Hopeful not optimistic

When I look at the state of the world I’m not optimistic. I think that things can go badly wrong in many areas. But I am hopeful.

For each looming disaster I see many possible solutions—almost all of them based on new technologies. Of course it’s possible that none of them will work or will come too late. But it’s also possible that one or more will work and something good will come of it all.

Many of the predicted disasters of the past have been solved when technology changed the ground rules, the options, or the possibilities.

The problem that bothers me most is not global warming or war or the rise of corporations or the deterioration of society or whatever you may worry about. It's the fact that all systems deteriorate over time.

But so far the productivity increases that technology keeps giving us seem to grow faster than all kinds of deteriorating forces seem to increase.

It's not clear that this can contine--but it is possible. So I'm hopeful. But not optimistic.

Living in the Library of Heaven

When I was a kid if I’d imagined Heaven it would have been this: a place with the world’s biggest library and I have a library card.

Now I’m in Heaven and it’s better than I imagined: the library has got books; it’s got music; its got videos; it’s always open; it keeps getting better; the research librarian is incredibly capable and I can eat while I read. It’s the Internet, of course.

One night I got up at three in the morning with a song in my head. I knew the name of the song—“Over the Rainbow” but didn’t know who sang—the version in my head. I just knew I loved it. Within a half hour (only because I was so lame in those days) I’d found the song, knew who sang it, downloaded it from iTunes, put it on my iPod and was able to listen to it endlessly for the next month. Let’s hear it for the Library.

When I thought of writing this Blog (sadly, many months before I wrote the first post) the name “What passes for wisdom” came to me. I thought it was cool. So many months later when I actually decided to write my first post (sadly, still many months before I actually wrote that first post) I Googled for the phrase to see if I could find something interesting to say about it. The second hit led me to a site that sold stickers that said: “What passes for wisdom may only be eloquent foolishness.” I thought that was pretty cool, but I didn’t want to have a sticker company as my reference.

So I Googled for the two phrases: “what passes for wisdom” and “eloquent foolishness” and got a Google Books citation for a book called “Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World” by David W. Orr published in 1992. The quote in the book said “be only” rather than “only be” but there it was.

Now this book might have sold only 20 copies, one of which would have been in the Library of Congress, one in the Library of Heaven, and the rest in the libraries of David Orr’s family, for all I know. But there was one in the 24x7 Internet Library, the one that’s right here on my computer or a few IP hops away.

I’m in Heaven.

For those interested in the details: here’s a link to the phrase in Orr’s book and here’s one of dozens of versions of Iz’s song on YouTube. Here’s another.

By the way: when I tried to reproduce the story of finding Orr’s book for this post, I couldn’t find it, because (unknown to me) on my second search I put in the whole phrase from the sticker, which did not match the book because of the reversal of words. So I went to my Google Search history, searched the search history, and found the original search string and original citation and was able to do the research needed to finish the story behind this post without pain.

Let’s hear it for Google Search. Let’s hear it for Google Search History. Let’s hear it for Google Search History Search. Let’s hear it for living in the Library of Heaven.

What I learned about being a writer

It took me long time to learn this.

It’s simple.

Sadly, I keep forgetting it.

1. There's no such thing as becoming a writer. There’s only being a writer and not being a writer. In a given moment you either are a writer or you are not.
2. Being a writer is easy. All you have to do is sit down to write. Not sit down and write. Just sit down to write. You don't have to write anything. That's called “doing writing.” And that’s different from being a writer.

Now if you do this one thing (sit down to write) often enough you will write.

And if you write enough you might even get good.

And if you get good or you get lucky, and if you want to, you might even get published. Or you can self-publish in a Blog.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that if you want to write, you’ve got to first be a writer. And if you want to be a writer you just have to sit. Just sit.

Sometimes sitting down is the hardest thing you (I) can do. Stupid, but sometimes it is.

And sometimes, like today, you (I) sit down and you (I) get an idea, and the words just flow off the ends of your (my) fingers and appear on the screen and you are (I am) writing.

If you’re being a writer, there’s nothing better than seeing those words appear.