Re: General advice beyond Org

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2018-05-20, at 21:29, edgar@openmail.cc wrote:

>> Question #1: How important is your strong inclination, measured in
>> dollars?  Because we all have to go along to get along, to some extent.
>
> American, Canadian, Australian... dollars? :D . I don't like to
> measure myself in currency. It is as if turning into
> a product. I guess that you mean how much I am willing to give up for
> my inclination, which is a good question.

Good point about not measuring everything in money.

>> If you're trying to defend your ideals, it might help to remember you
>> can't, because everything is connected to everything else.
>
> The first part of this statement is very daunting, depressing and grim.

And very untrue.

It helps to develop a rational attitude to morality: you do not have
influence on everything, not even all the results of your actions, and
hence you do not bear responsibility for what you don't influence.  (Of
course, that doesn't mean you don't bear any responsibility for what you
_do_ influence.)

For instance, you go to the bakery, buy the bread and pay the baker the
money.  He then takes the money and goes to buy a gun to kill his wife.
Are you responsible?  I don't think so (at least under normal
circumstances).

(BTW, by "rational attitude to morality" I mean "attitude to morality
which takes morality seriously, and at the same time takes seriously the
_reality_, i.e., not some nice-looking theory which does not work in
practice, nor any way to just say that morality doesn't matter.  IOW,
"rational attitude to morality" is just "the Catholic attitude to
morality".)

>> During the Vietnam war, it wasn't uncommon for someone to declare their
>> opposition to the war meant they refused to work for a defense
>> contractor.  OK.  Banking, then?  But banks finance defense
>> contractors.  McDonalds?  They feed defense contractor employees.
>> Academia?  You're training new defense contractors.  No matter how you
>> earn your bread, your employer and your earnings eventually feed the
>> same maw.
>
> Oh! war! thou creator of all!

Again, too simplistic and not true.

>> If you're just trying to pamper your fingers, it might help to remember
>> you can.  To the extent others are unaffected, you'll usually be free
>> to choose what software to use.  That will be more true in technical
>> and scientific areas, and less true in business and administrative
>> ones.
>
> I don't know what "pamper your fingers" mean, but I think that the
> message is the comparison between technical and scientific
> v.s. business and administrative.

FWIW, I work in a small software house which mostly uses open-source
software (which is not the same as free software, but has a big
intersection with it).  We use Node.js, Vagrant, Ansible, PostgreSQL...
And our boss encourages us to "give back" to the larger community by bug
reports, pull requests and open-sourcing small utilities we write.

>> One last point that's often underappreciated: if you use whatever
>> software you're asked/expected to use, then if you have problems or
>> delays -- as you certainly will -- you'll have a sympathetic ear.  If
>> you insist on doing it your own way, others will blame every problem or
>> delay, fairly or not, on your choice of software. [...]

*Very true*.  We have one person using MacOS.  Every time there's some
problem, someone says "It's because it's Apple."  Yes, it's a joke, but
it's symptomatic.  We also run a small, jocular version of "editor war"
between Emacs (me) and Sublime Text (most of the other developers).

Just my 2 cents.

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl