Sunday Letters Sunday Letters Journal

In this episode of The Sunday Letters Podcast, I’m in conversation with former US Air Force pilot and current lecturer in digital media studies at TU Shannon, Bernie Goldbach. We talk about the contrast in Bernie’s work from the high intensity of flying missions in the Pacific region and the Middle East to the perhaps less demanding work of lecturing third-level students in Clonmel. Here’s a summary of some of the main points in the conversation.
* Hauling radioactive waste on Enewetak in the Pacific
* Identity and intrinsic motivation of Air Force pilots
* The challenge of work-life balance in high-intensity roles
* The Secret Service, working at The Pentagon and one of the greatest spoofs the US played on Russia.
* Bernie’s take on Ukraine, the intrinsic motivation of Ukrainian soldiers
* Why the 1988 Ramstein Air Show disaster happened (what Bernie witnessed that day and, crucially, the night before.)
* Leaving the Air Force and moving to Ireland and translating his skills into teaching.
* The heightened attention, perception, memory and motor skills of high performers
* Creative design and digital media in education
* The negative impact of technology on young people’s development. Passive entertainment Vs practical interaction.
* Finding fulfilment and engagement in work and the power of symbols of success.
* The work in the post-Social Media world and the power of stories.
* What would you do if money was no object?
* The future of work and the impact of technology on work and jobs.
Links
clonmeldigital.micro.blog
insideview.ie
Bernie Goldbach LinkedIn
Technological University of The Shannon
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To join live every Friday on Peak, go here. I’ll be reading from the book of the week and follow with a discussion with you and others on the core message of the book. Tonight I was joined by philosopher and friend Dmitri Belikov.


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This episode is a reading from a speech by Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, to students at Tilburg University in 1997 titled Beyond An Economy of Work & Spend. In this essay, Schor offers a detailed breakdown of why th…

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Transcript Extract
I’ve been experimenting with transcriptions. Here’s an extract from this week’s monologue.
(00:04)Welcome to episode 222, On The Merit of Doing Nothing. This is the Sunday letters podcast, part of the Sunday letters journal. Read, and listen to all previous episodes and issues of the newsletter over at sundayletters.larrygmaguire.com. There's a link at the top of the show notes, probably one or two in between, and one at the bottom. This podcast is free. Although if you decide to become a paying subscriber cost about three euros or €3.50 or $3.50 about the price of a good cup of coffee, you'll get subscriber-only episodes, short, little extracts, and other articles that are reserved for paying subscribers and supporters of the Sunday letters journal. So if you decide to do that I'd be very grateful. If not, you can listen for free. It's a free episode. And if you're so inclined, give us a review on apple podcasts or wherever you happen to listen to your podcasts.(01:11)Tell us what you think of the show. Give us a few stars, help people find what I'm doing and lets me know what you think of this material. So this week, I'm talking about the merit of doing nothing or switching off and tuning out of doing the opposite of being busy. And what got me on this topic this morning was I had planned something completely different, but an item appeared in my feed on LinkedIn about a piece of research that was reported in the Guardian, on the merits and the benefits of, and the ability to access air creativity. When we actually switch off from thinking, and it is true. And it's been reported in a number of different places by many writers that the benefit of switching off and going off for a wander and doing things that are not associated with work, call it rest, recuperate, recuperation, whatever you want to call it.(02:14)But it's, it's the absence of thinking and then, and trying to solve the problem or get where you want to go. We live in a world. That's very much hinged to the idea that you've got to be active. You've got to be productive. You've got to be working your ass off. You've got to work all the hours that are sent in order to make enough money in order to be of enough value to other people, to the corporation, to the company, to your customers, whoever. And it's really a foolish idea where we're, we're so welded to the nuts and bolts idea of life, to the practicalities of life, to(02:59)The ones and the zeros. And if it's not a one or a zero, if it's not, if we're not active enough if there's no data to read, if we're acting on a whim or an apparent whim, well, then that's in, that's not valuable at all. In fact, it's useless. So to play, for example, is something you do when you finish work, when you're finished being active and getting stuff done, you know because you're a practical human being. And, you know, in order to get ahead in the world, you've got to be a doer, and you've got to go after it, you know, embrace the hustle and all this kind of nonsense. And it's because I suppose we live in a technological society a digital society, and we've been this, this, our hegemonic common sense about work suggests that you've always got to be active and it's the value is in the data.(03:59)And the data will tell you everything you need to know, like as if we can predict the future. And we know we can't. The weather forecast can't even be predicted. And why do you think as a human being, as a kind of single cell in this multicellular organism we call life. Why is it did you think that you can predict and determine your future when nothing else can be predetermined, it arrives, and it's magical almost, and we should be content with that, but instead, we want to analyze the shit out of everything, and we have to work our asses off in order to be valuable to ourselves and other people. And it's a nonsense. So what do we do? We keep working and we work and w

