Mind

This is another meta-level blog ... pondering the causes for disappointment - which are invariably expectations. In a way it relates to an earlier blog titled "OSGeo - The Jack of all Trades" where I touch on a selection of expectations people have developed around OSGeo and their inherent potential for disappointment.

To help me explain what I mean I want to fall back to translate "Expectation" and "Disappointment" to the respective German language words "Erwartung" and "Enttäuschung" (which originally had a positive connotation. The German word "Erwartung" originally derived from "warten" which simply means "to wait". German makes a hell of a lot of use of prefixes, in this case the prefix "er-" http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/er- changes the meaning of the verb "warten" into an active state. "Erwarten" means to "await" something. Now - this is quite a nonsensical term if you really think about it. Imagine you are at a bus stop and wait for a bus. Eventually it will come, or not. But it will surely not be more on time or come more reliably if you actively "await" it. Makes sense? So to "await" something (which is basically the same as having an expectation) is pretty stupid.

Next, in German the suffix "-ung" turns the verb into a noun (this is probably called nominization in English). The noun "Erwartung" (expectation) means to actively await something (external) to happen. What will be the result? Firstly we can obviously never know, but there are chances that the expectation will be frustrated and we are disappointed. In German this is again much more visual: The root of the word "Enttäuschung" (for frustration) is "Täuschung" which means "deception" or "illusion". Adding the German prefix "Ent" as in " Enttäuschung"changes the meaning of the word into "releasing out of illusion". Just like "tarnen" means "to camouflage" and "ent-tarnen" means "to uncover" something. (Nowadays in German the notion is that expectations are absolutely in order and if you are frustrated the reason and culprit is to be found externally – but the original meaning tells this other story). Maybe the (French origin) English terms "illusion" and "delusion" come close to something similar (but English is a bit mushy and soft which makes it great as an adaptive language but takes away a lot of precision).

OK, so what can we learn from this? Very simple: Frustration and Disappointment are good things because when they happen to us it means that we are released from an illusion and are free to stop to expect things that will never work out anyway. It involves some pain but it is good (the other option is to chose the blue pill http://arnulf.us/sevendipity/archives/45-Cause-and-Effect.html) and bide in ignorance.

It is a different thing to be actively deceived and experiencing deception. Then frustration is a natural thing and might result in anger which can (hopefully) be turned into positive energy to change things. But frustration and disappointment resulting from expectations always originate in ourselves and can thus be avoided.

If you want to change things for better, then you must change them yourself. Become part of what you want to change and ask others whether they want to help you do them together. Maybe you can also inspire them to do what you think is good. All else like manipulating people into doing things or forcing them soon becomes ethically questionable – and these options are also much less sustainable and fun. The way forward is to do those things that you deem important and support others who are on the same track.

This is one of the reasons why OSGeo has developed a do-ocracy – and sometimes frustrates (and disappoints) those who had other expectations – but are not active part of the game.

Have fun,
Arnulf

Folks,
I feel the need to clarify something about the OccupyWhatEver movement of the 99%. I agree that things need to change. I agree that occupying public places is a good thing to wake up people and get these things started.

But I object to what most seem to make of this. It does not start with "those up there". Them 1% are not the cause for the mire we are in. They are only the effect. Just like killing the messenger does not help to undo whatever message she had to deliver it does not help to scorn the 1%. The only thing we can do is scorn ourselves - and then change.

The cause is our greed, materialism, lack of spiritual focus and attachement. It will become worse as long as we continue to choose the cheapest deal, accumulate the most for us and deny to care for others. Yes, it is that simple. No strings attached.

What will happen next? The 99% will not change and we will all end unhappy. What can we do about this? Again, this is very simple. Just become part of the 1% of people who understand that greed and materialism and attachement and ignorance will not get us anywhere nice. Go choose the red pill. Choose the red pill. It is a simple truth.

This does not mean that it is simple to implement though, don't get me wrong. It is hard to be different. The only hope we have is to lead by example and inspire the 98% who do not understand.

Chances that we succeed are very low indeed. But whatever happens there will be 1% of happy people and go figure who that will be.



Have fun,
Arnulf

PS: Most typos intended. English is such fun sometimes.

If you ever receive an email saying something like "somebody should do this and that", think to yourself: Is my name Somebody? Probably not. If you have an intuition and come to believe that the culprit of this mistaken phrasing explicitly mistakes you for Somebody then make sure that you make absolutely clear to the confused mind that either: you have a name / or that you are not going to do whatever is being asked for. If you actually want to do what is being asked for then make clear that YOU are going to do this, but surely not Somebody (or else every next Somebody call will end up naturally on your plate).

