The Discipline of DE (1978) [video]
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One interesting fact about Burroughs is that he was a chronic drug abuser and managed to shoot his wife during some sort of drug fueled accident. The message in this little piece can be easily interpreted as Burroughs trying to analyzing his own mistakes that lead to her death.
This is really just scratching the surface of how odd and complex Burroughs' life and psyche are. If you are a fan of surrealism, the beatnik movement or other larger than life writers like Hunter S Thomson, it's worth giving his work a chance.
Edit: here's the Voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-p68gSp4eE#t=5
Edit 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ajahePtEaY#t=66 (music by John Cale)
The movie Naked lunch, nominally about Burroughs, is also very much worth a watch.
Some supportive points for mindfulness:
- Treating everyday things like works leads you not enjoying them and doing them poorly. Yet the bulk amount of time in your life is spent doing these very activities.'
- Finding enjoyment in perfecting simple things actually makes a lot sense, as its presented.
- If you stub your toe, drop a dish, etc, and don't practise doing the movement properly you are likely to make the mistake again.
Support in Absurdist:
- He puts the radio, with its neatly wrapped cord, under a sink.
- "Gentle old cop making a soft arrest"
- the contrast between 'gentle' and 'soft' with arrest is clearly absurd.
- 10 month year with 26 days
- Taking your time in a gun fight.
Support for Satirizing (comical critique):
- The objects are clearly magical.
- The utensils instantly drop exactly where they need to without sorting.
- The toothpaste cup basically cleans itself.
- The chair actually does move in front of him.
- The contrast between the do-easy mindfulness and the ignorant way of living are infomercial-level exaggerated.
The ending summarizes the absurd double-entendre: a gun-fight is a simple movement done very well in a zen sort of way (the trick to moving fast is to practice slowly), but at the same time its clearly absurd. Its also a gun-fight. You don't have time.
Really great video. I'll be watching it again
I've been working in very tight spaces where I twist myself into pretzels trying to get at a particular spot, all while wrapped up in a homemade hazmat suit, to the point where I can hardly breath or see. It has gotten better after I established one rule: No Stress Positions. Meaning, do whatever it takes to get comfortable before proceeding.
Before, if my back would start to hurt from a difficult stance, I wouldn't really notice, I'd just speed up to try to get it done before my back gave out, frequently botching the job and cutting or scraping myself in the process. Now, I notice that I'm breaking The Rule, think about the topology, reposition myself, maybe add cushions, maybe spend some time to move things out of the way. Fixup my mask and goggles, and then take my time.
Before I'd only take notice of my discomfort on failure, when I just couldn't do it anymore. And that resulted in a strong desire to quit. Now I spend the effort to get myself in an "I could do this all day position", and I can do it all day. I think the same thing applies to washing dishes or making breakfast. First step, just notice that you aren't doing it in easy mode.
It's summed up by the old Two Bulls on a Hill joke.
He also taught me the phrase "lazy man's load", in reference to trying to haul everything from the car to the house at once. Taking less each time reduced the risk of an accident (like dropping a bag of groceries or having the bottom tear out because it's not properly supported), even though it means more trips it (usually) produces the better result. Which also seems appropriate here, the lazy man's load is born of haste and is decidedly not the easy way in many, if not most, situations.
From the movie : "How fast can you take your time?"
Keep a calm, steady frame of mind, so you have a more uniform appreciation of time passing. Don't fall into a busy frenzy or a puzzle-solving trance that allows a haphazard or complicated way of doing things to feel quicker than it really is. Don't let boredom blind you to the virtues of smooth, simple things.
A common mistake people make is identifying boring, predictable tasks as the most urgent focus for improvement. This is misguided. A task that is boring and predictable is already well-engineered. It can and should be further improved by automation, but much bigger gains come from standardizing the tasks that seem to go differently every time, the tasks that are typically handled by the most experienced developers. Making an "interesting" task boring saves much more effort than the subsequent step of automating it.
I would say that getting the boring & predictable ones out of the way frees you from keeping them in mind. This allows you to address the ones that "go different every time" without keeping track of the details.
Removing the boring/predictable stuff also means you can enter flow much more quickly (and regularly). I find that for me programming is more of a psychological game than a technical one. The ability to quickly get into flow is of very high value to me. However, in other domains and with other people "standardizing" the "offbeat" task may yield greater productivity gains.
XKCD made a comic about automating task -> https://xkcd.com/1205/
Don't spend a manic day writing 10k lines of code and only compiling it at the end of the day. Don't go in without a plan and develop the structure in an ad hoc fashion. Don't delay refactoring until after the first 100k lines are written. Ideally never even write 100k lines because you've selected an appropriate language and libraries to let you write something that closely matches the problem domain.
Use templates/frameworks where possible for common activities. These don't even need to be heavy weight, but relates back to using libraries. If you're making your 100th CRUD site in some language and you don't already have a default structure, you're doing it the hard way.
If you perform your actions single-mindedly and with purpose, you will find that they become easier and more efficient. It is not a question of exerting more effort, but exerting it in such a way that none goes to waste.
Come to think of it getting frustrated with our interaction with inanimate objects is completely absurd. DE is like the opposite of slapstick.
- Walk across a room with care
- Open a window with care
- Shoot a guy with care
Have you ever heard of Zen Buddhism? All the "advice" you get from Zen teachings is pretty similar to this, except with more focus on not-doing as an approach to doing.
Retiree transforms his life and solves all his problems by doing exactly what he was going before only... more carefully? And duel is certainly absurdist.
I enjoyed the film, but I think it’s intention is largely opposite what is being received here.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/9aa3vy/do-easy-william-s-bur...
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/william_burroughs_gus_va... - "Buddhist noir" - nice.
https://www.openculture.com/2018/07/discipline-d-e-gus-van-s...
I'm European and live in the US. When I've travelled to the Middle East and Japan, both places struck me for people doing exactly what this video suggests.
Such a calm, methodic way of handling things... made me realize that to them, we probably appear careless.
My take-away for myself is to stop getting angry at some stupid things I get angry at. To try to make stupid chores into elegant mini-games instead (speed run it optimally, etc).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZznUiv1Q5s
It's like hearing my own thoughts reinterpreted and spoken out aloud. It's how I've always enjoyed doing things, just so, efficient, precise and elegant.. I wonder if there's a connection between that and being slightly on the spectrum..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0239404/
Same writer and director.
What do you find to be unhealthy or objectionable about the message of the text? It’s as if you believe that people in this thread who are discussing the merits of the text are going to act absurdly like the young man in the video.