If The World is wrong, We Must Fix It!

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Riaan Burger's picture

I've detected a disconnect in life of late. It feels like there are two kinds of motivation among the people I socialise with. The one is driven something along the lines of "if things are not working, find a way to survive" or "how to survive optimally", the other is goes something like, "if the world is wrong, we need to fix it". The toughest thing about the second one is that it can turn to totalitarianism very easily; One's own views shouldn't be without oversight. Constant review and exposed the challenges expressed by others. If those challenges follow the first motivation, I think one can discard them in the name of general communal progress (though not for the person expressing them), but if they have merit one should evaluate, perhaps gather more input and then revise and grow personally, with an appreciation for the contribution the dissident views adds in value to your own life.

It seems like tough economic times compel people into thinking more along the lines of survival ism. The first motivation I mentioned. It's a necessary and useful human trait. So not to be dismissed completely and it has merit. But I suspect we become more human and develop better and more completely as humans when we have the time to consider the greater part of humanity and the values we may contribute to it. The second motivation I mentioned.

Somehow I hope and suspect I'm right that the GPL community, a group of people freely contributing to shared resources like the Drupal project, attract those of the second motivation. But when times are tough, our survival instincts can kick in and we can, without clearly and openly knowing about it, start making decisions like a cornered animal. For profit motive alone, above all or much else or just without considering the greater good.

It is a subtle thing that I know I'm not above of. Though currently, lucky enough to have so many people in the community supporting me, perhaps I'm able to rebel as my nature dictates with more ease than many people can afford. Should this be true, a truth or just a revelation to me known intimately to many people already, then it is time to and a responsibility to rebel. To change the world. If we're creating such safe havens in GPL communities, we have a duty to create those spaces for others, so that we may gain from the diversity and creativity that blooms from such freedoms and can only be made by many free people working together. One's own freedom is so much more limited than sharing it with others.

While these thoughts translates well to the GPL community, I'm facing some personal challenges (and I know some of you face the same or similar). Insights in the lives outside of the programming community we're in led to this post. Life really, really seems to be tough in the world outside for so many people. I'm an Atheist, so I can't say I feel "blessed", but I feel very lucky to be a part of a community that derives its strengths and security from working together so well. Every day I take for granted, way too easily, how much I see so many of you step up to help each other, to help me, to learn, to care for each others' continued education and welfare.

I wish I can have the same for the rest of humanity. Let's rebel. Make it all right. Fix the World!

Comments

One of the best things I have

april26's picture

One of the best things I have found about the Drupal community is how supportive it is. I work with other CMS's and frameworks, and in all cases it is a "bait and switch". The only reason someone is helping you or offering something, is because they are getting themselves in a position to charge for a module or theme, to corner a market, to cut out others or to lobby for their own project. I spent a long time in the corporate world, where one gets very suspicious of motives after being bitten a few times. You just have to assume that the "mongrels" you meet along the way are desperate.

Riaan, you make a difference. You bring people together to feel part of a community (when so many of us work alone day after day). Thanks to you, we are humbled to realise the amazing things others are doing, and we are proud to show off what we have achieved. To people old enough to know what I'm talking about, you are that round wheel in the tinkertoy that connects all the other pieces.

Whatever you're going through, don't give up on the world. Many people haven't realised that the secret to inner contentment is in giving, creating value and knowing that the world is a better place because you were in it for a brief moment in time.

Like the poem says "Whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Strive to be happy."

And no matter how bad things get, at least Donald Trump isn't our president!

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

Hear hear!

Wayne Oliver's picture

Nail on the head bud, and you are very instrumental in the Drupal community. It's really you and Greg that sucked me into this community, one I thought nothing of before joining.

Being an atheist too, I really understand that feeling of feeling Lucky! And we really are. :-)

Let's do it!

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Riaan Burger's picture

Thank you so much! It is always encouraging to hear the thoughts in one's mind expanded and some confirmed by others; Otherwise it can seriously become an echo-chamber. Though seeing one's own name like that can cause blushing.

