goodness
If I had The Sads
Significant everywhere
Writing isn't a conveyor belt bearing the reader to "the point" at the end of the piece, where the meaning will be revealed.
Good writing is significant everywhere,
Delightful everywhere.An equivalence
In both early Christianity and Islam, theologians made a claim about architecture likely to sound so peculiar to modern ears as to be worth of sustained examination: they proposed that beautiful buildings had the power to improve us morally and spiritually. They believed that, rather than corrupting us, rather than being an idle indulgence for the decadent, exquisite surroundings could edge us towards perfection. A beautiful building could reinforce our resolve to be good.
Behind this distinctive claim lay another astonishing belief: that of an equivalence between the visual and ethical realms.
If you look for the light
If you look for the light,
you can often find it.
But if you look for the dark,
that is all you will ever see.— Uncle Iroh
Words which are things
I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee,—
Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.I have not loved the world, nor the world me,—
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,—hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the falling: I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,—
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.Asking yourself some questions
All of the moves that we make in space will tend toward being in accord with this phenomenon of wholeness / beauty / life if we’re willing to bring the requisite level of care to the doing of our work.
Alexander says that each of us possess the means for accessing this order within ourselves and — here’s where he loses most other architects and many in the so-called sciences in academia — he contends that what we’re connecting with inside of ourselves is an objective criterion for what good means.
Applying the criterion is easy: you ask yourself some questions:
With any action you might take with regard to placement, and with regard to the situatedness of things in space you ask yourself: does this move increase wholeness / beauty / life?
Does the intervention you’re taking intensify the feelings of wholeness in you as the maker when you are performing the work?
How does your work on this one part enhance what’s going on among wholes at the system level?
The Nature of Order
A Book by Christopher AlexanderFinding nourishment vs. identifying poison
An Article by Austin Kleon & Olivia LaingA useful analogy for what [Sedgwick] calls ‘reparative reading’ is to be fundamentally more invested in finding nourishment than identifying poison. This doesn’t mean being naive or undeceived, unaware of crisis or undamaged by oppression. What it does mean is being driven to find or invent something new and sustaining out of inimical environments.
I would like to adopt that line as a mission statement: “To be fundamentally more invested in finding nourishment rather than identify poison.”
Because you can identify all the poison you want, but if you don’t find nourishment, you’ll starve to death.
The amorality of Web 2.0
An Essay by Nicholas CarrThe Internet is changing the economics of creative work – or, to put it more broadly, the economics of culture – and it’s doing it in a way that may well restrict rather than expand our choices. Wikipedia might be a pale shadow of the Britannica, but because it’s created by amateurs rather than professionals, it’s free. And free trumps quality all the time.
The Cycle of Goodness
An Idea by Tadao YoshidaThe CYCLE OF GOODNESS® is the corporate philosophy established by YKK’s founder, Tadao Yoshida, who believed that “no one prospers without rendering benefit to others.” It expresses the basic belief of the YKK Group. Tadao Yoshida firmly believed that business belongs to society. As an important member of society, a company survives through coexistence. When the benefits are shared, the value of the company’s existence will be recognized by society. When pursuing his business, Mr. Yoshida was most concerned with that aspect and would find a path leading to mutual prosperity. He believed that using ingenuity and inventiveness in business activities and constantly creating new value would lead to the success of clients and business partners and make it possible to contribute to society. This type of reasoning is referred to as the CYCLE OF GOODNESS® and has always served as the foundation of our business activities.
Artifice, blindness, and suicide
A QuoteThe first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.
Doing It Right
An Article by Brad FrostDoing it right requires a different pace of working and a much broader thought process than “ok, let’s get this thing out the door.” Which is super tough because most workplaces place a huge emphasis on getting things out the door, and fast. Little agile tickets that are expected to be completed in micro sprints to me seem to be antithetical to doing it right.
Premium Mediocre
Cupcakes and froyo
Premium mediocre is the finest bottle of wine at Olive Garden. Premium mediocre is cupcakes and froyo. Premium mediocre is “truffle” oil on anything (no actual truffles are harmed in the making of “truffle” oil), and extra-leg-room seats in Economy. Premium mediocre is cruise ships, artisan pizza, Game of Thrones, and The Bellagio.
Maya Millennial
But the demographic at the very heart of the phenomenon, the sine qua non of premium mediocrity, is the young, gentrifier class of Blue Bicoastal Millennials. The rent-over-own, everything-as-a-service class of precarious young professionals auditioning for a shot at the neourban American dream, sans condo ownership somewhere at a reasonable distance from both the nearest meth lab and minority ghetto.
The essence of premium mediocrity is being optimistically prepared for success by at least being in the right place at the right time, at least for a little while, even if you have no idea how to make anything happen during your window of opportunity. Even if you know nothing else, you know to move to San Francisco or New York and hoping something good happens there, rather than sitting around in some dying small town where you know nothing will ever happen and being curious about anything beyond the town is a cultural transgression. This is a strategy open to all.
What premium mediocre is not
So premium mediocrity is not clueless, tasteless consumption of mediocrity under the mistaken impression that it is actual luxury consumption. Maya Millennial is aware that what she is consuming is mediocre at its core, and only “premium” in some peripheral (and importantly, cheap, such as French-for-no-reason branding) ways. But she consumes it anyway. She is aware that her consumption is tasteless, yet she pretends it is tasteful anyway.
Second the distinguishing feature is that premium mediocrity only signals an appearance of striving upwards. Everybody in the premium mediocre world recognizes that it is not a reliable indicator of actual upward striving, such as number of code commits on github, or non-bot retweets achieved by on a tweet.
In other words, premium mediocrity is dressing for the lifestyle you’re supposed to want, in order to hold on to the lifestyle you can actually afford — for now — while trying to engineer a stroke of luck.