I thought it may be worth sharing. Here they are!

In the exercise, one tries to answer in particular the following questions:

• What work is and what it means to me
• What's work for?
• What does that mean?
• How does it relate to the individal, others, society?
• What defines good or worthwhile work?
• What does money have to do with it?
• What do experience, growth, and fulfillment have to do with it?

And finally, here is a slightly edited version of what I came up with:

We supposedly all have to work. Even though technology has made it less and less necessary for people to work, here we are, 21st century and all, and most people having to work 40ish hours/week doing whatever, to get a (occasionally) decent salary. In reality a big part of the manufacturing work that sustains our lifestyle is based on modern-slavery labor. And there are a few people that make tons of money thru it, while an immense fraction of the population live in terrible conditions.

For white people in 1st world countries, like our case, it turns out that most of the work is quite meaningless. “The smartest minds of our generation have been sucked into increasing the likelihood of you clicking”, or something like that I read and quite agree.

Certain kind of work is necessary to just live, like the work involved in producing food and distributing it, or build and keep basic infrastructures like water supply and energy, and waste disposal. A lot of work actually goes to the equivalent of breaking glasses to repair them – selling unnecessary electronic gadgets, having a lot of servants for doing simple tasks. The opportunity cost there is high.

Close to the essential kinds of works would be education and medicine. They allow for the well-being of people alive.

I suppose looking at the Maslow's pyramid of needs and seeing which kind of jobs allow them to be covered for all people, would be a good way to asses what work should be, what the working culture should strive to achieve.

The military and the banks gather a lot of resources, for doing things that are not productive and often are counterproductive. The ridiculously inflated resources that go into those make it seem like “normal work” in society is a farce.

As Kurt Vonnegut said, we are here to fart around. Maybe. In any case it certainly seems like no one is doing something anything that essential, or that one should worry for not doing so.

Bertrand Russell also had an interesting view on the matter, as he explained in “In Praise of Idleness”. Funnily enough, he did quite a lot of things, or “worked hard” as many would say.

What keeps it all going? Basically this exploitation system that is thinly hidden from our view. It seems difficult, if important, to change that.

Why work? To have a better live. Not just myself, but everyone. To change how the world is now into one that I think would be better: more fair, less hypocrite, one that makes more sense. One where people are actually free to pursue their interests in a respectful way with the others (and not one where a minority more-or-less is, and even in a disrespectful way with the rest).

I can't think of work as separate from the current unfair capitalistic system that we have. I think work can be reframed into something way more sensible if things like a universal basic income were a reality. I guess that while something like that doesn't exist, it's probably good to both try to get it and play within the system in a way that maximizes both its chances of changing into a better one and the usefulness of what you can do and the fun you can have meanwhile.

One way of making it easier for a different system to happen is to work in the dissemination of ideas that help have a better view of the future in mind to the people. Like writing a good book about how society could work differently and how to get there, at the same time as making it fun to read. Let the good memes spread.

Basic life-supporting work is not needed at this point – if it was, then the discussion would be different.

Doing research helps indirectly on the well being of everyone, especially if doing it in an open way. Science helps the truth have more weight, and having access to the truth is a basic need for a change to a better society. It's hard to change something that you don't even know exists. It's also pointless to have freedom of thought if you are not exposed to ideas so there is nothing for you to think about.

So, what's work for? There are different answers.

From a society point of view, work should aim to maximize the well-being of everyone, to have the needs of all covered and to enable people to pursue their interests. It is not how it is nowadays. Instead, work serves mainly to ensure that the status-quo is kept.

From a personal point of view, one answer is “to earn money”, to be able to survive and possibly buy a better car than your neighbor. Actually, it is more and more to be able to simply pay the debts that come form getting something as basic as an education (college debt) and a place to live (loan). And more and more, for medical insurance too. In any case, as much as I can speak ideally for myself, work is for enabling the well-being of all, producing social change and both earning enough to have a reasonable amount of freedom and having fun in the process.

Finally, what do experience, growth, and fulfillment have to do with it?

Experience is something that makes you better at whatever you are doing, and that brings both efficiency and joy. In as much as the work you are doing relates to the kind of changes you want to see, the more experience the better.

As for growth, I am not particularly interested in it. It's something I'd expect to come, but I can't quite see the point of things like me climbing the steps of positions at a company or at the university. I expect changes to arrive, in the way I think, in the way I do things, in how efficient I am, etc. But I'm not planing on any path because of the expected growth it could bring. At least, I can't think how that would be.

And fulfillment would come from seeing that the actions at work align with the things I value work for: mainly the enabling of the well-being of all. As long as I can see that it makes sense, work would be justified. There has to be an equilibrium at how much the different aspects are satisfied: I'd want both a positive impact in the world and a way to enable a good life for myself. Depending on how many of those things I can get from my job, there would be less need to get others from extra work.

Work should ultimately be an enabler for fun. Fun for me, fun for everyone.

