<div dir="ltr">Comments: <br><br>1. I have seen but don't read that blog---marketing is not my thing (advertizing, management, etc.) <br> But that post and your reply both make sense to me. <br> <br> Seth does give 'wiggle room' to switch back and forth between 'disrupting', innovating, exploring, practicing, experimenting, and taking care of business---maintaining. <br> He does say its hard so most people choose one role. <br> For example, a mother and father may maintain a house, raise children, have jobs as maintainers--drive a bus, do construction, be a beurocrat at the IRS or census, be a librarian---while their children many turn out to be 'disruptors' --Einstein, Ramanujan, Zuckerberg, Gates, Mick Jagger, Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X...even famous criminals (who later serve as inspirations for creative novelists and filmmakers--who are disruptors of things like ;'traditional cultural values'--but who employ alot of maintainers as well in places like Hollywood.) <br><br> (Harriet Tubman was both a maintainer and a disruptor---she served in US military in civil war---'maintained the USA as a country '--- and also 'disrupted' the institution of slavery (eg worked with John Brown). <br><br>You sort of need both---the internet wouldn't exist without einstein and Ramanujan--who had hard times finding jobs, often were judged as 'cranks', lazy, and incompetent (especially Ramanujan) by professional math and science people . <br> And it wouldn't exist wtihout the people such as their parents, and those who did the internet work or manufacturing, maintaining, and non-disruptive technical work like programming.<br> (Alot of programming as math or computer language looks on the surface similar to what einstein and Ramanujan did ---but its different---programmers' are following the rules made up by the disruptors, and those new rules essentially built on previous rules--but broke them. <br><br> Both Ramanujan and Einstein's work 'danced with infinity' and made up new rules for infinity. Einstein borke Newtons rule and said light could not travel at infinite speed. <br> Ramanujan dealt alot with infinite series, including some involving proving things like <br><br> 1+2+3+4+....+infinfity = -1/12. <br> (Who would have guessed that if you keep adding all the numbers you get a negative number--billionaires might want to keep that in mind.) <br><br>It can also be noted that disruptors usuallly are to some extent maintainers--einstein did have a 'regular job' for awhile, and people like Ramanujan who 'don't seem to do anything' except sit on their mom's porch and scribble, do 'maintain the peace' a bit . <br> My area has quite a few poor and semi-homeless people who seem not to do anything, but in general they don't require alot of maintainers working as police, courts, and prisons . <br> (I read it costs $75,000/yr to keep someone in jail in California, which is more than tuition at Harvard. That doesn't include other costs like transporting them to prison, or any side effects if they caused a social problem --some crimes do not cause many --eg someone drinking a 2$ beer on the street or selling single cigarettes, as opposed to going to a bar and getting a beer for 6$ , or going through the beurocracy of getting a sales liscense for cigarettes. . <br> Of course liscense offices and bars employ lots of maintainers, and some people object to people drinking outside--seen as 'disruptive ' of social order. <br> In my area, some people even view people who don't attend church as disruptors; same is true for people who don't vote). <br><br>I know unemployed people who basically maintain their family property --which can be alot of work (eg on an old house). But they are often seen as shiftless, on the dole, non -contributors to society. <br><br>There are many paid in this area doing the same sort of work---fixing up or maiantaining old properties. Most of those jobs are essentially reserved for immigrants, who are willing to work for a lower wage, and also will work very hard and have skills. Some of the native born people refuse to take these 'maintenance jobs'--some would rather sell illegal drugs or live off handouts. <br><br>One can add some 'maintenance work' is essentially serving as a 'gatekeeper' ---people decide who gets in, and who doesn't. There are entire academic and other buerocracies devoted to this (college admissions offices, standardized test makers , etc. ) not to mention secuirty guards etc. (I've heard the amount of GDP spent on 'security' (which now includes cybersecurity) is is the 100s of billions$. Probably 15% of houses in my area have sings on the lawn saying something like 'protected by surveillance camera'. (The local governemnt will actually pay for these --give them out for free---in certain areas.) <br><br>2. To me the big question is what should be the proportion of maintainers versus innovators/disruptors, and also to what extent or whether everybody should do a bit of both. (As noted, many maintainers also do some disrupting-- they may be family people, a few are even employed in 'secular' churches like unitarians, but on the side they may go somewhere and get arrested in a 'disruptive protest'. (eg people worried about climate change who block roads, etc.) <br><br>I'm into music, and some fields of math and science. I'm not very competent at either , and also my approaches to music and math/sciences are what would be called 'disruptive'.<br> I break or bend every rule in music, and the same is true for my math/science. <br><br>Because i realize both my limitations, and also that my own 'disruptive' or 'innovative' stuff is somewhat far from the mainstream, i have done many temporary maintenance jobs (construction, repair, security, cleaning, elder care, child care, tutoring ...). I've also lived off of social services and handouts. <br><br>The 'gatekeepers or 'maintainers' who maintain places which allow music to be bought and sold, and science/math papers to be published and hence with a chance to be read and even awarded with some sort of monetary reward (eg a research grant , teaching job, or student scholarship) , basically in my experience have kept me 'outside the gate'. <br><br> (My area has alot of 'far right', ''fundamentalist protestant and catholic religious' , 'chinese, russian, and US government (NPR) subsidized' radio stations. <br><br> Lots of 'maintainers' keep those radio stations on the air.