To help solve this type of issue generically we have developed simple rules for email addressing. If an email is explicitly and directly addressed to you (To: ) then you have to react, no matter what it says. If you appear in the carbon copy (CC: ) only, then you may just ignore things. But things obviously become more complicated... An example: If there are more folks in the To: address line and "Somebody" is supposed to be doing something in the body text, then you are allowed to ridicule the sender by immediately sending back "Nobody is the big brother of Somebody" or similar.

Have fun,
Arnulf.

Just a note: I will be offline until 2 December. No telephone, no email, no web. I have done this before and it was such a good experience that I will do it again now and then, just to train quiet mindfulness. It does feel a bit strange to not follow every tweet and ignore the inbox for a week or two but besides a somewhat flooded inbox and missing some interesting threads coming through Twitter nothing really breaks.

Ah yes, and there is the FOSSGIS conference that needs to be prepared, and I need a visa to attend Map World Forum 2011 in Hyderabad and the OSGeo India Local Chapter meeting, there are workshop coming up and other OSGeo things to attend to - but all of this will happen with or without me, so no worries.

Have fun,
Arnulf

So it is Friday again. That means the week is done. Almost done, just one more day and then the next weeks begins with a Sunday. That gives us a head start and makes Monday less painful. Yes, we violate the ISO 8601 recommendation of starting the week with Monday, but what the heck. To hell with standards.

Lets see. What other lunatic suggestions can we commit to this blog in another futile attempt to lighten up a wrecked herd of workaholics? Lets have another word game for a change: "Friday" is almost the same in German where we say "Freitag". As you will know German allows to link words into chains as in Straßenbahnlinie which is a short three-linker with Straße (street) bahn (rail) and linie (line). Put together this gives us a tramline (see, you can do the same in English). Just a few more characters... "Freitag" is a short two-linker: "Frei" means "free" and "Tag" means "day". So in German we are celebrating the "Free-Day" once a week. No wonder that we are so up-to-speed with Free and Open Source Software... Maybe we can suggest to introduce an "Openday" to replace "Thursday"?

What would we need to do? Well, first we need someone to come up with a request for change (I'd volunteer for that). Then it would be helpful to connect to someone who has a level A liaison with ISO. Anyone around, OGC maybe? Next a work group needs to work out why this would be a good idea. No, wait. That is exactly not how it works! The work group would only describe how to introduce the new term but not explain why. This might be one of the core problems with quite a lot of standards and more so the bodies in them. The INSPIRE guidelines for example never ever say what metadata is. They only say with painstaking exactness what you have to put into them and how to make them available. That is pretty dumb if you ask me. But I digress.

So why is everybody working in Germany if it is the "Freeday"? Because we all feel free at work? That would be good for us! But somehow I doubt it. If I look at people commuting in the morning most all of them look pretty unhappy. Or more like unconcious or even a bit anabiotic. A train full of Zombies. In plain daylight. Pretty scary when you come to think of it this way. We plod on because we have been told to do so for our whole life. Some pityful creature at some place in history must have forgotten the original meaning of "Freitag".


Which is more along the lines of lust and love. Ha. Don't believe? Well, here we go: The name Friday comes from the Old English frīgedæg, meaning the "day of Frige", translating Latin ''dies'' Veneris. Lots of sparely robed chicks for the last day in the work week, what do you think? So while we are at it we can slink over and check out this world's Love goddesses and no - it's not the ones you might think of now. It is "deities" (this gives us several genders by default) and for our women there are also a few guys around. For you women we have Rāgarāja who transforms worldly lust into spiritual awakening. Not bad. And here we also come back to Freyja (Old Norse the "Lady"), who in Norse mythology is a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, gold, seiðr, war, and death.Dammit. Seems like we can only get the full package, want love and beauty we get fertility. So far so good but what is all this seiðr, war, and death about? It seems like at one point we have to choose whether we want love or wrath. At least when women are involved...

Whatever, back to Friday. It is very much Freyja's day and etymologically the roots of this name can be traced back to the German word "Frau" which means woman. So this is also the women's day. And not the English wo-man which is a sort of neutralized man or "just a human" but a real female (wtf: this is yet another modified male, a ''fe''male). Either English is highly genderless or really chauvinist. Whatever, I like the tree best, it reminds me of the Borg, which sound a bit like the German Borke which is the skin of the tree, in English bark. But now we are just barking up the tree.

Admittedly, this will not get us anywhere, so lets's wrap up. Where does this get us? It very much depends on you. I will enter that request for change at ISO and then just have a great Friday and weekend. And I wish you lots of lust, love, war or barking, just as best you like and no matter whether you ar fe or male.

Have fun.