I wondered how well such a non-technical topic would be received on GDoSA. It is very interesting that it would be the topic that have, after such a long period of no replies to topics here, be the one to draw a couple. Not just one-liners either, real human replies!

@april26 That is so true. Not having a Book to define value, I also came to the conclusion that the only way to define value in one's own life is to measure it externally by the effect you have on other people. There are those things you, yourself really enjoy doing. Some of those then match up with external measures and that's the best stuff to keep busy with. For me that is late nights of code and, perhaps more visibly but also less planned and more compulsively, to form useful part in a community. The Drupal community gives that to me and I'm so grateful to be a part of it.

@Wayne Oliver I love sucking. Erm, like that. But I also got sucked in. For me it was the guys at the Johannesburg meetup led by Ivan. I miss that so much.

Yesterday morning I was just on page 10 of the last edition of The Economist (comes out on Fridays, so I was late reading it - workload is rough right now). The lead article was about how Africa's value isn't in commodities, it is in its people.

Later the day I had the opportunity to reference that article in a discussion on the Nigerian Drupal group. They seem to refer using Facebook (I'm hardly ever on there, the now the majority of my Facebook posting contribution is in that one thread).

https://www.facebook.com/groups/drupal.ng/permalink/10153393166007540/?c...

By that article and the people we have here, in Nigeria and likely all across the continent. By the infrastructure slowly going to enable these communities (these guys in Nigeria develop Drupal sites on 5 hours of electricity from mains per week). We are going to make one massive splash as an African community in the world out there in the coming decade!

While I sing the Drupal song so often, it is perhaps worth saying. Drupal, for me, is an extension of the GPL community. FLOSS culture led me here. So it does to a great degree, mean I'm a freedom fighter (without a gun) and passionately want to defend and support the GPL and its values.

Tinkertoy

Riaan Burger's picture

Haha april26, Tinkertoys!

I now recall that I spoke to a recruiter a couple of weeks ago. I really don' think recruiters can help us as we have some unique needs, but I thought I'd give them a chance anyway, these guys in particular seemed really eager to help and didn't run for the hills when I mentioned our needs.

It's odd when you tell them your company develops Drupal sites, but you may not really want someone with Drupal experience. After all, Drupal 8 is different enough that it's not like one would get someone with years of experience; It just launched recently.

So I mention PHP/Symfony and Drupal, but also fundamentals like plain old HTML5 and CSS (Sass), some Linux command line familiarity or a fetch for gaining such skills and then it comes to qualifications, I quote what I wrote:

"Qualifications mean very little in this business. In my own, those with degrees all the way through to masters just make for better conversation over a beer and is not indicative of performance on the job. I prefer seeing CVs sans any qualifications, school performance or any educational history. Rather three short paragraphs about a development-related project a candidate is working on and is passionate about."

And really, if I ever see a qualifications list, even school completion on a CV again I will discard that candidate. But of course I'll make sure to mention that the CV shouldn't list that.

Recruiters need loads of info to know what you want. So I tried to link to the things s(he) may not understand:

"So, for Burtronix, we're looking for a very self-motivated, ethics-oriented person that takes other people's and their own privacy very seriously, at least knows about and want to use tools like gpg (Gnu Privacy Guard), have a history of working on their own (either their own web dev company or just remote work) and is a tinkerer, hacker and maker. These attributes are more important than any experience in Drupal, our core software development framework. Drupal can be taught, the rest cannot."

There I linked the words "hacker" and "maker", but I didn't link "tinkerer". While I understood it to mean one thing, seems it's a tin smith! Now you put me back on track.

English is a mostly acquired language for me. We did the usual basics in School, but the rest and the subtle meanings one has to build right. Reading and experience. And now I know where the strong affinity for tinkering may have originated - playing with those toys ;-)

PS: If you thought our esoterism for new talent ended there... man, these recruiters will have an interesting time. May well make for a great future post.