In political science, a fairly well-known basic idea is that the two ways to dissent are exit and voice. Exit means you leave and go somewhere else, and was common in early political eras when most civilizations were small and surrounded by plenty of nomadic/lawless regions to retreat to. As populations increased, voice (i.e. protest, class warfare etc.) became increasingly common. The classic reference on this is "Exit, Voice and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. It's been on my reading list for a while.
For developers, it is swinging back towards exit, since the Internet can be considered a kind of virtual equivalent of the nomad regions to retreat to.
"Center-periphery" dynamics is the common term in geopolitics for dissent dynamics driven by movement inside/outside a core. Class warfare is the better known kind of dissent involving unionization etc. and involves fighting up and down a class structure.
Guilds, historically, were a medieval kind of institution that had characteristics of both exit and voice. The classic guild professions (weaving, masonry and in more recent times, things like typesetting in pre-lithography days) used their portable skills to leave kingdoms/cities and move elsewhere if they didn't like their current situation. This option was not really available to laborers tied to the land, and was essentially an urban phenomenon. This is the origin of the term "journeyman" for instance... apprentices who would follow master craftsmen around until they became masters in their own right.
This is the origin of the term "journeyman" for instance... apprentices who would follow master craftsmen around until they became masters in their own right.
No, that's not right. When an apprentice finished their apprenticeship, they would usually have to leave their master's service. The openings for masters would be fixed per town by the guild, so journeymen would work itinerantly until they found an opening to become a master. Journeymen would work for a series of masters, and their relationship to these masters was entirely different to the relationship of apprentices.
The status of journeyman became institutionalised, so that the criterion for taking up a mastership was that one had travelled widely enough as a journeyman for some length of time and had crafted a masterpiece.
I've never heard of the idea of guilds organising flights: I should think that master guildsmen had more to lose than agricultural laborers from relocation. Perhaps if several guilds coordinated, it could be less than massively destructive. Where did you get this idea?
It may help to know that while journeyman and journey come from the same French word, journée (meaning, essentially, day), that journeyman simply means someone who is entitled to charge a day rate for his work. (Masters were the "contractors" of their day; they were paid for the project, and apprentices got to eat -- they usually paid for the privilege.)
Yes, the guild system and town laws often made the journeyman itinerant, but it wasn't travel that put the "journey" in "journeyman".
Don't quite recall, but I think it was from a book about cathedral builders or something. But I'll admit my knowledge of medieval guilds is largely superficial and drawn from books where it was a side issue rather than the main topic. Your description sounds like you know what you're talking about. Got any good references (books, not articles) worth reading to get a clearer idea of how guild economies worked?
I'm not an expert: I spent a bit of time about ten years ago researching the topic, back when there was a lot of talk about guild structures being appropriate to software development.
It isn't an old guard thing. It is a personality and strengths thing. I am not particularly old guard (I am 37), and while I am about average in the technologies I do know, I suck at learning new platforms/technologies. It's like pulling teeth.
Those who are good at it just don't get how hard it can be for those are not quick learners in this sense. This is part of not knowing their own value -- claiming that learning new languages is "easy." It is. For them.
I dunno, I guess I'm of the mindset that the waves are coming, and you're either on them or under them. These days, I get antsy if I get enough time in one stack that I really feel like I have it cooking. Which is how I've clawed my way up from the embedded programming basement all the way up to javascript now. (Aside: sweet jesus, how do you web guys put up with javascript? It's like java and ml's thalidomide baby.)
I remember hearing about this. Sounds like she should have placed a limit on the number of deals Groupon could sell. But what's the connection to his line about having an iPhone?
If you had your own iPhone app and knew how to market it properly, you wouldn't be at the mercy of Groupon's well-known strong-arm tactics in dealing with small businesses for instance. Or some other alternative tech-savvy way to market your business so you aren't killed by a few bad Yelp reviews or discounts from the social commerce/coupon startups that you don't know can hurt you till you try them. Many of the more prosperous small businesses are already starting to vie for control over their customer acquisition channels.
That's the gist of it, with one correction. The 10,000 hours bit is fine, the missing detail is how you count to 10,000 when there are no convenient external reference points. The true extrinsic variables are things like a named discipline or degrees as indicators of experience.
True. That's why I took care to separate out the clinical cases as carefully as I could. The reverse is also true: people who can be helped by cognitive reframings may not find medication useful. In fact, it can make things worse. A significant proportion of patients on depression and bipolar meds get worse, not better.
I have no problem admitting that I have been on medication a couple of times, for brief periods. It was a long time ago, and so ineffective/counterproductive for me that it was the kick in the pants I needed to decide to take control of my life at a more cognitive level. It convinced me that meds are vastly overprescribed for what might be called "existential" illnesses. That experience did inform my post.
But there is an aspect of this stuff that is perhaps even bigger than the mild/severe distinction and the pop-psych/clinical psych distinction.
This is the fact that professional or amateur, anybody who thinks they actually understand more than 10% of this sort of thing is a liar. I wouldn't trust any professional who refused to admit that we just don't understand 90% of what's going on, at either a cognitive or biochemical level. There is as much bs spouted by the supposed "professionals" about serotonin as there is by amateurs like me opining about how to climb out of slumps.
Not that I think my stuff is bs, but my kind of writing belongs in a category with more than its fair share of bs :)
The short answer is: you get used to it, but it is not ideal or a particularly healthy work lifestyle. It has many of the same problems as solitary confinement within a prison.
Since the pattern is increasing all around, more social support structures are emerging around work-from-home lifestyles, but frankly, the current state is very primitive.
There was a coworking space about half a block away from my current location, but it closed down. Unfortunately I didn't find out it closed until after I moved here (partly to be close to it) :/. Perceived cost of living keeps me from moving to a different metro area with better services.
Though I do that kind of cliffhanger stuff on occasion, that isn't the reason here. My "theory of Toby" merely requires a good deal of groundwork to be laid. And you're right on both counts... he's not in the hierarchy, and Zen/transcending have a role in the explanation.
It just won't be the kind of feel-good Zen/transcending you are probably thinking of (which you should expect, since Toby displays too much misery to be a traditional Enlightened One).
If you are really curious about how I am developing this thread, read Nietzsche's 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'
