Well you sure didn't look like you were having any fun
with that heavy-metal gaze they'll have to measure in tons
And when you look up at the sky
all you see are zeros
all you see are zeros and ones
You took my hand and led me down to watch a kewpie doll parade
we let the kittens lick our hair and drank our chalky lemonade
it's not that I just didn't care I must admit I was afraid
and I'm awfully glad my finger's resting gently on the masterfade
The masterfade
I coulda played along
the masterfade
I coulda played Mah Jong
but it just takes too long
and I just can't remember which way the east wind blows
does it matter?
if we're all matter
what's it matter does it matter if we're all matter when we're done?
when the sky is full of zeros and ones
I saw you standing all alone in the electrostatic rain
I thought at last I'd found a situation you can't explain
with GPS you know it's all just a matter of degrees
your happiness won't find you underneath that canopy of trees
If the green grass is 6 the soybeans are 7
the junebugs are 8 the weeds and thistles are 11
and if the 1s just hold their place the 0s make a smiley face
when they come floating down from the heavens
You took my hand and led me down to watch a papillon parade
we let the kittens lick our hair and drank our chalky lemonade
you squeezed my hand and told me softly that I shouldn't be afraid
'cause all the while your finger's resting gently on the masterfade
the masterfade
I coulda played along
the masterfade
I coulda played Mah Jong
but it just takes too long
and who the hell can remember which way the east wind blows
when you're lying on the ground staring up at that inverted compass
I mean Christ who knows?
awesome awesome lyrics.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
"To others, however, the members of “Generation Y”—those born in the 1980s and 1990s, otherwise known as Millennials or the Net Generation—are spoiled, narcissistic layabouts who cannot spell and waste too much time on instant messaging and Facebook. Ah, reply the Net Geners, but all that messing around online proves that we are computer-literate multitaskers who are adept users of online collaborative tools, and natural team players. And, while you are on the subject of me, I need a month’s sabbatical to recalibrate my personal goals."
- Managing the Facebookers, From The Economist Jan 3rd 2009 edition
I love that last line, "I need a month's sabbatical to recalibrate my personal goals". I hadn't perhaps viewed the need to quantify self-worth as being a distinct characteristic of my generation. The Economist discusses this new individualism with some candour, relating a tendency to question and reflect upon big ideas to difficulties in integration with organisational structures that often require individuals to simply shut up and work. The article brings up "touchy-feely management fads", apparently a byproduct of the new-age tendencies of these so-called Facebookers, and sets such notions against "brutal command-and-control methods". Integration aside, the article (all of half an Economist-magazine sized page in length) hits at the soft narcissism of the new generation and their collective unsuitability to contribute to productive economies. The bottomline, is that in times when livelihoods of hundreds and thousands stand on the brink, there are more important things than individual development to consider. Even if it means foregoing that trip to Nepal to reinvigorate the spiritual essence of your being, long drained after days on end of staring at figures on a computer screen.
I don't think it's such a simple matter of putting 2 weights on opposing scales and deciding in favour of the more substantial though. To be fair, the article is entitled "Managing the Facebookers", and it opines as to the type of person that's most valuable to a firm in leaner economic times. It deals with the specific subject of management.
Yet, it dichotomises attitudes to work in an unfair way. A caricature of the "Net Gener" who "treat(s) work as a route to personal fulfillment" and "laboured under the illusion that the world owes them a living" is presented, and ridiculed. And even if it's true that such an attitude is more prevalent in the younger generation (the article does not show this), the author pretends to a moral immediacy which is unjustified. It is this specific set of presumptions that I take issue with.
How does an individual decide that his head-down, gritting of teeth exertions for the good of the firm, or the national economy will be worthwhile? By celebrating quarterly growth figures? Or taking comfort in the growing profit margins of the firm? The baby boomers of post-war Japan resurrected an economy with astonishing success, to what end? So that the world can applaud in admiration and study the factors of their success? Perhaps that the next generation can be rid of questions of survival to engage themselves in less sapping affairs? A little removed from the personal considerations of the average worker, I would think.
There is good reason to be dissatisfied with simply being a productive unit of labour, functioning within a capitalist economy. Certainly basic needs as putting the food on the table, as the article summarily expresses it, have to be adequately satisfied first. Yet from there human wants become considerably more complex; putting more and more food on the table can give some people all the meaning their lives require, but there are innumerable other ways, all drastically different, to lead full lives. Simply saying that an entire generation of people need to "temper some of their expectations and take the world as it is", seems over-simplified to the point of severe redundancy.
