Stewart Brand

And he had screwed up a couple of times, and then he watched mechanics screw up with his motorcycle.

And that was when he decided, OK, if I'm going to get somebody reliable to take care of my motorcycle, I guess it's going to have to be me.

And he really did just immerse himself totally in becoming really skilled as a mechanic dealing with his bike.

And then because he was also thinking about values and philosophy, he used that as a frame for talking about his philosophy.

which is interesting stuff, but not nearly as interesting as the clarity he had about maintenance itself.

And so what I did was I basically skimmed all that cream out of his book about maintenance and put it in my book.

Gumption traps are wonderful.

It's the sort of thing that's, you know, now the...

Both word is agency.

Do you have agency?

Can you confer agency?

How are you going to get agency in this otherwise helpless situation?

And instead of saying agency, he said gumption, which is a nice kind of funky old word.

Yeah.

And it isn't highfalutin.

The agency's kind of highfalutin.

Gumphin is very something one of your grandparents, one of their grandparents might have talked about.

And a gumption trap is an interesting concept that basically you get into a situation, sometimes technically with the motorcycle itself, but often just inside your own mind.

You get frustrated and mad because you have a wrong theory of what the problem with your motorcycle is.

Why is it cutting out when I take it on the road, but I can't find out what's making it cut out when I'm back in the shop?