Quiet Desperation.

Quiet Desperation

A friend, who is out of work and has been for some time, was more than a bit down last night and suffering from the "Why Me" syndrome last night.  So I pointed out that "Everyone is having a pretty hard time right now and it's not them -- a huge amount is the economy".  We went thru mutual friends and of about 20, perhaps 3 were doing well -- and the rest were just getting by.  I then quoted Thoreau's Quiet Desperation line from Walden Pond.  Actually I tried to quote it and then said to myself "Dude!  Just do a google."  Here it is:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

From: http://eserver.org/thoreau/walden1a.html

I had forgotten the "games and amusements" postscript.  But most of all, the "it is a characteristic of wisdom to not do desperate things."  Very cool.  Thanks Google!

[The FuzzyBlog!]

It would have been so hard to find the quote before the Internet. Check out some quotation books, etc. This way, a short google and you have it all, even things that you might have forgotten. I love Walden Pond and have a dog-earred copy of it still. This IS a great quote and one I am trying to follow, since I too have no job. I'm trying to make my own Walden Pond and having some little success.  12:17:56 AM    

The 99 cent KM solution. (SOURCE:Mathemagenic)-Weblogs give people voices and for that reason alone they are worthwhile in a corporate setting!Weblogs are the new home pages: providing a site for individual expression. Make it easy for people to create a weblog. Keep it behind the firewall if you must; they can do their own personal blogging on their own time. Not everyone is going to take to weblogging, of course. Some people are shy and some people are slow writers. But an enormous outpouring of ideas and critical reactions will occur. Voices will emerge. The mid-level engineer in R&D may turn out to have caustically trenchant things to say about marketing. The woman in shipping may have her finger on the pulse when it comes to HR and morale issues. The graphics designer may be on a tear about why the company isn't taking international competition seriously enough. Who knows? But that's the point. Weblogs make audible the real, unmasked voice in the back of the corporate head. [Roland Tanglao's Weblog] [Ron Lusk's Radio Weblog]

Making tacit knowledge explicit is one of the great joys of a weblog (i.e. the stuff in our head becomes the stuff on the blog). Tacit knowledge is usually lost while most explicit knowledge is hard to move around. Adding RSS and aggregators then takes this flow into another plane, dispersing knowledge more rapidly than most other approaches.  12:05:05 AM    

Here is an interesting development.  Recently, I have had business meetings with people that have weblogs.  Usually, when you have a business meeting, there is a period of formality.  There are introductions.   You exchange business cards and personal histories.   Basically, you spend the first 15 minutes trying to synch up.

The difference with people that have weblogs is:

1) We don't have to exchange business cards.  They know where I am located on the Internet.  I know where they are located on the Internet.   My personal weblog has spam-free e-mail, and a link to instant messaging.   There is a link to a bio page that provides some detail on who I am and what I have done. 

2) By reading the weblog of the person I am about to meet with, I already know a lot about that person.  Most importantly:  I know how they think through reading their writings.  There is probably no better way to supercharge a meeting than to read the weblog of the person you are about to meet with.   It provides a strong basis of understanding necessary for high order interaction.

3) I can write up the results of the meeting on my weblog and share it with a wider audience.  That provides feedback to the person you met with and shares the insight developed in the meeting with a wider audience.

I really didn't expect weblogs to change the way I met with people.  This was a surprise. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

I'm sure that if anyone read my weblog, they would feel they knew me. If I see Dave Winer or John Robb at a meeting, I will feel that I know them.<  12:02:04 AM