On a simply complex level: Money=Human Work

We receive money in proportion to how we make life easier for other human beings. There are too parts to the equation for Work.

Work: Work=Effort*Distance.

Effort*Distance is also a ratio.

That ratio is equal to the efficiency of a person’s work.

In your daily life do you not try to make it easier? Every person works and gets better, or more efficient, at the task that they choose to undertake. Basically, human beings are steadily trying to make life easier. This has gone on through out history. In general we call this process of making things easier progress.

If you look at the governmental structures during times of the most progress you find that they are free market and democracy, or at the very least moving towards either. Conversely, the times where there is the least progress are just after the collapse of such establishments (ex. the dark ages). Why?

During free market times some people/organizations become highly efficient at making money. After working hard these people had an extreme concentration of wealth; enough to change the governments to fit their needs.

Here is why democracy is essential and mostly free markets are essential. If people are not given the illusion of freedom then they lose efficiency in their work. Essentially, any nation, that cannot motivate it’s workers with the idea that they can make life easier, will become extremely in-efficient and fail. Human beings are motivated by the idea that life will be easier tomorrow if I work hard now. That idea is called hope.

This is the reason why communism has failed. In communism, there is no hope that tomorrow will be easier. There is only the reality that it will be the same. Every day, the same.

McCandless (Into the Wild, Krakauer) was right that what excites a person is a changing horizon; what he missed was that the horizon doesn’t literally need to change. Risks are taken everyday, without the use of a canoe and the Colorado River. In businesses and in ordinary, seeming, life. That is, as long as there is hope for betterment.

That doesn’t mean that everyone is motivated by hope of betterment. Some people, like McCandless, reject that life for one reason or another. You can live like he did, essentially in the same way human beings have for two million years; only keeping what they need; having an efficiency just over one.

McCandless died at age 23. That’s an important bit.

Anyway, at this time our nation is attempting reform, a little, by regulating our economy to stop corporations from influencing our government as much. That way the average citizen feels that they can do something. President Obama was elected overwhelmingly because of the hope that tomorrow will be better; safer, more fun, or more delicious etc.

Whether or not, regulation is successful and gives us our government back, I don’t know. Our government was never designed to represent the three hundred million people it does. We’ve never been democratic, and not truly a representative country. Our modified republic has been changing; incorporating parts of socialism, and fascism/corporatism along the way. Our government is changing every time it meets. Luckily, it has a strong foundation, with only a few modifications.

Friday was a long day.

We found an apartment, in Elgin, agreed to instal a radon system, slept only three hours total, I drove to Elgin and back (dangerous considering previous), took a nap, found out showering was not an option, neither was dry clothes, because gas was turned off, lost keys, found keys, dried work shirt on way to work, sweated in the sun, thank you convertible, put on shirt slightly damp shirt before work, punched in barely on time,  found out I needed to buy a new shirt that was dry all day, took off damp shirt, put on new one, worked hard, felt dizzy, had poor perception of reality like tunnel vision for thought, made a few mistakes, entered in an order nearly twelve minutes late, told the customers the honest truth, apologized, gave them a brief description of my current state, grabbed food, ran food, entered more orders, found out that the food I entered in late came out differently than ordered, also the table concluded it was my fault completely, checked order again, I entered it correctly, endured managers negativity, laughed as I rolled silverware, told people about my day, decided to document it, and went to sleep.

That was Friday.

I would find myself laying on the floor, often in the semi light from the kitchen’s overhead fan/light.  Outstretched, spanning the distance between the couch and the kitchen, I did not want to go into the kitchen, but what else is there to do?  My mind was trapped in a cycle of conflicting thoughts.  The only thing that kept me from depression was getting out into the bright whiteness of winter and walking/exploring.  

I had chosen to limit myself to between 450-550 calories per meal with three meals per day.  This, though not the healthiest approach, made me confront myself.  I figured out that I would eat when ever I became bored.  As soon as there appeared to be nothing to do I walked to the kitchen and looked in the cabinet.  When I restricted myself to eating only during meals, at first, I would find myself in the kitchen looking through the cabinets foraging suddenly I would remember my new stance.  Then I would walk back into the living room and find something else to do.  With a compulsion or habitual action, I found out, that a person must replace that habit with something else in-order for it to be deactivated.  It took me a while to realize that I must do one thing every time after I had the impulse to eat.  The times before I realized that I would not know what to do with myself.  The funny thing is, I don’t remember what habit it is that replaced my eating compulsion and got me off of the floor.

I read the first chapter of The Catcher in the Rye yesterday, and it reminded me of who I was.  At the time that story resonated with me like a Stradivarius violin.  It’s fair to say that during that time frame there was very little difference in the fictional mind of Holden Caulfield and my actaul mind.  I wrote a paper as though I was Holden at one point.  In the paper I fullfilled the minimun requirements of quotes and structure but I wrote it so that it defeated its self.  I discredited my the quotes I had pulled, and all around enjoyed my time working of that paper(though it was a week over due).  Afterwards, I recieved the paper back from my teacher>  She assured me that the grade of D was not reflectant upon the paper’s quality but the fact that it was a week late, then she asked why I wrote it that way.-  I said, “I thought it would be funny.”

