2003-03-04

 
1-march-03

City Change.

I am currently aboard my Amtrak train from San Diego to San Francisco -- a meager 15 hour trip compared to the 5-day trip I have taken before. Two days ago I quit my job testing membranes and writing up test procedures for the Pall Corporation (yes, I am aware that it was a corporation I was working for. When I have more experience working with businesses I can further comment on the difference between destructive, trivial corporations and technologically advancing benevolent corporations -- Pall, for instance, makes membranes that make medical and industrial filtration processes more efficient and inexpensive. I always tell people that at least I wasn't testing hamburgers!). The last day of work was incredible. I felt as if I'd won an award; everyone was praising me about how good a job I'd done, and I was taken out to lunch (for vegan food nonetheless!). On my exit interview I reflected a lot about the challenges of my job and I was told that much of the difficulty was because I was too educated for the job (duh!). They basically didn't have a specific position for me, so they ended up sharing me across departments getting me to apply the scientific method where otherwise people were making up numbers and fabricating inaccurate data. So, while I wasn't learning about Biology in quite the way I wanted to, I did get to learn about scientific testing, corporate hierarchy, and above all, industrialism. I surmise that industrialism is not the blanket culprit of Western woes, but it is rather Industrial Capitalism -- the drive for making more and more for less and less. Technological Revolutionary Industrialsm -- the drive for doing more and more while using less and less -- is a much more sensible paradigm if we are to continue with this path technological modernity. I have no qualms about preserving the underlying paradigm of the western civilization -- information and technology; I would like, however to exchange the hierarchical use of this information (property, authority, governance, patriarchy) for holistic, democratic information gathering-and-sharing. There is much more to discuss and probe regarding this topic (which I have been considering for a year now, perhaps more -- since I first read Buckminster Fuller and Paolo Soleri); however, I shall hold off until I meet my future peers in this grand geographic gamble I am taking by picking up and moving to a new city, yet again.

When I first moved out to San Diego, I was looking to gain experience in biotechnology, I was hoping to practice activism in a place that needed it badly, I was desiring sunshine and fresh air, I was hoping to stare the stereotype of Southern California in the face and say "I can ride my bike and fart past all you cars!" I largely accomplished much of this, but the impetus for my moving up to Berkeley lies in my lack of community. It was a great challenge to make friends without having a car. I will still resist stereotypes of people (save one, which I learned from my commute on the train every day: there are two types of people -- those that smile back at you and those that stare at their feet) but there was something peculiar about all of the people I'd met that seemed like friends. I can't put my finger on it, perhaps it was absentmindedness, bias towards an individualist, arrogance... It does not matter, but I was not used to having to push real hard for friendships. The people I met had spent effort on making friends as if it were a limited resource and thus would not want to waste it on a guy without a car, that eventually is going to go to graduate school and be an intellectual scientist, that has no other friends to share. The primary longing I have that was not fulfilled in San Diego -- that I am certain I will relinquish in Berkeley -- is the need for peers to discuss and intellectualize interesting topics with. I rarely met people that read books, let alone of similar topics as myself. Those who did had their own business going on. It was remarkable that I came out to San Diego on an adventure with no friends, no job, no girlfriend, no car. No one seems to do that lacking all of those items. Yet in San Francisco, and in DC as I was used to, people do that all the time. I think I will be much more understood and will find participation in all of the thinking I've been doing lately.

I should cite an email I sent to my great pal, Hilary Frenkel, when she asked me what I learned during my six months in San Diego, (i'm adding a couple things to it):

what did i learn? i learned that i can be very apathetic when
i'm not getting paid (with respect to internships)... I learned that I love
bicycling, but I need to take care of my body and stretch (Still too lazy to
do that). I learned that being vegan is right on! (oh, i always knew that!)
I am now trying to put together a zine that will consist of interviews and
contributions from many of my favorite bands, formulating a critique of
industrial capitalism. so far people have been receptive, but i only recently
started to get the ball rolling.

let's see, what else.... southern california is all highways and suburbs.
the people are super nice but many are self-centered. there are two types
of people in life: those who smile back and those who stare at their feet.
making soup is easy, cheap, fun, and tasty. freezing leftovers is the key
to surviving a 9-5 job (er... 7-3)... i like dumpster diving, but still need
guidance on what's safe and what's not. i've gotten a lot of new music,
burned a lot of cd's from people and the library, learned about classical music,
realized that a motorcycle is not only unsafe but also uses gas too!
the only way to find a job is to physically go in and say "give me a job,
here's my resume". life's too short to settle for any less than our dreams.
craigslist is a wonderful thing. beer is expensive unless you buy it at trader
joe's (you won't believe their alcohol choices and prices! 1.99 wine and
it's incredible!) I'd rather read a book or climb a tree than drink a beer or
watch TV. Michael Jackson is not so bad, just misunderstood.

posted by MM 8:53 PM