My work on the LdnBeta thing really exemplifies my “learning is personal, knowledge is social” mantra.
I’ve been putting an awful lot of time into it — which would seem to be a great personal loss — but it’s gratifying be stretched a little. As per Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory it’s great (for a change) to have
Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed)… Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult)… A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
That’s the personal aspect: it has been paying-off for me (in a sense). In the last couple of days alone I found a handful of great blogs I should have already been following; I also learned a little more about web design, improved my own site a little — and time seemed to fly.
I was happy.
Now there’s an irony, or a paradox here: the whole thing is framed as an attempt to stir digital collaboration, innovation, and engagement in the social and civic spheres. In a sense, I’m “donating” my time and energy — supposedly an act of “selflessness” — to the common good (or so I presume).
So which is it? Am I selfishly doing this out of a selfish desire for fun challenges or am I doing it out of a selfless urge to contribute to the greater good?
The truth is, both “selfish” and “selfless” are myths — or at least, the notion that everything should can be neatly categorized as one or the other (with a lot of stuff being vaguely “a bit of both”) is a myth.
What’s standing in our way is the stupid industrialized mindset (perpetuated by capitalists and anti-capitalists alike: see here and here) which inflates the importance of extrinsic motivation, interpreting everything via metaphors of machines, playing fields, and war, constructing theories in which resources are fought for, exchanged, and given away like finite pieces of a board game.
There’s nothing holy or mystical — nor certainly not weak, nor criminal — about sharing. On a really practical, tough-minded, scientific level, “selfless” sharing can and does tend to increase the number of pieces on the board that everyone has access to.
But it isn’t a giveaway. It isn’t just that tossing people a few spare tokens will earn the goodwill of some god who magically bestows the community with a bigger harvest for being good.
The good of sharing is that things are in motion: it builds relationships, it generates capital, it makes discoveries and random associations that turn into creations, it keeps shifting resources around until they gravitate into optimal settings.
Likewise, personal development and competition are good for the same reason.
The benefit of capitalism is that it tends to keep things flowing better than any other system in civilization’s history. With capitalism, resources are more likely to get to those who are most able to make generative use of them.
But we can do better.
Industrial capitalism is held back by bad metaphors that mire our thinking in notions of scarcity, “winners and losers,” and stability. The current strains of socialism suffer the same flaw. These ideas are as ill-suited to our future the Ancient Greek pantheon is to our present.
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