[ox-en] Selbstentfaltung and garbage collection
- From: "B. Fallenstein" <b.fallenstein gmx.de>
- Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 11:48:54 +0100
Hi Kermit, all,
Kermit Snelson wrote:
Nor am I convinced by the "Selbstentfaltung" theory of political economy.
If I've understood correctly, the argument restates a platitude [Klischee]
that we sometimes encounter in English as "If you do what you love, you'll
have what you need." If that principle is to work as the basis of an entire
society, a lot of people will need to love jobs like garbage collection and
coal-mining [Abfallbeseitigung und Kohlenbergbau]. That's unlikely. As
they say in the movie business, what everyone really wants to do is direct
[Regisseur sein].
This is an important and interesting issue (I've opened a new thread for
it). I agree, there won't be thousands and thousands of people who love
coal-mining more than anything else. But I do not think that we will
drown in garbage, either. Why?
On the German list, StefanMz lately wrote about a national gathering of
young environmental activists (the "Jugendumweltkongress") he attended
two years ago. He reports that for many problems/ideas that turned up in
the course of the event, immediately a group of volunteers taking care
of them was formed. And one of these groups was the toilet cleaning group.
In Free Software, too, though there's hardly anything like garbage
collection (in the physical sense), there are certainly more and less
interesting tasks. Having found a bug is certainly pleasant, but I think
most programmers would agree that the satisfaction is not worth the
frustration when you've been searching for the umpteenth hour and it's
*still* there. Implementing a new feature is *much* more fun. Obviously,
though, bugs still get fixed.
Clearly, these tasks are necessary for everything to work-- same as with
garbage collection and coal-mining. Does this mean that in a GPL
society, there are two reasons for doing something: first,
selbstentfaltung, and second, neccessity?
Actually, no, I don't think that's the case. I actually believe that
necessity makes a thing attractive to do.
Why? Because we want what we do to be meaningful, more so if we haven't
the excuse (for ourselves) that we do it for money. Selbstentfaltung
does not mean having fun every second we do something. In fact, feeling
that what we do has meaning is, IMHO, a very important reason for
feeling that it is selbstentfaltung (for example, the doctor who enjoys
their work because they feel they're doing a good thing).
This does not mean I think there will be enough people in a GPL society
willing to do the job of a garbage collector as we know it. I believe
that in a GPL society city, a group would form to take care of garbage
collection, because they belive it's an important and challenging
problem (similarly to how all these small helper tools get made in Free
Software which are neither the most interesting thing nor likely to get
the authors celebrity status, but which are still an important and
challenging problem). The garbage collection group will think about how
the problem can be solved causing least inconvenience to all, and my
guess is that their solution will be different from today's. The group
will probably be too small to actually carry it out, so they will do
something like publish an ad in the local newspaper or so searching for
contributors. Some others will consider the issue important and will
join the effort. Still, if there aren't enough volunteers to organize a
city-wide garbage collection, I could very well imagine that it would be
e.g. a household's responsibility to drive their garbage to a central
collection point once or twice a week, just as they are responsible to
get the groceries they need from somewhere.
One important point is that the social reputation of garbage collection
would almost certainly have to change, because in a GPL society, people
would be happy and thankful that the job is getting done. This, again,
has parallels in Free Software (I would *not* want to program most free
software I use!). Maybe sometime we'll even hear the following dialogue:
A: "So what do you do professionally?"
B: "Garbage collection."
A: "Oh, really? Cool!"
;-)
Kermit, others: Does all that make sense?
- Benja
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