"DEATH BE DAMNED" Charles Bukowski's quote in this inspirational essay caught my attention. He meant that he wasn't trying to achieve a sense of immortality through his writings, which would survive him. I don't believe him. At what stage in his life did he write that quote? I have a different perspective, as I am being ravaged by cancer. This quote brings to mind Rachel Carson's struggle to write another book, while enduring pain from metastatic breast cancer. She had something to share with the world. Her writings were her legacy. I had not been favorably impressed with Bukowski before, as he was known for being a sexist alcoholic. Ironically, his epitaph is "Don't try." Hmm. He said that was his theory of life and his manner of writing: "I don't try, I just type." That his epitaph requires explanation is proof that he expected his writings to be known after his death. Scientists find that pesticides are endocrine disrupters, which may cause breast cancer. Carson, a marine biologist, undertook "Silent Spring" (1962) because pesticides were poisoning the ocean. Pesticide poisoning may also have taken her life. ("The Right Way to Remember Rachel Carson," Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 3-19-18.)
Thank you for sharing. I don't know the stage of his life which he wrote this, but Bukowski spent his entire adulthood writing, drinking, being rejected, being fired, and working menial jobs. Don't try is from a poem that you should read to understand the meaning. I hope you stay strong and keep on rocking.
Rachel Carson, was, and still is, one of the underrated and barely known great humans that passed or are passing by....
The fact that a web search is bringing debatable valuable quotes, out of context mostly for the erudite flair, is just reflective of the state of where our re-focused (with a very shallow depth of firld) values are.
I felt privileged in reading her ecological and personal musings.
And what is more humbling, her writings were not written fir the purpose of legacies, prizes or other extrinsic validation reasons.
She genuinely believed in meaningful and relevant sharing of potential useful knowledge, regardless of her circumstances.
Very true, Ariel... Schools ( yours, mine, regardless of their mission statement are not in the business of bringing real awareness and promote agency , at individual or population level.
So, with small exceptions, social and individual values are , at best, PR afterthoughts, or , more often than not, even labeled subversive. Contemporary Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 , as dystopian as it sounded many decades ago when I read it, became the reality .
A good lecture , that is not so activist, but even more profound in acknowledging the greatness of Rachel Carlson is her previous book . A more serene reflection, on mostly aquatic nature of life (we're all more water than anything else) the privilege of being a blip in time.
The message, quotes and evidence based example ( kudos for your personal one), and generally, the value of actions versus inaction is well known and worth being always aware of it.
The perplexing part for the rest is the fact that, some if not most of us did some very actionable things. More or less enthusiastically and more or less emboldened by an existential crisis or competitive desire (I am excluding the sociopathic tendencies of power, that have some extra characteristics for "success" or "fulfillment" drivers - some that are actual requirements in a more and more shareholder gains as immediate indicators of "actions speak more than words" oriented society .
There's a remarkable absent actionable broad formula that works consistently.
If things were done , by someone, that check the actions and even some over delivered ones, it is very volatile outcome, depending on , I would speculate, geolocation ( that will shape the social and economic dynamic opportunities) .
Sartre access to remarkable education (with all the bullying that comes with proportional with the institutional fame) coupled with his ability to maintain a high profile interesting relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, Bukowski's LA move (one can imagine his impact on american literature if he stayed in Gdansk to stick with his Polish ancestry).
The sponsor choice of a French sounding inspiration-aspirational name if the founder would be in, again, the geolocation and the prominent school signalling pedigree.
All those do not guarantee, obviously anything, but facilitate acceptance to the vast majority of people that don't really understand what the reality of having some graduate titles from an ivy league means, beyond the PR).
So , actions all for it.
Now, for the real life changing question, that would throw some light and allow the "action" to encounter minimal "reaction " ( from intrinsic personal or extrinsic pushback).
How to do a blueprint or at least a sketch, of a flexible actionable plan?
That is, in the reality of the statistical distribution of many different realities and variables, make an actionable plan, with , hypothetically and mostly accurately reflecting the real life, are pushing back ? ( think student loans, children education coats, the mental soothing pet companion, stressed partner, local climate ( too ..... fill in the complaints) , civic disintegration, general disinterest, and , most aggravating, the ascending callous lack of empathy everywhere. When everything is designed to be central to a person or group = "brand". Politicians, media, content or discontent creators, ( that's debatably more lucrative than educationally ones - thank you for that), corporate or otherwise.
