an Amateur and a Dilettante

i got my roommate to borrow two books from the library for me.
thanks shanon.

interestingly enough, both seem to share tips
that can help me with my next assignment, my job.

one is christopher locke's gonzo marketing.
while i'm not too sold on his gonzo model,
the book has moments.
some funny ones, some whoa-cool-i-want-to-look-at-it-like-that ones.

here's a favorite (rarely will i encode four paragraphs from a book but i thought paraphrasing it would be too polite):

The concept of gonzo marketing would never have come together at all if I'd had to rigorously research every damn thread we're about to touch on. Will some of these lead us into curious intellectual culs-de-sac? Yeah, probably. Are you likely to encounter grievous gaffes and disquieting half truths? Sure, but what else is new? By screwing up royally here, I hope to provide a new kind of model demonstrating to business that it not only can, but must move beyond its unhealthy fear of error and imprecision. Today, it is certainty that is not an option. Failure is almost guaranteed.

In addition to being a sort of indie-Indy, I also think of myself as An Amateur and a Dilettante. The caps are there to echo the title of the movie, An Officer and a Gentleman--though as you're already finding out, I'm neither. At its heart, gonzo is animated by an attitude of deeply principled anti-professionalism in the best sense. And there is a best sense. Historian and former Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin once wrote: "Democracy is government by amateurs.... The survival of our society depends on the vitality of the amateur spirit... The representative of the people ... must be wary of becoming a professional politician."

Here, amateur clearly doesn't mean incompetent or unskilled. It doesn't mean unprofessional. But professional-ism is something altogether else. Over time, any functional specialization tends to forget its relationship with the larger social context it was created to work within and serve. Instead, it concentrates on developing an inner sanctum of specialists who talk among themselves in a private language inaccessible to outsiders. Almost without exception, such professionals despise amateurs. Or worse, accord them a patronizing form of faux eye-rolling patience.

Related to "amateur" is the even more pejorative term "dilettante"--someone who practices a craft or studies a field of knowledge in which he or she is not a "recognized professional." But the etymological roots of these words tell a different story. Amateurs do what they do for love (from the Latin amare), while dilettantes are not mere casual dabblers, but instead are inspired by delight (from the Italian dilettare by way of the Latin delectare). But delight and passion for the work are precisely the qualities professionals tend to lose first. The opposite of professionalism is what Zen master Shunryu Suzuki called "beginner's mind"--an ability to look at the world with fresh eyes and an open spirit.



easier said than done.
my reminder posted june 12 2006 (link here)

will be severely needed.