Paul Erdos is a good example of doing this well. What with his system of modest bounties on math problems and showing up at friends homes with a suitcase ready to collaborate saying “my brain is open”. His case illuminates some sufficient conditions...
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In western culture, we associate valuable output with dramatic, viral, launch drama, "appearing in public" in Arendt sense, and a sense of historicity and action. We associate quiet-drip work with either craft that's durable but not historic, or outright ahistorical laboring.
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This is not entirely unfair. Historicity *does* tend to correlate to dramatic conclusions of individual creative heroism and dramatic beginnings of collective historic chapters. Making *is* mostly "mere" craft, tossed after it wears out. Most quiet drip work is transient labor.
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Take Jiro Dreams of Sushi for instance. You could argue that being in a documentary makes Jiro a "historic" figure who shaped history, just via a quieter Japanese ethos. Otoh, really... is there more there than transient labor that will be forgotten, and some wabi-sabi equipment?
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But I think something is slipping through the cracks of the correlation between the three modes of vita activa (historic action, making, laboring) and performance appearances (appearance drama, background economic context, invisible labor context)
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Make that a 3x3 matrix and ask whether each of the appearance modes can have the consequential structure of each of the vita activa modes? Can you shape history invisibly laboring at home outside of public view for years, with never a dramatic "appearance" moment? I think so.
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Conversely, can something that has all the drama of public appearance have none of the historic consequentiality of Arendtian action we correlate it to? Of course. Most politics is in fact like that. Fine, I guess I should make this 3x3 matrix and blog it.
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End of conversation
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