[FRIAM] "What Work Means"

[Marcus Daniels]

Organizations are like waves.  Every now and then someone (or a small group) finds a way to do some surfing.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2023 3:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "What Work Means"

I spent my career at universities (2) except for a few years at Bell Labs and Bios group.  I always felt that the organization I worked for was altruistic.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Fri, Oct 27, 2023, 11:45 AM glen <gepropella at gmail.com<mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
That's a great article! But I have a bit of a bone to pick with it. (I know, right? What a boor I am.) I just can't help but read this as inherently Presty. I work with a handful of GenZ at my minimum wage side gig. They are hustlers, through and through. So a theme of the Presty article does ring, that of "financially stable" (never ever ever mind "well-off"; that's not even in the lexicon). But in that pursuit, my decidedly non-Presty friends work more than one job. One of them has a job at 2 breweries, working as an assistant brewer in one and as a "cellar person" at the other because Assistant Brewer doesn't provide quite enough income to pay the rents sought by our Land Lords. Another has 2 jobs, one as a bartender and the other as a ... what? ... "accounting logistics" (?) person at a car dealership.

So the perspective and focus presented by Aden in the Presty article seems VERY privileged to me ... but no more so than the privilege expressed by, say, Steve's story about a state school graduate's perspective on the grant submission/evaluation process. Is it any wonder we see more graffiti like "Eat the Rich" these days? Is it any wonder my non-Presty friends don't vote?

Another theme implicit in the article is Sam Bankman-Fried's huckster rhetoric of Effective Altrusim. When Presties talk of "service", "mission", and "meaning", I get this icky feeling deep down. An article from Harvard talking about work-life balance makes me a bit sick to my stomach in the same way as listening to Peter Thiel talk about the Straussian Moment (or Robin Hanson arguing we should have more babies). Yuck. I need a shower to wash off this Presty filth.

But similar to Eric's local deconstruction of Elliott's bullshit about bimodal distributions, what's a hyper-privileged Presty to do? What options are there other than going with the flow? What? Should Aden quit college and ... walk the earth? https://youtu.be/dLdRsofkCVs?si=quzxQt7wOUZT375g Nah. He should stay in the game and propel the criminal enterprise until he finds his golden parachute. If he can't suppress his appetite for "meaning", he can snack on some Greenwashing and, say, support the paper straw initiative at the local county commissioner meetings.

On 10/26/23 13:19, Tom Johnson wrote:
> FRIAM-ers:
> Many of us, probably a majority, have spent a lot of years in or around college campuses.  We dealt with students for decades.  The latest issue of Harvard Magazine has an interesting essay by a graduating senior describing his and his classmates' outlook on their future and the world.  All I can say is I'm glad I am retired.
> See "What Work Means <https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2023/11/university-people-undergraduate-what-work-means>."

--
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