Luck is the bonus part, and may eventually involve grit, so it's not quantifiable or to be included in an action plan. ( but that's no guarantee, grittier it gets, more epidermis gets lost and open wounds can become more difficult and severe to manage concomitantly)
Thanks for writing and sharing. To me, a plan is a list of things that never happen. It is better to experiment, to boldy go forward, to try, to fail, and try again, than to remain still and idle. It is the only way forward to achieve anything. Luck, grit, pushback, everything plays a role. But don't focus on all of that. Focus on what you can do. Focus on your own actions.
The "plan" part is something that I don't do personally ( for me !) anymore.
Not a really popular approach in an academic "prestigious" experimental surgical lab ( so yes, experiments, within my own personal realm and professional are the things I do. The expectations and bureaucratic hurdles are very different from what is presented in the "success " stories of serendipitously breakthrough by doing what's one's strengths.
Failure is the name of the game in the experimental world, but the criteria ( from impact factor publishing, h-index ( academic equivalent of subscribers) and funding agencies are not really allowing unbiased one.
So at a personal level I have just intentions. Loose ones even.
But it's not easy to align with the expectations of prior mentioned groups and , despite being able to get into flow states ( in the sense Csikszentmihalyi defined it so astutely), curtesy of neurodivergence ( the new "mot du jour" - before I was just disobedient ( question of perspective) , the focus on what I can do ( and I am empirically noticing it also around my peers and other outside the experimental fields) becomes a liability.
Changing the rating and granting agency (subscribers vs publishing and failing experiments- that actually prove what's not working and it's invaluable in the context of narrowing down to what works) is the answer.
Re- skill ? Re-tool ? ( I did reset several times - variations on the main themes mentioned, different setups - corporate, institutional, theoretic, clinical, educational, research ).
PS: I want to clarify that I am not, at all, trying to make a polemic. Juat to state circumstances that are glaringly omitted in most inspirational presented situations. Some extreme, some not.
I genuinely try to understand the value, at personal level, of "cutting the loses" on something that's actually fundamental to sift through information ( medical in my case noise), and get into popularization of my thoughts, view on things (driven or not by subscriptions and commercial publications- nobody reads Pubmed, except for cherry-picking or to promote one's status and/ or required h-index for academic advancement.
No so much re-skilling or re-tooling but a refocus on the overall goal and how to achieve it. I will be going into this in future issues. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and reading this, thank you so much.
"DEATH BE DAMNED" Charles Bukowski's quote in this inspirational essay caught my attention. He meant that he wasn't trying to achieve a sense of immortality through his writings, which would survive him. I don't believe him. At what stage in his life did he write that quote? I have a different perspective, as I am being ravaged by cancer. This quote brings to mind Rachel Carson's struggle to write another book, while enduring pain from metastatic breast cancer. She had something to share with the world. Her writings were her legacy. I had not been favorably impressed with Bukowski before, as he was known for being a sexist alcoholic. Ironically, his epitaph is "Don't try." Hmm. He said that was his theory of life and his manner of writing: "I don't try, I just type." That his epitaph requires explanation is proof that he expected his writings to be known after his death. Scientists find that pesticides are endocrine disrupters, which may cause breast cancer. Carson, a marine biologist, undertook "Silent Spring" (1962) because pesticides were poisoning the ocean. Pesticide poisoning may also have taken her life. ("The Right Way to Remember Rachel Carson," Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 3-19-18.)
Thank you for sharing. I don't know the stage of his life which he wrote this, but Bukowski spent his entire adulthood writing, drinking, being rejected, being fired, and working menial jobs. Don't try is from a poem that you should read to understand the meaning. I hope you stay strong and keep on rocking.
Congratulations on being recognized as a textbook case of entrepreneurial success!
Thank you so much.
Rachel Carson, was, and still is, one of the underrated and barely known great humans that passed or are passing by....
The fact that a web search is bringing debatable valuable quotes, out of context mostly for the erudite flair, is just reflective of the state of where our re-focused (with a very shallow depth of firld) values are.
I felt privileged in reading her ecological and personal musings.
And what is more humbling, her writings were not written fir the purpose of legacies, prizes or other extrinsic validation reasons.
She genuinely believed in meaningful and relevant sharing of potential useful knowledge, regardless of her circumstances.
She might not even popular these days. Oh well...
My schools taught nothing about Rachel Carson. I came upon Since Silent Spring in the library, so then I read Silent Spring.
Very true, Ariel... Schools ( yours, mine, regardless of their mission statement are not in the business of bringing real awareness and promote agency , at individual or population level.
So, with small exceptions, social and individual values are , at best, PR afterthoughts, or , more often than not, even labeled subversive. Contemporary Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 , as dystopian as it sounded many decades ago when I read it, became the reality .