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I discovered Bukowski a few years back and was immediately caught by the sharp end of what he wrote. He wrote from the inside out, saying what he saw and what he felt without censorship, often to the point of being crude and offensive. I think he was hated as much as loved, but it seems that despite it all, he stuck by his principles. He hadn’t outlined any particular philosophy as such, other than that most people were full of shit and incapable of being real. At poetry readings, he’d abuse his audience. I think that’s why they came to see him. Regarding the work of an artist, his advice was to do it or don’t do it. If it is there, go with it; if it isn’t, wait. Trying is counter-productive. In the commercial world of goods and services, we can’t tolerate this philosophy of work. It is an offence against our consumerist common sense. Whatever you want, it is yours—just set yourself out in the world and get it. You’ll find some of Bukowski’s thoughts and feelings on the craft of writing and other topics in the collection, On Writing.
In 1964, Bukowski wrote to author Jack Conroy about Conroy’s novel The Disinherited, a work of fiction that tackled the plight of the working classes in the 1920s and 1930s United States. Bukowski insisted that from his point of view, the poverty of the 1920s working classes portrayed in the story was still relevant forty years on. When we read what Bukowski said about work, we’d be forgiven for thinking that it was today. Those of us in western industrialised nations may have a materially better standard of living and fancier gadgets than in 1964, but there remain many who are marginalised. Given the current energy crisis and increasing cost of living, many who were already struggling to stay afloat are probably drowning.
Here’s Bukowski;

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I discovered Bukowski a few years back and was immediately caught by the sharp end of what he wrote. He wrote from the inside out, saying what he saw and what he felt without censorship, often to the point of being crude and offensive. I think he was hated as much as loved, but it seems that despite it all, he stuck by his principles. He hadn’t outlined any particular philosophy as such, other than that most people were full of shit and incapable of being real. At poetry readings, he’d abuse his audience. I think that’s why they came to see him. Regarding the work of an artist, his advice was to do it or don’t do it. If it is there, go with it; if it isn’t, wait. Trying is counter-productive. In the commercial world of goods and services, we can’t tolerate this philosophy of work. It is an offence against our consumerist common sense. Whatever you want, it is yours—just set yourself out in the world and get it. You’ll find some of Bukowski’s thoughts and feelings on the craft of writing and other topics in the collection, On Writing.

In 1964, Bukowski wrote to author Jack Conroy about Conroy’s novel The Disinherited, a work of fiction that tackled the plight of the working classes in the 1920s and 1930s United States. Bukowski insisted that from his point of view, the poverty of the 1920s working classes portrayed in the story was still relevant forty years on. When we read what Bukowski said about work, we’d be forgiven for thinking that it was today. Those of us in western industrialised nations may have a materially better standard of living and fancier gadgets than in 1964, but there remain many who are marginalised. Given the current energy crisis and increasing cost of living, many who were already struggling to stay afloat are probably drowning.