## The Problem Life can be confusing. Especially in the modern world. Lots of people have a culture, a language, and a history, but no home. They -- We -- are a people in diaspora, and are especially lost when it comes to education. They're not all developers. But the skill of developing something is exactly what they need. > _We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?_ > -David Foster Wallace Sometimes, when you're missing something, the solution is to find it. Other times, you can't find it, because it doesn't exist yet. In those situations, there's only one solution: To build it. So that other people can find it && we don't have to be alone. ## The Solution > _Company. (noun)._ > > _The fact or condition of being with others, especially in a way that provides friendship and enjoyment._ > > _e.g. "We kept each other company, so we wouldn't be alone."_ We no longer live exclusively in the physical universe. Half our lives are now spent in a different universe entirely: One first conceived by the founding logicians and engineers that built the fields we call computing, and first democratized in the final decades of the 20th century. --- NU. (noun, proper) 1. an abbreviation for the New Universe: that half of daily life we now spend in these things we call "devices," specifically the Turing complete objects we call desktops, laptops, and phones. --- We the developers, who know the most about that universe, are its builders, pioneers, and explorers. And like the builders and pioneers of the physical universe, We more than others often feel that strong desire to leave the modern world entirely, to peacefully live out our days hunting and fishing by a peaceful cabin in the woods. The longing for an Exodus is strong in us. ![[there-will-come-a-day-when-you-feel-crushed.png]] We lack principles to guide us in how to live in this New Universe without going mad. Developer folklore and hacker culture have kept many parables and important lessons alive for decades in an odd half-underground subculture, rarely understood by most modern developers at work and by still fewer tech leads and managers of those teams. This folklore is a large part of the wisdom we need to survive modern life in the New Universe, whether we call ourselves developers or not. We are, in a sense, like the biblical nation of Israel, before the earliest books of the Bible were written. Most nations and peoples disappear from history when their nations die. Modern cities don't have an "Akkadian community" or a "Sumer town" or a "Little Babylon."[^1] Why then, when Israel and Judah were destroyed -- and destroyed again -- did the Jewish people persist, not just for a time, but for millenia? The simpler answer works best here: > Because someone wrote a book. The Bible, especially the first five books we call the Torah, held the people together over thousands of miles and thousands of years. Before the Bible, there's almost no trace of YHWH in the archaeological record. And the only mention of Israel was a single Egyptian inscription claiming to have destroyed them. As citizens of the modern world who often long for the past, there are two paths available to us: - Retreat into the past. - Advance into future. What we need is not theology, or propaganda, or to convert to some other religion than the one or none you believe, or to side with or against the modern state of Israel. We need to do what the earliest Authors of the Bible did when they wrote. Not to _join_ a people, but to _start_ a people. Fortunately, we already have one. All we're missing is a story. A story of who we are, where we came from, and what it means to be Our People. ## Let's start the jews > _\[This is\] all of the material of classic antisemitism: The Jews are an unassimilable group. Self-interested. Internationally organized very tightly and all talking to each other and kind of working as one mind. Who don't have the interest of the \[nations they live in\] at heart, they have their own interests at heart. And are animated by a deep hostility to the society that surrounds them._ > > -Some Guy, saying a bunch of things that sound like compliments to me. I mean hell, what do I know? I'm not Jewish by birth or religion. But that paragraph up there? Makes the people it's describing sound pretty badass and cool. LSTJ (from Church of Babel) goes here. Then LSTJ from the J/A/G dialogue. Then How to Control Everything. Then find a way to include a "When there's nothing left to take away" section near the end. ## When there's nothing left to take away ![[when-theres-nothing-left-to-take-away.png]] [^1]: Though some dispute this last one.