The problem with society is that assholes breed assholes.

Hah! Made you think. Courtesy of Droppingknowledge.org.

If a negative person says you’re a good listener…run, RUN LIKE HELL! They’re just getting ready to kill any chances you had of enjoying the next hour or so. Most people will complain once or twice and sort it out themselves, but negative people will piss on your battery every time they see you, until you run out of excuses to avoid them.

It’s getting to the point where I’m going to be honest and say, “I’d like to see you, but I’m sick of your constant, draining self-pity. I’ve given you enough advice, now sort your shit out.”

It’s difficult being an optimistic, positive person in our current society, because the negative people gravitate towards you like leeches to try and drain your positive energy away instead of generating their own…

Humans on the other hand are never satisfied. As soon as we’ve satisfied the three variables, we go searching for more. So we’re safe, well-fed, getting laid, and we’re happy about it for a while. Then it wears off. Now we start thinking we’re not making enough money, or that we’re not famous enough, or we’re not creative enough. So we start trying to fulfil these new variables we’ve found, but in so doing, we often sacrifice our original accomplishments in the first three.

Making more money means more work, less of a social life, which in turns leads to less sex and/or a broken marriage.

Becoming famous also creates problems, because it means sacrificing security. You may be famous, but now you’re a target. Usually because you’re rich and extravagant, in a prominent political position, or you’re simply hated for being famous.

Trying to be more creative also leads to problems if it’s taken to be more important than it is. How many starving artists do you know of? They’ve maxed out the creative variable by sacrificing the security, food/health, and sex variables. So they might bring out some brilliant work, but they’re on the path to self-destruction.

Even when a person can’t find new variables to fulfil, they often start overloading the first three instead. Overweight or anorexic people have overloaded the food/health variable. Paranoid people are quaking in their self-created ruts from overloading the security variable. And while promiscuous people might often be envied, they’re usually overcome with self-loathing from not being able to build a lasting relationship. They’ve maxed out the sex variable.

This is the curse and blessing of being human. We have the capability for great things, but only when we can find that perfect balance between security, food/health, sex, and the newly found variables we believe to be our purpose. By all means, find those new variables and work hard (and smart) towards fulfilling them. But watch your balance. If something doesn’t feel right or you’re feeling depressed and lacking energy for no obvious reason, it’s probably because you’re out of balance. And when you’re not balanced, from focusing on one area at the cost of others, then you’re building up a debt in those neglected areas. And the greater that debt becomes, the harder it is to pay back, because it usually comes with interest.

So keep your balance, before the universe decides to repossess the neglected parts of your life, leaving you wondering where it all went wrong.

Open your eyes/How to read for yourself

Reading and art should never be revered to the point of idolisation, as we then falsely perceive the things written about to be the only things of beauty in our surroundings. We should learn to see our surroundings with the master’s eyes, rather than trying to see the master’s surroundings with our own eyes. Use a master’s work to learn a new way of seeing to expand your abilities, instead of restricting yourself to the tiny fragment of human experience which the master artist has lived through.

On friendship

Friendship tends to be over-rated. A cynical and perhaps truthful view to take is that friendship is just a warm feeling of affection which may be reciprocated, and nothing more should be expected to avoid disappointment. The pursuit of affection and the pursuit of truth should be seperated. Friendship allows for affection, but you need to split your personality for it to work. You cannot be brutally honest with a friend, but in placing your thoughts on paper or a painting you can be perfectly truthful. Thus both pursuits can be achieved without intefering with one another.

On appreciating life

If your death was guaranteed in a day, week, or year; how would your priorities change? Shouldn’t they be changed now rather than procrastinating till you’re dead? How would those people who were killed by the tsunami have lived differently if they knew? Okay, they probably would’ve given the beach a miss, but you get the point.

On taking your time

If you rush through life you’ll miss out on the richness which seemingly mundane objects and events have to offer. This applies even more in our current culture of get-things-done-faster-or-you’re-just-a-lazy-sod.

How not to point fingers

When suffering, don’t blame something or someone else and give up; just accept that shit happens and move on.

Expressing yourself

Avoid clichés in expression. Though they may be tried and true, they are also old and worn. Rather be original at the risk of ridicule or rejection.

[tags]proust, books, philosophy, psychology, life[/tags]

Knowledge workers hoard information. For them to be seen as valuable to the company, they have to market their value to colleagues and especially superiors. So Jane forces Bob to ask her for the knowledge he requires, and then she makes sure that Bob understands how valuable she is to the company through a complex social interaction before letting him have the information. In this way she continually reinforces her value to the company in her colleagues’ minds.

Groupware fails completely in a business environment because Jane has to give up control of her knowledge to the company-wide knowledge base, in effect reducing her value. So she either shuns the system or uses it half-heartedly by not sharing valuable key information that is really needed. For groupware to work in a business we have to understand that the complex social interaction cannot be removed from the system, it needs to be embraced. And the system needs to provide a way for the users to increase their value to the company by allowing them to take ownership of their information and blocking attempts to steal credit from others.

Social software is usually successful, because no one has any reason to hoard information. If they do, they’re not maintaining their value to a company, they’re actually losing their value to society and losing friends. And anything that you say, do, or share using social software is linked to you as a person, rather than to you as an almost anonymous employee. Social software must allow you to build your reputation, maintain trust networks with your friends, and it must be useful or at least fun. Groupware has never been fun to use, and doesn’t allow you to build up your reputation, so no one uses it.

For groupware to succeed, it needs to take into account that people don’t just care about their reputation within the company, they care about their reputation in the world. They can easily build their status in the company by getting up and talking with coworkers, so why bother with clunky groupware? If the groupware allows them to link their personal and business lives, and help them to build their status in both areas, then it will fly!

As Jamie puts it in Groupware Bad, don’t build shit that nobody cares about!