#activism #ideas

Hoping that it will serve as a helpful-ish short introduction to someone, here it is:

It's hard to describe all the turmoil. The events keep unfolding, but so far this week seems more easy-going, though still tense. The very basics are that a left-wing independentist coalition in Catalonia forced the referendum with bad forms (the request is justified, as it has been claimed for ages by a vast majority of their population, but the way they did it is bad), the right-wing central government replied with even worse forms (huge mobilization of security forces and violent charges against common people just trying to vote), the referendum happened but without the proper infrastructure and gave (unsurprisingly) a big majority for independence, albeit with low participation, and the independentists argued they were going to do a one-sided declaration of independence based on that while at the same time the right-wing parties were basically pushing for a declaration of a state of exception. As of yesterday, they are at an impasse. Either of the next announced steps would be incredibly stupid, and they both probably realize. So, even when they had announced that they were going to do it yesterday, they didn't quite declare one or the other. Most people have been visibly demanding that they indeed stop and talk, that they open formally a negotiation. They might listen. There are many side ramifications, but that's at least the very basics, as perceived by me in any case :) I am in Madrid indeed, and I have been here for the last three weeks. My following of the case has been from here, from the demonstrations here (there have been many since this started), from talking to people here and to catalan friends too. A couple of catalan friends that live here have gone on purpose there for voting (and have quite colorful stories), and a couple more photojournalist friends have gone to cover the situation.

That's it for today!

#life #activism

But I want to write something, and I would like to highlight what I consider to be the most important.

Most of the people in Catalonia want to vote. They don't necessarily want to become independent, but they do want to vote about it. There's little magic in knowing that, we don't lack polls, and the numbers are all around 80%. That's not a voice to silence. And from Catalonia they have demanded it for a long time. Yet, there's absolutely nothing in the horizon that suggests that's going to happen in our current system.

It should be obvious that's unfair and antidemocratic.

The fact that the local government called for a referendum that is illegal according to our current system is nothing compared to the fact that people that want to decide for themselves are systematically silenced.

The response of the central government and their puppets has been a show of carelessness and dumbness. Plus all the actions and the forces they have mobilized an immense waste of resources. More importantly, the deployment of a flood of police to stop people from voting, that has predictably resulted in violence, is profoundly unfair and antidemocratic.

Not to mention such actions please few people, and contribute as nothing else could to make people wish for independence. I can certainly sympathize with being a republic and as far as possible from this deeply corrupt government which is a continuous source of shame for Spaniards.

I was in Sol today in a demonstration in support of the right of Catalans to vote. I wasn't alone! The square was packed of people, many more than what I expected.

There were a couple of things that pleased me particularly.

Quotes from Voltaire and Wilde, the classical and still mostly not understood “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” and “Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” Dear classicals, you're quite to the point.

A couple of German Erasmus students asked a girl next to me, who seemed to be a foreigner too, about the situation and the meaning of it all. She answered beautifully all their questions, and explained different aspects in a quite joyful and pleasant way.

The day is over. The struggle will go on. It's not my wish to convince anyone. But I wish to highlight what's at stake: whether we have a society shaped to the will of the people or we have one that rules in spite of what people want.

We should strive for listening to others and having people's opinion count more. Laws are an instrument for the people. Unfair laws should be challenged and disobeyed. Nobody should decide for us.

#activism

It's something I have seen countless times in websites when they talk about their updates. And I am no exception.

To me, it is the feeling of being read that puts me off most. Plus simple and pure procrastination.

I'm pretty sure there must be a name for this, and it must be a well-known thing that every psychology student has seen from their first year.

Anyway, this is a possible comeback, and in any case let me talk about this very cool thing I've recently discovered: https://hypothes.is/. It is an extension for the main browsers that allows to annotate webs and pdfs, and share those annotations collaboratively. It has already many of the things that I wanted as a project to make web annotations. And it is free software.

Hypotes.is has many cool features, but for my interests it lacks the possibility of seeing the annotations in a more hierarchical/scored/transitively-interest-oriented way, so even with an immense amount of annotations per page one could easily see the main ones for her. Well, I can collaborate with them.

#diary #programming #life #activism

If only because of the concentration of smiles, it was worth having it.

I'm still a bit surprised about the high I get by just walking by the streets. It's great. Crossing paths with many people, seeing cool places, feeling being a part of the city... Yes, I want this.

As a plus, in this not-exactly-small city, it often happens that I get to cross paths with people I know and like. Today it was Ilan who spotted me first. He came back from Ibiza a few days ago, and him and his Uruguayan group of friends were walking by in the opposite direction as I was. I joined them for a while, walked and talked and saw the event together. I love when you randomly get to know nice and interesting people. Later on, I also met Jorge from the Go club, a really cool guy I hadn't seen for a couple of years. Always cool to catch up, even if shortly.

What about the town hall? Dressed with a changing rainbow of colors, you could feel it was not merely standing but participating of the pride. Kudos to the local govt.

Even though I support the orgullo crítico (critical pride), I don't see it as a contradiction at all with respect to the pride parades. On the other hand, I think the parades are the lion's share of what goes into the consciousness of everyone, especially the people that would not have been exposed to the idea of a lgtb community with equal rights. I really, really like it.

A beautiful day.

#diary #activism