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Behind the scenes of this vainglorious Happy End abomination is the Jackal, as project manager. Obviously the project has been managed very badly, but who knows what difficulties have been faced?
Meet the Jackal
A shady character . Even careful researchers have not found much on him. What we do know comes from text rescued from the way-back machine (following below). We cannot guarantee its legitimacy.
Days of the Jackal,
A much maligned creature. Clever, loyal and persistent. Hounds the devilish details with dogged persistence. A Jackal of many trades and master of co-ordination… The Jackal is an experienced generalist. Put briefly, he knows jack-all, that makes him an expert.
Who is the Jackal?
The Jackal has learned by experience (some of it bitter), that the way to survive is to co-operate. He has evolved survival strategies. By default he has become a project manager.
The Jackal has tried many things, and often has failed dismally. If you learn by your mistakes, then the Jackal is a genius.
Clint Eastwood said: ‘A man’s gotta know his limitations’. The Jackal has learned something about his, the hard way.
Is the Jackal a workaholic?
All nature programmes rely on the fact that a close look endears you to the star. The Jackal is no exception, once you begin to understand his single-minded, compulsive need to bring down the prey, and how much desperate wheedling and beguilement it takes, then you find yourself sympathising. You feel his need and understand he has to be a workaholic just to survive.
Is the Jackal able to deliver?
Experience suggests that he wins through in the end. The snarling bravado of the Jackal is not all posturing. The padding covering the Jackal’s bones testifies to a track record that includes some surprisingly impressive kills. Although other beasts were also involved in bringing the quarry down, and the Jackal’s role in the hunt might go un-remarked, the Jackal is able to scavenge and has a place at the table.
Where does the Jackal come from?
The Jackal is from everywhere and nowhere. His lair constantly shifting as he hunts down the latest quarry. The Jackal lives in the recesses of your mind and, being a semi-wild creature, is a figment of the collective imagination, yours as well as mine.
Capt. Kidd.
The one who does the actual work is Capt. Kidd. Trouble is, he’s lazy. That’s why nothing gets finished. Talk about open source. He’s usually on the sauce, so not much gets done, tragic really. Grandiose plans, maybe a few bold strokes to get a new idea started, then distraction, procrastination, changed priorities, disappointment and depression.
He says he was a real pirate when he was young. He says pirates are misunderstood, and that really, piracy was about collective justice, democratic decision making, shared spoils and solidarity: “”We are, one and all, resolved to stand by one another!”
As far as we understand, he got into forgery and fraud during a custodial sentence for armed robbery. Since then he’s applied his creative skills wherever he thought he could make money.
Strangely talented, but massively inconsistent. You probably know someone just like him. Not a prima donna, just a waster. Don’t trust him. We never got to know his back story either.
When he had a lot of brandy, (quite a few times), he had some amazing stories. But they changed each time. Supposedly sailed on the high seas and was a sea captain, but that’s impossible so can’t be true. But really good at forgery. No idea where he’s from, he seems to know a few different languages and a lot about 18th century sailing boats. Pretty weird really, we think he does some hacking as well.
Foxy
Foxy is the flash cousin of the Jackal. He ponces around in his Jag trying to impress people. Jackal hates him – he never forgave Foxy after he broke the gate and the Jag.
Foxy got kicked out of some posh finance company for fraud. He was supposed to do well with the Gatecrash pyramid project, an educational software ponzy scheme. It was a big scandal, ages ago, caused a lot of damage and got him into trouble.
He is a bit dim. Don’t trust anything he is involved in, don’t click on anything, he is a scammer. Inform the police if you catch sight of him.
Other stuff
If you have got this far you might be ready for the bonus video. (Don’t get disappointed, it is still under construction, coming one day or is it a pipe-dream?).
The overall aim
Procrastination, find a way to fill the void until it is time to shuffle off the mortal coil. Maybe that’s also about creativity (in an oblique way). Any original intentions are lost, or diluted and compromised. Is the highest form of Art comedy? Is the most sophisticated form of comedy laughing at the misfortunes of others? Followed by the Karmic redemption of your own humiliation of course.
Creative coach?
A possible avenue, creative coaching.
What’s that? Is it a coach who is creative or someone who coaches people to help them be creative? Or could it be both?
“If your problem was a car, what sort of car would it be?”
If the essence of being human is to be creative, the term “creative coach” means helping to amplify the creativity of others and adopting a creative approach to the coaching process.
As artificial intelligence fills our world with more and more automatically created rubbish, being human becomes more important, we all need to connect strongly with our own unique human creativity. This is something special that machines cannot take away from us.
Discernment
Maybe even more than the process of generating new things, (ideas or artefacts or both), creativity is about discernment: being able to recognise what’s good.
Shortcomings of computers
Computers are great tools and can help with making things, ideating, and collecting data on choices that humans make, finding which things are more popular (and potentially trying to imitate the characteristics of those things), but they’re not able to make value judgements, not proper human ones.
Fully appreciating the relevance of the shortcomings of computers and the the humanity of discernment is of central importance. It entails becoming more aware of your own subtle reactions to the world and their significance.
Most of us are not very good at discernment. Most of us benefit from giving our feelings, reactions and discernment more attention.
Everyone deserves dignity and fair treatment, but things get tricky where people have been causing harm. Discernment involves lots of things, appreciating when we are being harmed is an essential step towards proper perspective on what harms are being perpetrated on others too. Sometimes we cause harm unwittingly. Should we be held responsible? Answering questions like that needs discernment.
a reminder that this is forever under construction
