Indeed: <Tom Sawyer ``had discovered a great law of human
action,
without knowing it--namely, that in order to make a man or a boy
covet
a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to
attain.'' >
Golf has a lot to answer for. Tiger Woods is currently in a demented state. I have spent considerable effort trying to hit a hole in one. I watched a friend do it perfectly, and on a very difficult hole at that. But only once in his life.
But it's not quite as simple as Tom Sawyer made out. Painting a whole fence, alone, is quite a different thing from dabbling a little while passing by.
Much of what we do is about self-identity formation = we exist through identity formation because if we fall in the forest and nobody is there to hear, we didn't exist in the first place.
I would go so far as to say that we are dealing with fundamental physics here. There are the four forces of the apocalypse, strong, weak, gravity and electromagnetic, but the wave functions of the so-called "particles" drop into reality when observed. So a photon is in all possible states until the observer observes.
Just today, I accepted an invitation to be paid three times my Zenbu hourly rate to help a bit at orbitrax.com  which comments on satellite communications industry with special reference to Globalstar. I demanded and received triple pay for overtime and holidays when I want them. Yet I will pay no taxes and don't even own any GSAT shares. Orbitrax is doing battle with the FCC over Ancillary Terrestrial Component spectrum for Globalstar. Edit... I see some posts are now password protected.
I spent some of Sunday setting up some more routers for Zenbu and getting a couple ready to go out today.
Our most enjoyable "jobs" seem to be when we are doing productive things for which we are not paid. Heck, we might even pay for our own whitewash so we can join in.
We can't take it with us, so once we have enough for temporal needs, we might as well just do the most enjoyable and best thing we can think of and leave a legacy which those left behind can enjoy.
Choosing which fences to white wash is tricky because the world is awash with unwashed fences. When paid to do a job, it's easier to retain focus because the money keeps one narrowly channeled, showing up to work without fail at 8am and sticking at it until dusk. Volunteer organisations have the problem of herding cats. For example I have given up on getting a hole in one. If you pay me enough, I'll go and try again.
Mqurice |
