Signing
up for a Long Now membership was worth every cent. The monthly
newsletter is priceless: it keeps us focused on 'thinking long' about
our own project. Setting up a watchmaking facility in a country with no
horological manufacturing history is as planning long term as it gets
and we are not talking years or decades- but generations.
This month the focus is on counterbalancing forces which actively work
against long term thinking: immediacy, ephemerality, and myopia.
Immediacy is 'the quality of bringing one into direct
and instant involvement with something, giving rise to a sense of
urgency or excitement'. Of course is nothing wrong with excitement about
a project, but the urge to act urgently and make a quick decision could be fatal.
Ephemerality is 'the property of lasting for a very
short time; an impermanence that suggests the inevitability of ending or
dying'. Indeed, human life is short; 'Man, born of a woman, lives but a
few days, and they are full of trouble' proclaimed the prophet. But
when Hans Wilsdorf started Rolex with borrowed money in his tiny office,
he wasn't worried much about mortality. Neither did the builders of the
pyramids or those who built the Harbour bridge.
Myopia is a vision condition in which you can see
objects near to you clearly, but objects farther away are blurry. While
we are yet to lay down the first brick in Mittagong, I can clearly see
the finished building, every room, every window, bench, tools and
watchmakers and machinists working together making Australian watches.
Strangely to some, this future reality is as real today as it will be in years to come. |
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