With economic ills afflicting entire communities, there is perhaps a case to be made that personal fulfillment should take a backseat to betterment as a firm, or society, or nation, whichever the relevant grouping. I'm interested in how an individual relates his own well-being to the well-being of people he does not know and identifies with in an abstract way. Nation, race, global corporation. How these can justifiably be central pillars of an individual identity. When common interests of economic well-being, security become so diffused from efforts of labour, in reality work that years and decades can be lost in. The notion that one's survival can be inextricably linked to that of a multitude seems simplifed to Marvel or DC extents, where we either unite to effect change and save the world in doing so, or perish. It is perhaps easier to feel these common interests in hard times, like when an alien species is upon our planet intent on destroying all humanity, starting from Washington DC. Yet, it is too easy to paint such portraits of hard times, of American influences defiling the world, of WMDs proliferate in every protrusive sand dune, of Antichrists and Depressions.
Which is why when people tell us we are "narcissistic layabouts" for wanting to take that trip to Nepal, it's probably constructive to question that a little, too.
- Managing the Facebookers, From The Economist Jan 3rd 2009 edition
I love that last line, "I need a month's sabbatical to recalibrate my personal goals". I hadn't perhaps viewed the need to quantify self-worth as being a distinct characteristic of my generation. The Economist discusses this new individualism with some candour, relating a tendency to question and reflect upon big ideas to difficulties in integration with organisational structures that often require individuals to simply shut up and work. The article brings up "touchy-feely management fads", apparently a byproduct of the new-age tendencies of these so-called Facebookers, and sets such notions against "brutal command-and-control methods". Integration aside, the article (all of half an Economist-magazine sized page in length) hits at the soft narcissism of the new generation and their collective unsuitability to contribute to productive economies. The bottomline, is that in times when livelihoods of hundreds and thousands stand on the brink, there are more important things than individual development to consider. Even if it means foregoing that trip to Nepal to reinvigorate the spiritual essence of your being, long drained after days on end of staring at figures on a computer screen.
I don't think it's such a simple matter of putting 2 weights on opposing scales and deciding in favour of the more substantial though. To be fair, the article is entitled "Managing the Facebookers", and it opines as to the type of person that's most valuable to a firm in leaner economic times. It deals with the specific subject of management.
Yet, it dichotomises attitudes to work in an unfair way. A caricature of the "Net Gener" who "treat(s) work as a route to personal fulfillment" and "laboured under the illusion that the world owes them a living" is presented, and ridiculed. And even if it's true that such an attitude is more prevalent in the younger generation (the article does not show this), the author pretends to a moral immediacy which is unjustified. It is this specific set of presumptions that I take issue with.
How does an individual decide that his head-down, gritting of teeth exertions for the good of the firm, or the national economy will be worthwhile? By celebrating quarterly growth figures? Or taking comfort in the growing profit margins of the firm? The baby boomers of post-war Japan resurrected an economy with astonishing success, to what end? So that the world can applaud in admiration and study the factors of their success? Perhaps that the next generation can be rid of questions of survival to engage themselves in less sapping affairs? A little removed from the personal considerations of the average worker, I would think.
There is good reason to be dissatisfied with simply being a productive unit of labour, functioning within a capitalist economy. Certainly basic needs as putting the food on the table, as the article summarily expresses it, have to be adequately satisfied first. Yet from there human wants become considerably more complex; putting more and more food on the table can give some people all the meaning their lives require, but there are innumerable other ways, all drastically different, to lead full lives. Simply saying that an entire generation of people need to "temper some of their expectations and take the world as it is", seems over-simplified to the point of severe redundancy.
With economic ills afflicting entire communities, there is perhaps a case to be made that personal fulfillment should take a backseat to betterment as a firm, or society, or nation, whichever the relevant grouping. I'm interested in how an individual relates his own well-being to the well-being of people he does not know and identifies with in an abstract way. Nation, race, global corporation. How these can justifiably be central pillars of an individual identity. When common interests of economic well-being, security become so diffused from efforts of labour, in reality work that years and decades can be lost in. The notion that one's survival can be inextricably linked to that of a multitude seems simplifed to Marvel or DC extents, where we either unite to effect change and save the world in doing so, or perish. It is perhaps easier to feel these common interests in hard times, like when an alien species is upon our planet intent on destroying all humanity, starting from Washington DC. Yet, it is too easy to paint such portraits of hard times, of American influences defiling the world, of WMDs proliferate in every protrusive sand dune, of Antichrists and Depressions.
Which is why when people tell us we are "narcissistic layabouts" for wanting to take that trip to Nepal, it's probably constructive to question that a little, too.
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