At the end of the semester I was getting a C in the class.  I expected to recieve a C in the class because it was a middle C and not boardering C+ somehow I recieved a B for the class.  I don’t know how well I did on the final but I don’t think I did that well.  I think she bumped my grade up.  Here is the interesting thing, she was probably one of the most incompassionate, and tired teachers I ever had.  Yet, she did something for me that no other teacher had done before or since.  She gave me the grade she knew I deserved.

Hey it’s Friday, my day for new entries.  I’ve been developing a couple different story lines and structures, but I am unable to really hack away at the prose parts of the storys because I haven’t yet figured out the art of character design.  My characters end up being too flat, predictable, or many other things none of which I would want to publish.  So I may have a couple weeks worth of entries catagorized as “commentary” until I can build up a bank of material that is, at the very least, developed fully.  I also may publish some of my highschool and college assignments.  Most of those works would not fall under the fully developed catagory but many of them I enjoy reading because of their absurdity.

Which reminds me of my last year of highschool, I was taking Spanish 1, a froshmen course, and I wrote a paper about panama(I chose Panama because I have done several projects about Panama in the past).  The assignment was to write a page describing the culture or something.  I could not have cared less about this paper as I wrote it, writing with comedic abandon I made a made up a fifteen letter word, Panamanamanians.  When I got the paper back after grading I was astonished to see that I recieved a perfect grade 50/50.  When I enquired about how I possibly could have gotten a perfect score she told me that no one else had broken there one page into seperate paragraphs.  Ironically, I failed that class.  I failed with a 87% in the class because a minimun course requirement stated that you must have a homework grade of 80% or higher to pass.  My homework grade was 70%, which by every grading scale I ever seen is passing.

Here we go.  I’m inspired.  Let’s talk about why my school failed me.

First lets talk about our Education System.

Education: (root word)Educate: (synonym) Teach: To impart knowlegde.

System: A group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole.

With a name like Education System you’d think that the main purpose of it would be to educate people, and also to verify education.  Yet I would say that the system I went through would more aptly be called the Effort System.  That is because the schools focused very heavily on homework which when you use the scientific definition of “work” you would actually call homework effort.  Homework is one means to the educational end.  Work scientifically is define as effortXdistance=work.

I’m going to leave the above paragraph un-molested because it gave me an apiphany.  I’m going to change my arguement.

The schools overarching system is the Work System.  They emphasize a minimum work load.  You must complete X amount of homework or else you did not work to become educated.  The Education System is not interested in education alone it is interested in making everyone work.  Why do you need to measure work in order to give some one a diploma?  Is our Education System afread of giving diplomas away to people that are educated but not interested in working hard?

An interesting dynamic to all of this is that you can choose to cheat on your homework by copying someone elses.  There is basically no way to stop that from happening because of the nature of homework leaving the class room.  Which clearly makes homework an unreliable source of data if you wanted to confirm that some one is putting in effort.  I’m sure I’m not the first to think of this, which is scary.  That means that as a student you are pressented with a couple of decissions about how to pass.  The first is do you homework every night at home or in some other class(this would be a waste of time because the homework will be gone over completely in class therefore passing the test is no problem), second cheat and join a couple of friends and alternate who does the homework.   That way that person could do only a third the work neccessary.  That is the easiest way to get an A, cheat.  Also, if you cheat or even do the homework you could fail, often times, more than half the tests and still pass the class.  So, the people that end up getting the “Educated” stamp of approval are often unethical under-educated cheaters.

In my case, because I was honest I didn’t do all of my homework because it was superfluous and I easily passed tests with out it and I never cheated, I was failed.  I’m an ethical over-educated GED graduate with spit in my eye.

Note:  If you are an educator; educate and verify education.  That’s it.

It’s hard to publish something on every Tuesday and Friday.  Especially, when you aren’t writing on Thursday and, even, Wednesday.

I blew past my deadline for my very first regular post.  My poor planning and subsequent underutilization of time are to blame.

I’ve been working on many things lately.  Most of which concern “work”: the changing of availabilities, and learning the habits of a new job.  I’m working towards solving a financial catastrophe that I’ve gotten myself into, as well.  The overall theme of previous activities relate to each-other and consume my mind.  As an escape, I’ve taken time to read educational books, classic fiction, and I’ve binged, from time to time, on Call of Duty 4.  These escapes have helped me articulate where I’ve been failing myself.

Habits are exacerbating.  Making good ones out of bad ones takes time.  I’ve made a habit of making good habits, and now I learning that I also must limit myself to a certain number of habits.  I’m overextended intellectually.  So, I’ve made poor decisions because of the overwhelming nature of abstraction.  I’ve got to focus my mind onto a few, most important, tasks and hack away.

It’s quite a process; make sense out of non-sense.

Changing takes repitition and structure; and time.

I will publish new material every Tuesday and Friday.  Just thought you should know.