Gainful Employment
Jul. 11th, 2007 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormSo there we go. That was a week-and-a-half job search has got me a place with a super-awesome landscape maintenance/design company, a small one, that's both organic and has a leaning towards permaculture. In fact, she has the word permaculture in her brochure.
It's in North Van, but I think I'll learn a lot from her. This is better than just working outdoors. This is doing something close to what I wanna be doing right now.
I start either Friday or next week, so today is a Wreck Beach day for sure.
I'm slowly peeling people off the need-to-talk-to list. It feels good. I think I'm down to six calls or so I need to make.
It's hot and sticky. I didn't get anywhere near enough sleep-- I went to visit Eva and Ryan after the unexpectedly long interview last night, and had missed my skytrain home by the time I got my bike to Drew's door. It was *really* good to see people, even if angst seems to be the word of the day. I will nap at the beach today with Mike and Eva and my internet stalker, do feel free to join us.
Man, I wish I had my drum to take down. I need to get a travel djembe, but first I need to make my rent for next month. Lesigh.
I missed my bike. Tomorrow maybe I'll head out on it. I was gonna bike to Wreck, but the watermelon makes that unwieldy.
The album of the day is still Barenaked Ladies' Gordon.
I've been thinking a lot about hurting people in relationships. It's been a super-recurring theme for me, both in my life and also in the last couple of weeks especially. Way back at the beginning of all this, I didn't believe it was ever okay to do anything to cause someone you loved pain. As the years march on I realise that is an impossible goal, and the line sort of fuzzes out: deliberate unwanted pain is not cool, totally unintentional pain there's not much you can do about, but what about things you do from ignorance, stupidity, or necessity? How much of that sort of thing is okay? How much is causing someone pain an okay side-effect? Anyhow, I know this keeps coming up for me because I can't really work through it-- I still haven't really accepted that it happens at all.
This tends to make me a really crappy girlfriend because I'm so shocked and appalled by my hurting someone that I totally suck at comforting and/or fixing things, I just get distracted. That, at least, I'm getting a handle on.
I made a kickass sourdough bread pudding. Thanks, Tim, for the bread. I should go eat breakfast, maybe nap before the beach, and get off this introspective trip. I haven't had enough sleep to make it very effective.
It's in North Van, but I think I'll learn a lot from her. This is better than just working outdoors. This is doing something close to what I wanna be doing right now.
I start either Friday or next week, so today is a Wreck Beach day for sure.
I'm slowly peeling people off the need-to-talk-to list. It feels good. I think I'm down to six calls or so I need to make.
It's hot and sticky. I didn't get anywhere near enough sleep-- I went to visit Eva and Ryan after the unexpectedly long interview last night, and had missed my skytrain home by the time I got my bike to Drew's door. It was *really* good to see people, even if angst seems to be the word of the day. I will nap at the beach today with Mike and Eva and my internet stalker, do feel free to join us.
Man, I wish I had my drum to take down. I need to get a travel djembe, but first I need to make my rent for next month. Lesigh.
I missed my bike. Tomorrow maybe I'll head out on it. I was gonna bike to Wreck, but the watermelon makes that unwieldy.
The album of the day is still Barenaked Ladies' Gordon.
I've been thinking a lot about hurting people in relationships. It's been a super-recurring theme for me, both in my life and also in the last couple of weeks especially. Way back at the beginning of all this, I didn't believe it was ever okay to do anything to cause someone you loved pain. As the years march on I realise that is an impossible goal, and the line sort of fuzzes out: deliberate unwanted pain is not cool, totally unintentional pain there's not much you can do about, but what about things you do from ignorance, stupidity, or necessity? How much of that sort of thing is okay? How much is causing someone pain an okay side-effect? Anyhow, I know this keeps coming up for me because I can't really work through it-- I still haven't really accepted that it happens at all.
This tends to make me a really crappy girlfriend because I'm so shocked and appalled by my hurting someone that I totally suck at comforting and/or fixing things, I just get distracted. That, at least, I'm getting a handle on.
I made a kickass sourdough bread pudding. Thanks, Tim, for the bread. I should go eat breakfast, maybe nap before the beach, and get off this introspective trip. I haven't had enough sleep to make it very effective.
Re: ignorance, stupidity, or necessity
Date: 2007-07-13 03:14 pm (UTC)A parent disciplining (not beating, but disciplining) a child because they've stolen something or mistreated someone is necessary pain, to bring that child into an understanding that there are consequences of doing the wrong thing. A doctor giving an innoculation may also be a necessary pain, to protect them from something much worse in a disease. Both are examples of something that's necessary for the interests of the person being hurt.
With the doctor, however, we hit the question of rights. A parent has the right, as a parent, to determine that the child will or will not be innoculated. A doctor, on the other hand, does not have the right to make that decision. He has not only a right but a DUTY to advise that it be done if he feels the child needs it, but he doesn't have the authority to compel it to be done. It's not his child.
Putting someone in jail for murder can be painful for them, but is a necessary step not only for their good, to correct/punish their behavior, but especially for society's good, to remove a dangerous person from the ability to harm others. A government has the right to do this, as well as the responsibility to. An individual citizen, however, does not have the authority to jail someone, only to report them to those who do (with the excpetion of restraining someone caught in the act till the authorities get there).
Those are both examples of causing pain to someone for the good of them or others. Sometimes, you have to cause someone else pain to protect yourself. I have a friend who had to cut off contact with a parent who was abusive, for instance, for her own safety. It's never an easy choice, but the real threat there made it necessary. At the same time, we have to be careful of the dividing line between hurting someone as a necessity to protect ourselves from harm vs hurting someone for our own *gain*. The dividing line can be difficult to measure at times. And there has a to be a consideration, even when protecting, whether you're protecting something good. Framing someone to avoid taking the consequences of something you've done would be an example of a wrong application of protecting yourself by harming an innocent.
Re: ignorance, stupidity, or necessity
Date: 2007-07-13 03:33 pm (UTC)Just from your examples, I'm thinking you're not someone who runs in my circles a whole lot, RL? Jus' curious.
Of course it's all about the lines. I don't think that anyone would argue that there are clearly bad things to do, and good things to do, which is where words like necessity break down into words like choice, I suppose. It's finding one's way through more ambiguous and generally emotional rather than physical situations that's harder (if it will hurt my boyfriend for me to break up with him, I should still break up with him if I want to because prolonging things will cause more pain in the long term-- but what if his father's just died, do I owe it to him to be supportive and wait till he's got over it some even if that will make me feel drained and bitchy until it's over?).
What really made me want to respond to your comment, though, was a memory I have from adminning on an online RPG. I screened applications there, and some of them went along the lines of: [applicant]'s father beat him every day which made him the best fighter in the world. Before he left home he thanked his father for toughening him up (I guess Johnny Cash's A Boy Named Sue covers a variant of this theme). Meanwhile, I just got back from a family reunion, where my mom's siblings (in the sixty to forty age range) were talking with a certain amount of approval about being spanked, and then of course there's the current situation socially where spanking is more-or-less totally unacceptable. So the action of physical discipline, which is a pretty clear thing that you can point a finger at, is variously bad to necessary depending on context.