A good lecture , that is not so activist, but even more profound in acknowledging the greatness of Rachel Carlson is her previous book . A more serene reflection, on mostly aquatic nature of life (we're all more water than anything else) the privilege of being a blip in time.
https://www.rachelcarson.org/
“Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions-to define, classify, control, and regulate people.”-Michel Foucault
The message, quotes and evidence based example ( kudos for your personal one), and generally, the value of actions versus inaction is well known and worth being always aware of it.
The perplexing part for the rest is the fact that, some if not most of us did some very actionable things. More or less enthusiastically and more or less emboldened by an existential crisis or competitive desire (I am excluding the sociopathic tendencies of power, that have some extra characteristics for "success" or "fulfillment" drivers - some that are actual requirements in a more and more shareholder gains as immediate indicators of "actions speak more than words" oriented society .
There's a remarkable absent actionable broad formula that works consistently.
If things were done , by someone, that check the actions and even some over delivered ones, it is very volatile outcome, depending on , I would speculate, geolocation ( that will shape the social and economic dynamic opportunities) .
Sartre access to remarkable education (with all the bullying that comes with proportional with the institutional fame) coupled with his ability to maintain a high profile interesting relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, Bukowski's LA move (one can imagine his impact on american literature if he stayed in Gdansk to stick with his Polish ancestry).
The sponsor choice of a French sounding inspiration-aspirational name if the founder would be in, again, the geolocation and the prominent school signalling pedigree.
All those do not guarantee, obviously anything, but facilitate acceptance to the vast majority of people that don't really understand what the reality of having some graduate titles from an ivy league means, beyond the PR).
So , actions all for it.
Now, for the real life changing question, that would throw some light and allow the "action" to encounter minimal "reaction " ( from intrinsic personal or extrinsic pushback).
How to do a blueprint or at least a sketch, of a flexible actionable plan?
That is, in the reality of the statistical distribution of many different realities and variables, make an actionable plan, with , hypothetically and mostly accurately reflecting the real life, are pushing back ? ( think student loans, children education coats, the mental soothing pet companion, stressed partner, local climate ( too ..... fill in the complaints) , civic disintegration, general disinterest, and , most aggravating, the ascending callous lack of empathy everywhere. When everything is designed to be central to a person or group = "brand". Politicians, media, content or discontent creators, ( that's debatably more lucrative than educationally ones - thank you for that), corporate or otherwise.
Luck is the bonus part, and may eventually involve grit, so it's not quantifiable or to be included in an action plan. ( but that's no guarantee, grittier it gets, more epidermis gets lost and open wounds can become more difficult and severe to manage concomitantly)
Thanks for writing and sharing. To me, a plan is a list of things that never happen. It is better to experiment, to boldy go forward, to try, to fail, and try again, than to remain still and idle. It is the only way forward to achieve anything. Luck, grit, pushback, everything plays a role. But don't focus on all of that. Focus on what you can do. Focus on your own actions.
The "plan" part is something that I don't do personally ( for me !) anymore.
Not a really popular approach in an academic "prestigious" experimental surgical lab ( so yes, experiments, within my own personal realm and professional are the things I do. The expectations and bureaucratic hurdles are very different from what is presented in the "success " stories of serendipitously breakthrough by doing what's one's strengths.
Failure is the name of the game in the experimental world, but the criteria ( from impact factor publishing, h-index ( academic equivalent of subscribers) and funding agencies are not really allowing unbiased one.
So at a personal level I have just intentions. Loose ones even.
But it's not easy to align with the expectations of prior mentioned groups and , despite being able to get into flow states ( in the sense Csikszentmihalyi defined it so astutely), curtesy of neurodivergence ( the new "mot du jour" - before I was just disobedient ( question of perspective) , the focus on what I can do ( and I am empirically noticing it also around my peers and other outside the experimental fields) becomes a liability.
Changing the rating and granting agency (subscribers vs publishing and failing experiments- that actually prove what's not working and it's invaluable in the context of narrowing down to what works) is the answer.
Re- skill ? Re-tool ? ( I did reset several times - variations on the main themes mentioned, different setups - corporate, institutional, theoretic, clinical, educational, research ).
PS: I want to clarify that I am not, at all, trying to make a polemic. Juat to state circumstances that are glaringly omitted in most inspirational presented situations. Some extreme, some not.
I genuinely try to understand the value, at personal level, of "cutting the loses" on something that's actually fundamental to sift through information ( medical in my case noise), and get into popularization of my thoughts, view on things (driven or not by subscriptions and commercial publications- nobody reads Pubmed, except for cherry-picking or to promote one's status and/ or required h-index for academic advancement.
Thank you for writing and commenting above .
No so much re-skilling or re-tooling but a refocus on the overall goal and how to achieve it. I will be going into this in future issues. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and reading this, thank you so much.