It’s been a while since we’re digested any of Ferris’ work, but I figured that with Summer starting that it was time to dive back in and start realizing just how far off my personal compass is from True North and to figure out what my pace count should actually be.
Chapter Four, titled “System Reset” has quite a bit of food for thought - hence the reason it’s taken so long to digest. Of the two quotes that he begins the chapter with Ferris truly does make the reader think about the life that they live, their actions and their level of comfort. Of the opening quotations, the following definitely makes one think.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists
I read these words and my first though is that this is common sense, however what I’ve also come to find is that what I find as common sense ends up being above and beyond what commonality holds. Granted, there is something to be said with relation to adapting to the world in which we live within. This logic is reasonable and modern in thinking. Taking the world and molding it to my own needs, using what is best for me, brings me to think in some way that George Bernard Shaw was a man ahead of his time living life as a post-modern visionary.
It is key to realize that being a master of one’s environment is what allows man to have an edge on those around him. Adapting nature such that nature revolves around you and you are its master rather than being mastered and preyed upon by nature, in as much as the world.
As an Information Technology Consultant, it is very easy to work toward the mediocare and learn the basics of a system’s architecture, but by dissecting it and understanding the underlying functions and how it is tied and interwoven with the platform allows for creativity. Understanding this relationship between functionality and method provides for the ability to modify the basis upon which the system is derived, allowing for true mastery to synthesize something new and outside the box rather than conforming to the determiniant of a matrix.