
For God’s Sake, Margaret (1976) - benbreen
http://www.oikos.org/forgod.htm
======
ncmncm
This is an astounding record of an astounding conversation.

So much died with them. We use control systems everywhere, but we should be
_seeing_ them everywhere, including the accidental ones, and fixing the ones
that don't produce good results. Instead, control systems are boxed and
understood only by specialists who only think of the box.

~~~
hinkley
I think we need to revisit "Software is eating the world."

There's a certain antipathy that's inherent to the current formula and it
shows up in your 'specialists who only think of the box' comment.

In a way it relates to work-life balance. We should be able to have developers
in their 30's who are specialists in several unrelated fields. Dive back into
something you did before you went into the CS program, or something you found
along the way.

Instead we blow right past our 10,000 hours toward 20,000 and a lot of us
never take a detour. There are diminishing returns here. Other skills are also
important (even more effective) once you know basically how to do your primary
duties without having to stop and think about it.

To really eat the world, we need to participate in the world. 'Disruptors'
usually think everyone else's problems are simple, due to pig ignorance. I'm
not sure when the backlash is coming but I'm sure it's out there.

I watched a 'household name' in one of my hobbies do a kickstarter to create a
public website with detailed information for that hobby. He got what sounded
like a bunch of money but ended up having to make most of it subscription
based. Guess what? Programmers are really fucking expensive. Especially if
they work on the wrong things.

If I can get my ducks in a row, my side hustle will basically be replacing his
bad execution of a good idea with one that works. I can charge myself
'wholesale' prices for labor instead of retail. I need fewer user studies.
Hell I _know what a user study is_. And I can care better about things like
privacy and scalability and reliability. For me it won't be a dancing bear. I
can bring in some of my expectations from my day job.

~~~
saalweachter
My two biggest regrets in my education are (1) taking the 'college prep'
classes in high-school instead of the welding and small engine repair style
classes and (2) majoring in CS instead of minoring while studying a field like
biology or chemistry that's full of things that need programs written about
them (and looking down on the kids who did, because I was the superior math/CS
student).

I mean, I don't think I have a bad life, but it's kind of a regret that when I
sit down and think about things to program for fun, I think about theorem
provers and compilers, which there are already bunches of.

~~~
mulmen
In junior high I took wood shop. I used a router to make a birthday plaque for
my dad. He didn’t smoke so the stereotypical ashtray wouldn’t do him any good.
I also learned how to work with acrylics.

In high school I took an auto tech class from my local community college where
I rebuilt an automatic transmission. It still amazes me those devices work at
all.

In college I took a welding class from the agriculture school for elective
credit. Everyone should have the experience of cutting metal with fire.

Those experiences have been priceless to me in my day job at $megacorp. I work
with a lot of people who have only had one job. Their thinking is very rigid.

I encourage you to find a community college course in any kind of trade
discipline. It’s extremely rewarding to apply the lessons conceptually to your
day job and life.

------
mindgam3
Come for the incredibly lucid conversation on cybernetics, stay for the humor.

>>

Bateson: Yes, yes. All cybernetic entities are displaced small boys.

Mead: Displaced small what?

B: Boys. They’re jacks. You know what a jack is? A jack is an instrument to
displace a small boy. A boot jack is a thing for pulling off boots ’cause you
haven’t a small boy to pull it off for you.

M: I’ll remember that next time. This is an English joke that no one will
understand

>>

~~~
umanwizard
Can confirm: I'm not English and don't have a clue what that joke means.

------
benbreen
Anyone who's interested in Mead and Bateson's relationship should check out
the novel _Euphoria_ by Lily King - it's narrated by a lightly fictionalized
version of Bateson and is about how he and Mead fell in love, in New Guinea in
the 30s. Great book and really captures their personalities. Both were truly
exceptional people who deserve to be better known than they already are.

~~~
mindgam3
Couldn't agree more. It's a pity that Mead and Bateson's work, particularly
Bateson's, seems to have never made it to the mainstream. If more techies and
psychiatrists understood their kind of systems thinking, the world would be a
better place IMO.

> If Gregory lives long enough he will get his Nobel for the Double Bind
> Theory of Schizophrenia.

Also not sure who was the author of this bit at the top (probably Stewart
Brand?) but I also agree 100%. Double bind theory is brilliant.

