Share Your Passion

I’m a shit writer.  Yep, that’s how I’m starting.  I write  in order to organize my thoughts in a coherent manner.  If I were writing this in a text file no one would see, I would quickly get bored, the sentence structure would be worse than it already is, I wouldn’t stick to a particular topic, and the whole exercise would degrade to a non-start after a week.  So, I put it all out there for anyone to see and the fact that a handful of people do in fact read it, or start to and get tired quickly ( like this piece ), is enough for me to take the time to polish it up a bit and make a damn point.  So what in the heck is the point?

I guess the point is that I have experiences and perspectives on the world that I wish to share with others.  I mean, we are a species of story tellers after all.  Everybody can tell a story.  That’s how we make sense of the world.  It’s our history, entertainment, our science even.  We all want to feel connected with the rest of our culture.  Culture:  the original social network.  Something in our profit driven, individualistic society has made it difficult to share my story with others.  I desperately want to be a part of something.  Hell, that’s probably why folks take to joining cults so readily.  Look at Scientology.  Christianity even.  Say what you will about their irrationality and ignorance; there’s community in those organizations.  We’re all so afraid of showing our true colors for fear that we’ll be judged.  But, there are many stories and everyone has their own.  They all want to tell them, but nobody wants to listen.

Ok, enough of that.  I’m not about to tell my story.  I don’t even know what it is.  Most of my childhood is little bits and fragments anyway.  It doesn’t matter.  What I think does matter is the ability to accept one’s own limitations, flaws, and ignorance.  Then, build on that.  I wake up everyday with the consideration that everything I thought I knew could be proven wrong.  That is exciting to look for some fundamental truth, realizing that everything I know is just a story I tell myself so as not to be driven mad.  There really is no truth, just perspective.  It’s all relative isn’t it?

Ahh, I got off topic.  I had other intentions.  This is why I don’t title my posts until I’ve finished them.  I use the pronoun “I” too much, don’t I?  Me, me, me.  The narcissist that I am.  Got to kill the ego.  Strong language for such an act of discipline.

Anyhoo.  So I blog.  A few people see it and I keep blogging.  What I really want to do is document my adventure of moving into a motorhome and organizing my life a bit.  I want to be able to share everything.  Maintenance help, water systems, power systems, composting, gardening, parking, driving, everything.  This is why I sat down to write tonight.  I’ve spent the last several years tinkering in a garage with heating and cooling systems, but mostly just tinkering with stuff in my head and occasionally jotting some scribbles and diagrams down on a piece of paper only to be forgotten and then rediscovered months later.  I’ll describe some of these systems in a later post and hopefully demonstrate them even later!  I’m talking a largely self contained energy and resource management system designed and balanced to require the minimum of controls to operate.  I’m not a dumb guy.  Well, dumb enough to crawl in a coal mine, more than once.  But, I get these ideas that are with me for days, and nights.  I rack my brain trying to solve problems with building these machines in the simplest, natural way I can think of until I hit a wall and then set it aside for a while.  These images become so real that I can see them in front of me so as if I could manipulate them.  The question is:  can I make any of them real?  Well, I’ll find out with my first home:  a motorhome.

Ah yes, the point.  Maybe.  I see these stories of ours as something to be shared willingly and freely to anyone with the desire to listen.  It might be zen teachings, a Marxian historical perspective, gardening tips or detailed instructions for building a biomass furnace.  They’re all stories.  No one should pay for stories.  These restrictions on information seem to me obscene.  Computer technology is allowing for the free exchange of information for next to nothing in cost.  Yet, much knowledge is still restricted due to old habits of artificial scarcity.  The competitive struggle of capitalism brings people to sell their passion rather than share them with the world.  It’s not that I think artists and engineers (the same thing really) should work for free.  The world can produce enough surplus to provide for everyone’s needs and then some.  It’s just that everything that we are, everything we can create is the embodiment of our culture and true greatness and survivability of the species can only come from the freedom to truly share our personal creative spin of past triumphs, and failures.

That is why I will not sell my ideas.  I will not hide my little secrets to prevent others from beating me to a patent or invention.  To stake claim on the reconstitution of a lifetime of reading and learning from the creative, scientific achievements past, as well as the philosophical toil ridding the commons of outdated notions like superstition and God.

Share your passion.  A better world awaits.

-M.C. Pletcher