<br> I can turn on the radio and hear stories about terrible things like how mainland china is invading hong kong , and the next station tells terrible stories about how the 'freedom fighters' of hong kong are standing up to a chinese invasion, or the upcoming gun shows featuring people from the NRA held in spotless convention centers and selling 1000s of different kinds of guns, shows about hate crimes against gays and trans people, others about discrimination against gays and trans people, one about how the 'gay agenda' and pro-abortion people are destroying western civilization, ones about racism and 'reverse-racism' by supporters of everyone from L Farrakhan to the 'proud boys/alt right'. <br><br>Maintainers help keep all these talk radio stations up and running--which are platforms for talk show hosts, who also have often lavish and expensive conferences and trips to large resorts, or convention centers. or universities. (i've been to a few academic ones on science topics. Lots of maintenance--spotless floors, excellent sound and video systems , sometimes very good free food (with lots of fruit and vegetables --since i'm not into meat). <br><br> I view the content of many of these radio stations as not worth maintaining except in the dustbin of history---keep it in the Llibrary of Congress, or digitize it. <br><br> Alot people in my area are employed in 'street and park cleaning'---pick up trash---this is also a kind of employment for people with 'petty criminal offences'. They get a community service sentence rather than jail term. Half of this work would be unnecesary if people just used the many trash cans in this area, rather than throw trash on the ground. Some of them basically dont care possibly because they feel noone cares about them--possibly for good reasons and possibly not.) <br><br>Many of these maintainers/gatekeepers in music and math/science in my view actually to an extent 'don't do anything'----they just look at things like dress code, whether a paper is properly formatted,and uses a standardized form for things like references and equations, whether your musical instrument is 'tuned correctly' and is a high end (expensive ) brand. They 'judge the book by its cover'. They don't read books past the cover, or if they don't understand a book (or music) then they decide its not a book or music. <br> <br> (The same is true for some police --- they decide who to charge as a criminal, and who to let go---even if the people involved are doing the same thing. Some say they 'judge a book by its color') <br><br> <br><br><br><br><br><br><br>2. <br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <br> <br><br><br> <br> <br><br> <br><br><br>1. I'm neither a maintainerm or a disr</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 8:01 PM Mike Roy <<a href="mailto:roymichaeldonald@gmail.com">roymichaeldonald@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Hi Fellow Maintainers,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">I'm not sure if many of you follow the blogging of Seth Godin. He is a marketing/internet kind of guy who writes about the new economy and how to get ahead in it. When I read his writings, I often think of what Kant had to say about Hume: "He awakened me from my dogmatic slumbers." I disagree with nearly everything Godin has to say, but I find it helpful to confront these ideas on a regular basis, and to grapple with exactly why it is that I find his suggestions so toxic. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">With that as preamble, below is his latest posting, where he encourages us to be disruptors, not maintainers. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">My response to this: </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Dear Seth, I got your blog post. It arrived in my inbox just like it does every day. How did it make it there? Via the work of maintainers. The folks who keep the operating system on your computer working. The folks at your ISP who keep the internet running. The folks running the servers where you store your blog posts.Ditto for the system you use to send out these email blasts. And of course the same is true as your thoughts made their way to me via my ISP and onto my phone. All of this incredible infrastructure only works because people show up day in and day out and keep it working. The folks doing this work probably aren't "dancing with infinity" on a daily basis, but I assure you that the binary you've set up between maintainers and disruptors is WAY more complicated than your post suggests. Check out <a href="http://themaintainers.org/" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif" target="_blank">http://themaintainers.org/</a> to learn more.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Mike</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">---------- Forwarded message ---------<br>From: <strong class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">Seth Godin</strong> <span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:notify@sethgodin.com" target="_blank">notify@sethgodin.com</a>></span><br>Date: Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 4:47 AM<br>Subject: Seth's Blog : Maintainers<br>To: roymichaeldonald <<a href="mailto:roymichaeldonald@gmail.com" target="_blank">roymichaeldonald@gmail.com</a>><br></div><br><br><u></u>
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<p></p><div style="display:none;font-size:1px;color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:1px;max-height:0px;max-width:0px;opacity:0;overflow:hidden">School trains people to work as maintainers. “The sculptures are all here in the gallery, make sure they are still here at the end of the shift… The floor is clean when you start, make sure it's clean when you finish… The policy manual has seven ... </div>
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<h3><a href="https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/609077766/0/sethsblog/posts~Maintainers/" target="_blank">Maintainers </a></h3>
<p>School trains people to work as maintainers. “The sculptures are all here in the gallery, make sure they are still here at the end of the shift… The floor is clean when you start, make sure it’s clean when you finish… The policy manual has seven rules in it, please don’t break them… The next ten patients are going to need allergy tests…” There are customers to be served, standards to be maintained, work to be done. Important work, no doubt, but not thrilling.</p>
<p>A few people somehow avoid these lessons and become instigators, impresarios and disruptors instead. They’re not only dancing with infinity but completely unsure what’s going to work, and yet they are hooked on leaping forward.</p>
<p>I think it’s possible to switch from one posture to the other. I know that it’s incredibly difficult, though.</p>
<p>Choose wisely.</p>
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