this type of situation, you are at very least offered the opportunity to simply accept the role you are given, but even here, it's a fairly open ended situation, and you are still expected to find some meaning beyond that of a gene carrier or meme conduit.

If one believes in the existence of some god, or puts strong emphasis on purpose found through social and familial obligations, is it not similar to some sort of servitude or slavery, as in the case of the wood, given purpose by its owner? If you take the point of view of the atheist and reject, to the greatest extent possible, purpose found through social obligation, you would seemingly be left with two choices. Either you would live without apparent purpose, or you would assign one to yourself. In the former case, one must consider the possibility and desirability of living a relatively purposeless life. In the latter case, one must consider the strange implications of self assigned purpose, i.e., how is it possible to be indentured to one's self, simultaneously slave and owner? And also, what implications does this have on fate and causality?

In earlier scenarios, purpose is passed a long in some sort of linear fashion, with entities using/creating other entities, thus assigning them purpose, who then go on to purpose other entities, ad infinitum. In the case of self-assigned purpose, we have these localized, self-contained, circular causal loops, self-reinforcing, and seemingly temporally isolated. Instead of receiving purpose from some external source, you find your purpose, which further influences your actions and future purpose(s), and eventually, you die, and with you, your self-assigned meaning. Although your ideas may continue, and others may manipulate memories of your life for their own reasons, in practicality, your purpose must die with you.

Whew! That was a long one.
Here's a song to contemplate or not contemplate to.

Expression through possession, thoughts on art today

After stumbling upon Australian artist Nanami Cowdroy’s fantastic ink pieces, I was contemplating purchasing one. The website did not list prices, but it did communicate that prints were available for purchase, so I decided to send an email asking for more details. Though I was perhaps I was a bit naive, the prices which were sent to me were quite a bit higher than the $50 or so I expected, ranging from a modest 115 Dollars AUD, to over 400 for larger prints on better quality stock. While I still remain undecided regarding purchase, this chain of events has gotten me thinking.

I have been wondering quite a bit about the role of art today within peoples’ lives, and how to best express your artistic tastes to others. For some reason, it’s easy to imagine ‘the good ‘ol days’ where you bought paintings you liked or something of that sort, hung them around your house, and then when people were there, you might discuss them. While this notion might be an overly simplistic view of things, a romanticized version of history which might be wholly imagined on my part, it is certain that artistic expression has more outlets than ever before. Ought I to be purchasing prints and posters to attach to my walls, or should I be buying t-shirts, expressing my tastes in such a way that dozens or hundreds of people can see? Perhaps it is best just have this sort of thing running on your computer all the time.