I’ve got an ambitious goal for this week: vomitout the chapter in 7Hard on “Individual Wealth vs. Commonwealth”.   This is the first substantive chapter of the book — after the (hopefully) engaging introductory section — and it raises some themes, like the sorry history of the 20th Century with respect to justice, human rights, and welfare, which persist through several of the Laws.

I’m looking over the outline, which I wrote over the month of October, which will guide this process, and I’m sorry to say I’m a little disappointed with the quality of the guidance it’s going to give to the next phase.

If you’ve ever worked on a multi-stage “knowledge worker” kind of project — a software release, a big report, etc., I’m sure you know the drill: optimize for making the current phase look good.  In this case, I was racing to check off the todo-list item “finish outline” and, frankly, I cut corners to do so.  For example, there’s a bullet in the outline for WEALTH (as we’ll call the chapter this week) saying “The Tragedy of the Commons”.  That’s great, and I kind of sort of know what to say about it, but it’s the minimum possible placeholder for that part of the outline.  The sad thing is that the outline is chock-full of minimum possible placeholders.  Sigh.

In any case, I sort of know what I want to say, which is good, so I’m going to get on with it.

In addition, I have a target of opportunity this week.  I got Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. DuBois (BR) out of the library and I’ve got three weeks to read it and get it back.

(My algorithm for a book is 1) try to get it out of the library 2) try to get it used 3) get it new.  I could eventually spring for this book, but let’s see how the race to read it goes.  It’s not bad to have a forcing function on reading a book.  Focuses the attention.)

BR is a classic of U.S. history.  DuBois was the first scholar to claim that Reconstruction — the post Civil-War period where Union troops  were occupying the South and enforcing an interim government — was not a disaster of Yankee greed coupled with Southern progressive incompetence — but was actually a success which was ended by the premature de-occupation of the South before the work could be finished.

I believe it’s impossible to understand the history of the U.S. without understanding slavery and white supremacy, which continue to vex us today.  DuBois is an essential reading on the road to understanding those issues.

BR is related to WEALTH, as it is related to other sections in the book.  I can’t pretend that it “belongs” in this week’s workload, but it isn’t utterly out of place.

I’ve been doing the main Deep Work in the morning, which means fitting in things like reading BR in the afternoon, not my sharpest time for reading.  I’ll need something to keep me from nodding out.

I’ll keep you posted on progress on the writing, and the reading.