The Second Conrunning
Mar. 1st, 2006 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldOther than the middle two lines, it reminds me of a committee for an all-volunteer not-for-profit science fiction convention:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood dimm'd tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-- from The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats
Huge amounts of work are put in all year by very tired and talented organizers, whose amazing talents are needed by a million other things. They can barely hold together their own heroic lives, much less a convention on the side. "The center cannot hold." But they don't have to. Dozens of excited people pop up like prarie dogs and chip in their attention about a month before the convention. And the outcome is always transcendently fun. For nine or ten months the right hand knoweth not what the left hand is doing; that's just the way it works. It's a ragged process of grassroots self-organization that arises from mere anarchy.
Also, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." In conrunning just as among open-source software programmers, artificial languages, or any other volunteer group effort. I don't know whether that makes me glad that I lack all conviction, or not. 'Nuff said.
If an actual blood dimm'd tide is ever loosed, I am afraid I will have to politely draw the line. "Hey now, stop that. No blood dimm'd tides loosed on the hotel carpeting. Didn't you know they're trying to do a ceremony of innocence in that function space?"
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood dimm'd tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-- from The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats
Huge amounts of work are put in all year by very tired and talented organizers, whose amazing talents are needed by a million other things. They can barely hold together their own heroic lives, much less a convention on the side. "The center cannot hold." But they don't have to. Dozens of excited people pop up like prarie dogs and chip in their attention about a month before the convention. And the outcome is always transcendently fun. For nine or ten months the right hand knoweth not what the left hand is doing; that's just the way it works. It's a ragged process of grassroots self-organization that arises from mere anarchy.
Also, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." In conrunning just as among open-source software programmers, artificial languages, or any other volunteer group effort. I don't know whether that makes me glad that I lack all conviction, or not. 'Nuff said.
If an actual blood dimm'd tide is ever loosed, I am afraid I will have to politely draw the line. "Hey now, stop that. No blood dimm'd tides loosed on the hotel carpeting. Didn't you know they're trying to do a ceremony of innocence in that function space?"
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