Builder Brain An Essay by Charlie Warzel newsletters.theatlantic.com The Builder mindset often eschews policy completely and focuses on the macro issues, rather than the micro complexities. It is a mindset that seeks to find very elaborate, hypothetical-but-definitely-paradigm-shifting, futuristic technology to fix current problems, instead of focusing on a series of boring-sounding and modest reforms that might help people now. …The worst version of Builder mentality is that their dreams become reality, but instead of maintaining their creations, they simply move onto the next Big Thing, leaving others to deal with the mess they’ve made. A time to build and a time to repair technologybuildingsocietyrepair
If we didn’t live to work A Fragment by Charlie Warzel warzel.substack.com When you talk to people who reject the modern notion of a career, many of them say the same thing: They crave more balance, less precarity, and better pay. They also, crucially, want to work. What’s profound about the career rejectionists is that their guiding questions are simple. What if work didn’t make you feel awful? What would life be like if we didn’t live to work? What do workers and employers actually owe each other? What if we structured our work lives around a different idea of success? workvalues
Seven lamps Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture provided seven guides, or 'lamps', for the troubled craftsman, guides for anyone who works directly on material things. These seven are: The lamp of sacrifice: The willingness to do something well for its own sake. The lamp of truth: The truth that 'breaks and rents continually'; Ruskin's embrace of difficulty, resistance, and ambiguity. The lamp of power: Tempered power, guided standards other than blind will. The lamp of beauty: Which for Ruskin is found more in the detail, the ornament—hand-sized beauty—than in the large design. The lamp of life: Life equating with struggle and energy, death with deadly perfection. The lamp of memory: The guidance provided by the time before machinery ruled. The lamp of obedience: Obedience to the example set by a master's practice rather than by his particular works; otherwise put, strive to be like Stradivari but do not seek to copy his particular violins. Richard Sennett, The Craftsman 125 Best Architecture Books