~~~
benbreen
I've actually just started work on an academic book project that will involve
Bateson (focusing more on his relationship with John C. Lilly and early
psychedelic drug researchers). I went to the Library of Congress last month to
look at his letters with Mead. One unexpected takeaway from that trip was that
he was a bit of a war hero, albeit a secret one (undercover mission to
Southeast Asia with OSS). I also liked this from a letter that Bateson wrote
to a friend during WW2:

“M[argaret] says that you have ‘grown up.' I wonder - I suppose I would be
said to have ‘grown up’ too - respectably working at a desk from 9 to 5:30,
doing some teaching, married and with young, and so on. But is it in us really
to alter after our 20s? I think not in fundamentals. I am sure that I shall go
to my grave with my shoes untied, my trousers unpressed, my hair overdue for a
cut, and probably imperfectly shaven. I shall still leave undone those things
which I ought to have done — and shall still feel unhappy and guilty about
it.”

~~~
mindgam3
I had no idea Bateson was connected to psychedelic drug research, in addition
to being a war hero/secret agent, but I guess I'm not surprised given the
interdisciplinary nature and general excellence of his work.

Interesting letter. For my own sake I really hope my hero Bateson is wrong
about the whole not being able to change after your 20s thing, heh.

Good luck with the book project, sounds fascinating.

------
bgilroy26
Mead and Bateson's work in South East Asia was the basis for the title of
Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus[1].

I was curious and went through the footnotes of Anti-Oedipus and D&G say in
Mead and Bateson's Balinese photographic survey that they describe a certain
culture the mothers tease their sons when they are very young by pulling on
their penises and then ignoring them, but I pulled the Mead and Bateson book
out of the Brooklyn Public Library and could not for the life of me find
evidence of what Deleuze and Guattari were talking about.

Why would you title your book based on a 30+ year old half-heard tale about a
foreign culture?

I like Deleuze and Guattari, but the experience of trying to figure out the
physical, material, biological, sociological source for the idea of 'Anti-
Oedipus' itself left me disillusioned.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
Oedipus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus)

~~~
mistersquid
> Mead and Bateson's work in South East Asia was the basis for the title of
> Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus[1].

Being fairly familiar with Delueze and Guattari's _Anti-Oedipus_, I don't
think it's accurate to characterize the Mead-Bateson link as foundational. To
that point, the _title_ of the work is "Anti-Oedipus" and the _sub_ title is
"Capitalism and Schizophrenia".

Indeed, the Wikipedia entry to which you link makes no mention of "Mead" and
mentions "Gregory Bateson" in a sentence including twenty-three other names,
which notably does not include "Sigmund Freud" against whom Deleuze and
Guattari are writing and whose work is the (anti-)basis of the title _Anti-
Oedipus_.

Anti-Oedipilization is the formative root of Delueze and Guattari's
schizoanalysis whose method is informed in its opening pages by Georg Büchners
novella _Lenz_ [0]

Quoting (excerpt of _Anti-Oedipus_ page 1):

> A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on
> the analyst’s couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside
> world. Lenz’s stroll, for example, as reconstructed by Buchner. This walk
> outdoors is different from the moments when Lenz finds himself closeted with
> his pastor, who forces him to situate himself socially, in relationship to
> the God of established religion, in relationship to his father, to his
> mother. While taking a stroll outdoors, on the other hand, he is in the
> mountains, amid falling snowflakes, with other gods or without any gods at
> all, without a family, without a father or a mother, with nature. [1]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_(fragment)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_\(fragment\))

[1] [https://medium.com/@mdowns1611/commentary-on-d-gs-anti-
oedip...](https://medium.com/@mdowns1611/commentary-on-d-gs-anti-oedipus-
chapter-1-1-desiring-production-f23648202f79)

EDIT: fix citation

~~~
bgilroy26
Thank you, this is very helpful!

------
carapace
[http://www.wholeearth.com/back-issues.php](http://www.wholeearth.com/back-
issues.php)

CoEvolutionary Quarterly back issues! <3

------
plink
By the title, I jumped to the conclusion it was some article about Judy Blume.

