Vonnegut Wisdom

Quote of the day:
“Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”
--Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network, describing America’s energy policy in today’s New York Times.

Quote of the day no. 2:
“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”
--Kurt Vonnegut

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I am guilty. I do this. I admit it.

This is to be distinguished from mea gulpa, which means “I drink my beer too fast.”

“Everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” This is played out in all kinds of ways.

At our jobs, we try to do just the fun staff--planning, researching, “strategizing”--and farm out the real work to those who work for us. Let the assistant do it. Then the assistant can hire an assistant to do it. Welcome to government work.

If we have to do too much everyday stuff, or if we can’t move up in the organization, we get bored.

At home, we want to continually change things and remodel. When it comes to just taking care of what we have, it’s yawn city.

A fascinating corollary to this is spending weeks and lots of money to fix up a room or a back yard and then only using it a couple hours a month. This boils down to spending more time preparing it and taking care of it than enjoying it.

There may be a direct analogy to the theological cliche “everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.” Then again, maybe they just sound the same.

The more-appropriate theological analogy may be the being/doing comparison in stories such as that of Mary and Martha. Martha couldn’t stop busying herself when Jesus was around, while Mary simply was there.

Something to think about. Or not. Whatever. I’m bored. Time to go mess something up so I can rebuild it.