C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

I'm bringing this up on my personal blog rather than my blog about Lojban because its lessons are broadly applicable to things that a lot of you are interested in, so I'd like to get your feedback.

Do you like my new icon? I made it after camgusmis talked me into being the cat-herder for Lojban's language debugging committee. (Yeah, a speakable human language has a debugging committee, is that not neat?) I don't possess expertise in linguistics or logic. I do not intend to arbitrate disputes over language, discuss linguistic issues, or even possess voting rights in the debugging committee-- just keep it moving. The Lojban word for "captain" is "jatna", pronounced "zhat-nah", but "Shatner" is my mnemonic device. Scotty, Spock and McCoy are the ones who know how to do things; I just keep them from sitting on their butts.

The job of herding cats is what I do with the vast majority of my free time, so I feel uniquely qualified. I define "herding cats" as "coordinating any project whose workers are true volunteers, are not obligated by compensation". (I feel the phrase is inappropriate to refer to paid employees, no matter how catlike you think software engineers are. You are not a cat herder if you have the power to fire or penalize someone. But that's another matter.) Cats show up only when they want to and are motivated by friendship and/or personal fascination.

What I am not qualified to do is design a constructed language. Just as in running a science fiction convention, my role is limited as follows:

1. Understand what tasks await doing, not necessarily knowing how to do them.
2. Assign tasks and track who is assigned to what.
3. Set deadlines and warn of their approach and arrival.
4. Keep current with everyone's contact info and preferred means of communication.
5. Talk to the volunteers a lot, asking for reports to check if they're active.
6. Seek replacements for the ones who went inactive or lost motivation.
7. Motivate active volunteers with vision, encouragement, small gifts, public thanks, or incentives tailored to their unique motivational drives.

And that, my friends, is herding cats. However, in the current traditional structure of a science fiction convention, there is a lot more that goes into being conchair, which is why I am not a conchair. It really is two totally unrelated jobs, which could be split. The second set of conchair responsibilities is:

8. Set the budget. ($$$)
9. Negotiate the hotel contract. ($$$)
10. Make long-term strategic decisions. What constituency to extract money from. What message to use to extract it from them. Where to best invest money to attract them. How to reduce the expenditure of money. ($$$)

"Oh, Matt, you can easily be conchair!" quoth he and she who have smoked crack and uttered a counterfactual statement.

The reverse side of that coin, to speak candidly, is that deeply savvy and wise decision-makers (tasks 8 through 10) do not always have sufficient personal availability to create and nurture a concom (tasks 1 through 7). Vital concom slots go empty, and we sort of coast along because we can't afford to have a leader who can create an active concom only to lead it right off a cliff. I am not speaking of any convention or any year in particular: it's fairly common.

In spite of being a cat herder, the reason I am not, have not been, and do not want to be conchair, is that I do not have opinions on 8 through 10 and money bores me. Paying attention to such matters would drain all interest out of me and make me want to GAFIAte. I would stab randomly in the dark at budgets, contracts and strategic decisions. I would be held responsible for the resulting failure, and I would be rightly blamed for having asked people to fail along with me. I will not, and constitutionally can not, evangelize anything that I don't believe in. When I mentioned this to Sal and Heather of Aegis Consulting, Sal remarked, "You don't like guessing, do you?" If I were to find out that those I trusted had staked my time and energy on a guess, I would be livid. So no, I can't evangelize guessing.

You may have noticed by now that my trust is of vital importance to me, and its dissappointment (to put it gently, I will not say "betrayal") is a recurring theme of this blog. I hear horror stories from avt_tor about conrunning politics in other regions, in which people actually compete to be in charge, and yet what an embarrassment of riches that must be. By contrast, in Michigan nobody wants to do anything. This is our harmonious blessing and lethargic curse. One issue with conventions in Michigan is that the number of people I trust enough to recruit as concom workers dwindles every year. You can't successfully build a concom if you say to people "Where have you been?" and "Have you gotten anything done?" as if to say "I don't have confidence in you." But it's true, I don't. As Head of Programming, there are two individuals to whom I say almost nothing but those things, every time I see them, because the success of my responsibility depends on it! I even tried adding someone to the "team" to shore up the task, and this third individual is doing nothing that I can see. (Don't worry, the vast majority of the programming team is completely present and it's going great overall.) Meanwhile I'm fielding inquiries about these tracks of the schedule and am helpless to do it myself since I know nothing about the topics. I feel I'm doing all I can as a cat herder, but at the end of the day, the cats are really in control.

I just keep reminding myself that the dysfunctionality is a necessary tradeoff for what I like so much about cat-herded groups.

Today's post from renniekins described a conversation with an Egyptian emigrant who, from the perspective of his cultural divide, can't understand why she's not married. In eloquent terms that speak for themselves, she explained to him why so many American women do not feel any need to desperately throw themselves at the first "good enough" guy who's stable and acceptably worth having to put up with having sex with him. Here, our friends fill in for our family-- they need to be deliberately cultivated that way.

