Wotsthefeckinpointitis,part 3968

Wotsthefeckinpointitis, n, dawning realisation of the pointlessness of much "normal" daily activity.

I have been stuck for the last few days/week with a bad case of wotsthefeckinpointitis. Huge numbers of regular, "normal" activities that are part of the normal human routine of life in a modern Western "civilisation" seem to have huge question marks hanging over them. It brought back to mind a specific incident in a planning meeting with a major IT vendor.

We were implementing serious amounts of software, and putting together significant hardware and networking to make it all work. We had convened a suitably large and important meeting to discuss the project. Staff from our organisation travelled from all over central Scotland to attend, and representatives from the vendor travelled up from the south of England, all to discuss our terribly important project.

Part way through the meeting (which as you'd probably expect had actually turned into a review of stuff we'd already spoken about previously) I found myself completely detached from the whole thing, looking out the window to the hedges and shrubs outside the building. I suddenly found myself thinking, what if aliens landed outside right now, and came and looked in the window to see what these human things got up to ? What would they think ? And the answer that came to mind was:

"You are all completely insane."

Here we were, over a dozen well- to highly-paid people, all pretty well educated and experienced in what we do, sitting around a table and talking utter bollocks at each other for several hours. At the end of it, the sum of human knowledge and endeavour would have increased by not a single jot. If anything, the sum of human happiness would have decreased. The people who had travelled up from southern England would have left home at some lunatic hour (4am ? earlier ?) to drive to an airport to catch a plane to get a taxi to land up at our office, then catch a taxi to the airport to get a plane south to drive home and get home at some equally lunatic hour at night. What does that sort of stupidity do to a home life ? Or even a life that doesn't end up being overwhelmed by a job which, at the end of the day, is itself pretty pointless ?

After all, yes, it was a large project, and it would cost lots of money and time and effort, but at the end of the day it was simply an optimisation; nothing that wouldn't have happened before would have suddenly started happening simply because of this project. Maybe later, maybe someday, but equally maybe never. The things that needed to happen would have happened anyway, with or without megaproject. Maybe not as quickly, maybe not a slickly, but they would still happen.

And yet here we were with a room full of people all, to some greater or lesser extent, blowing their lives to smithereens in the service of megaproject. Because that's what we do. We work. We work harder, run faster, push further, push push push.

And then we all end up dead.

And at the end of it all, what was the fucking point ? What lasting, worthwhile monument did we build up with our crazy, frantic, lunatic endeavours ? Servers that would be decommissioned in a few years, software that would be upgraded, fiddled and changed to the point that it was like the original Roman spade that had only had four new handles and three new blades. All gone, and no doubt all replaced by more work done at the same crazy pace. And at every step, more and more time poured down the black hole called "job", never to be regained or reused for anything that might actually increase anybody's happiness or self worth or be of actual benefit to mankind.

Because every second spent worrying about some innately trivial but apparently important detail at work is one less second of life. One second closer to the long sleep. A second you can't get back, saying "actually that wasn't really worth the worrying about at all, could I have that second again and maybe read some classic literature/paint my masterpiece/write a love poem/pot some plants in the garden/try to perfect the golf swing/etc ?"

I really do wish we could just stop. Stop the running, jostling, shoving, pushing, driving, hurrying, scuttling. Stop. Talk to kids, talk to the neighbours, sit in the garden and watch things grow and get utterly sloshed on home brew or whatever. Take back the time and just live at a more normal, more *human* pace. Think about things that matter, and let the things that don't matter take care of themselves.

Not everything that is countable counts. Not everything that counts can be counted.

It's been a while...

... and to celebrate, here's a nice picture...



Yep, it's my Newton 2000U, caught on my mobile (at a rather jaunty angle I must admit) at Newton railway station just outside Glasgow. A Newton at Newton, you might say ;)