More on executives and constructors

There are fundamentally two kinds of "doing." Now, I almost said "two kinds of activities." Because I like that model better. That's a model where a "thing" has a quality inherent to itself. And that really facillitates classification, doesn't it? In fact, the truth is I did say activities, so attracted to that elegant division was I. I said activities in the first draft of this.

((And ultimately, I will talk as though there are two kinds of activites. It's a conceit of convienence - one that represents the way people think about the world, but one that is disingenuous regarding the way the world actually is.))

I mean, to be totally, totally honest here, I really first said "active activities." Then I caught the absurd redundancy in that, and I knew the redundancy had to go because it shouted "bad writer," about yours truly. But I liked the absurdity of the redundancy, and the reason it had occured in the first place was because I need to distinguish between Activ-ities and Passiv-ities.

So, naturally, a solution presented itself. And my gut said it was a good one. It is a strategy that I use often and with good results actually. That strategy is to tell, or at least to sound as though you are telling, the truth. In this case that manifested as: a clause that I thought might read kind of transparent and cool and compelling. The clause was "I almost said...". So the whole sentence, after I noticed the redunancy and fixed it, now read "I almost said ACTIVE activites."

(( That new sentence satisfied me, apparently, because I went on to write quite a bit more, and then I walked away from this work for quite some time.

Now I am back, and the original compostion, and it's subsequent "I almost said" form, are undergoing/have undergone significant changes. Which include this sentence right here. But not the following. The following picks up the narrative as though this little explanatory aside - this part in which I reveal the wires and such behind the text - never happened. ))

Of course I'm not including passive activities like sleeping and watching tv and breathing. Those aren't ACTIVities at all. Those are PASSive activities. Passtivities.
But anyway, activities are behaviors that produce a measurable outcome, usually an outcome with physical manifest. So, for example, a "rose garden" is the physical manifestation of "planting a rose garden."

And it seems to me that if you look at all activities as a massive group, you will find that they come in two "genders" if you will - constructive or executive. To clarify about these "genders." Neither activites is feminine; neither masculine. There are girly executive activities, there are manly executive activities. Same for constructive.

I used the term 'genders' because I think it evokes a strong associative understanding. By associating this the executive/constructive dichotomy with the intimately familiar dichotomy between boys and girls, I hope to suggest that this dichotomy is as fundamental and as decisively "dual" in nature as the dichotomy between x and y chromosomes. However, it is important to remember that it is activities, not people, that sex as constructive or executive. People may tend strongly to one or the other approach - and therefore will probably be better at, and favor, activites that associate with one approach - but all people are fundamentally, at least a little bit, both constructors and executives. You have to be, just to make it through the day.

But people tend to be primarily either constructors or executives.

I mean these terms to mean the following things:

1. Executives are people who are naturally inclined to develop and execute plans. Certain types of activities are more or less executive in nature. What do we call individual executive activities? Let's call them executions. Like when a government kills someone. That's horrible language though. Especially the way I phrased it. Cause I put it in the most 'compassion inducing way' by saying when "A" government kills someone, just cause I was feeling a little politically bambastic. Executors are just people who do well with an order-of-operations, a series of carefully mapped out steps.

2. Constructors are people who are inclined towards a "seat of the pant's approach." That language, however, is terrible. Because it implies kind of half assing things. That is not the case at all. Constructors simply prefer to massage things into shape. Often they will start with no plan at all and perhaps even have only an inkling of a concept.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am a constructor. I had some concepts when I began this - more so than usual - but in displaying the wires like I did above, I both provided an example of what constructive art looks like and displayed the fact that I am a constructor. It is folly to try to escape who you are. Best to just Meta up on yourself ad infinitum.

Next Time: Meta-ing

mr strauss
pop goes lethal