In the comments, cannibal played devil's advocate for the position that everyone should get married:
"What happens if you fall over and bang your head at 4am, then lay bleeding and unconscious? Your friends, unless they live with you, aren't there for that. Cats are not sufficient.
Friends move away. There's an effort involved in finding and keeping up new friendships.
The investment isn't as deep. You can count on friends for moral support, but if things get really bad you can't expect them to go into debt for your medical bills. Virtual family vs real family is sort of like an HMO vs traditional insurance... the old-style insurance stuck with you no matter what, once you'd signed the contract. The HMO pays for the first $300 with a $400 deductible. Of course, real insurance doesn't exist anymore, it got replaced with a PPO.
If you got laid off, would your friends take a second job to help support you? Support you while you went back to school?
I can think of times when I've taken care of my friends, and they haven't done the same in return for me."

In Egypt they might be shocked to hear this, but marriage as a mere business arrangment is a form of prostitution. What cannibal describes is insurance. Insurance is gambling, and in gambling there is a winner and a loser. If you cash in on your insurance policy, you win and the company loses. If you don't, your premiums are wasted and the company wins.

Compare this to the One True Forever Love from storybooks who makes lavish, extravagant promises like "I love you more than all the other people in the whole world" and "till death do us part." Do people realize how much that is to ask of someone? It's... everything. Weddings shouldn't go setting up a damn passionless insurance contract on terms like that. "I now pronounce you liable for damages, you may indemnify the underwriter."

You can lose at the marriage gambling game, and you can lose big time. That is a cesspool of brooding resentment and regrets, a nightmare from which the only escape is dishonorable abandonment of the devil's contract that you signed in blood at the wedding altar just because you were afraid. If you go that route the devil will come back and have his or her due, because even if you win the gamble and end up as the invalid being cared for, you will know your spouse only gives up the rest of the prime of their life just because you've got your hooks in.

Whereas if you cultivate close relationships with people, they will come to your aid not because you're calling in the wedding wager, but because they want to. If so, they want to help you whether you marry them or not. Marriage to such a person is a wonderful and beautiful thing, but the wedding is pretty much a public celebration of something that was already there. So, if you don't think your friends have your back, the solution is to find new friends. Oh, and by the way, you need to have their backs when they're in trouble. That's the way it works. I've seen it in action and it's beautiful. I've seen more medical bills eliminated from the donations of a hundred cheerful friends than from the crippling, life-ruining, all-consuming subservience of one slave. If you're so concerned about late-night accidents, get a frickin' roommate.

The wedding vows are wonderful promises, only if they're spontaneously felt, and genuine. But if not... if you immediately run out and search desperately for a "good-enough" who you settle for... you'll grow bitter. The bottom line is that the cards life deals you might mean a different form of social structure will work for you.

I'll try almost anything once. So far my adventures have included goth nightclubs, a sword fighting class, a seedy karaoke bar and a clogging class. Needless to say, it's been as a fascinated observer rather than a participant. It's kind of like the new Star Wars trilogy: It's worth renting on DVD to see the pretty special effects the first time, but the second time you watch it, it's a stale rerun. If anyone had told me years ago (during the period where these experiences would have been considered unthinkable deviations from sanity) that there would come a time I would feel guilty for not wanting to go to a goth nightclub, I would have laughed. "You need to get your nose out of a book and go out on the dance floor or go to a karaoke bar," some of my friends say. I feel guilty about getting no enjoyment from singing and dancing-- which are supposed to be fun-- how unhealthy is that on so many levels? The funny thing is, this approach of "it's good for you, you'll learn to like it eventually" is giving me the same feeling I used to get about sitting in church. Every time I go to Star Bar or City Club they keep apologizing for it being a slow night and assuring me it was really an exception. If I just keep trying, eventually I'll attend one of these clubs on a night when it's actually enjoyable on a personal level rather than another one of my experiments in alien anthropology. I want to get out of the house and meet new people, but the world seems to be unsuitable. I guess I just need to accept that my idea of a fun place to socialize, where there is sufficient light and quiet to actually see and hear my friends, might not exist outside of conventions, the weekly M.O.F.O. and Tuesday at Tio's, and parties. We need a relaxicon around here. Alas poor Bacchanal, I hardly knew thee.

This morning's commute was only ten minutes. I'm so excited about my new digs. Moving to Oak Park went fast and without complication. Saturday, my brother helped me move what little furniture I have. Sunday, Rachel helped me move almost all the rest of the stuff. Then Blasted Bill came over and fixed my computers and set them up on my housemate phecda's network. We went to Dairy Queen and picked up Narf on the way, since he lives only a mile away from me.

As we discussed how many of our friends live nearby, we decided this vicinity would be the perfect area to have a northern addendum to Tuesday's at Tio's, First Thursdays at Amers and First Mondays at SideTrack. We might meet every other Monday if there's any overlap with SideTrack. For now, we'll try meeting 8 pm Monday nights at Denny's on Telegraph between 696 and 12 Mile in Southfield, beginning tonight at 8. I have named it Macomb Oakland Fan Organization, or MOFO for short!