Category: This is all a test

…is a phrase indicating that it’s easier to get a job teaching how to do something than to get a job actually doing that thing.

Apparently, the origin of the phrase comes from playwright George Bernard Shaw and more recently commented on by Woody Allen with his riff, “those who can’t do, teach and those who can’t teach, teach gym.”

The original statement from Shaw’s 1903 drama series actually stated that “those who can, do; those who can’t teach.”

It seems both Shaw and Allen may have had little idea of what teaching is because teaching is ‘doing teaching.

Though it seems obvious that if one can’t really do something one can’t really teach it, Seneca the Younger’s quote that “while we teach, we learn,” puts us in a bit of a quandary.

Is it possible then that it’s not binary ‘either/or‘ but ‘and‘ meaning we need both together? Teaching and doing are part of the same thing. And being more generous with our work by understanding that just in the doing we’re teaching and in teaching, we’re doing helps things along.

Written while listening to Bach’s English Suites.

…and cultural gravity seems to have a lot in common.

Maybe they’re the same thing with a different name or a slight variation on a theme. Whatever the case, the overall idea has relevance to much of what we do.

Both come down to the idea that a single solution, identity, or design/product will lose it’s relevance and impact in the not to distant future and level off or decay as time goes on.

A more static/singular solution, identity, or design/product may have been viable in the mid to late 20th Century where things moved more slowly but the speed of modern times seems to demand a constant upgrading, redesign or, framed in early gaming parlance, levelling up.

So, as we climb the upward slope of the curve, keeping in mind that at some point what we are doing or who we are professionally will level off or decay, we can begin a redesign somewhere up the curve and not when the levelling off or decay happens.

The challenge is that as we do not always know when the levelling off/decay will take place, we are put in a constant state of learning and redesign which demands a great amount of work and courage.

What got us “here” will most likely not get us “there,” where we need or want to go.

Written while listening to a World Music Compilation

…a school of thought from ancient Greece practiced by a group of philosophers who called themselves the Cynics. As outlined in Wikipedia, “For the Cynics, the purpose of life is to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. As reasoning creatures, people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which is natural to themselves…”

What!

Not sure how we got from there to Wikipedia’s present-day meaning of, “…a disposition of disbelief in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions.”

However we got here though it seems that today’s cynicism is a somewhat lazy way to live. A mixture of criticism and apathy. It’s easy to rag on things and doubt sincerities, which may help simplify one’s perspective but doesn’t allow for or demand engaging with challenges or people in meaningful or impactful ways.

I’m not sure where I got the following, “It is not the survival of the fittest but the survival of the friendliest and those who can best work together,” but it shows, in a world where not everything is as wonderful as we would like, a possibly less lazy and more productive way to look at things and approach issues we may face at work or in our personal lives.

I guess, like many things, it comes down to a choice.

But we have to take a moment in order to choose.

Written while listening to The Hu