This weekend I finished the His Dark Materials trilogy. I can't wait until Sylvia is old enough so I can read it to her. I loved the religious undercurrent and the notion of a God Particle. At the core of the book is a really interesting twist on obedience and morality. It takes a well-deserved swipe that the notion that it is moral to be obedient, and individual creativity and exploration is immoral.

The people I respect the most aren't of the obedient mindset, but pretend to be for political reasons. I had an encounter with such a person on a large and complex project, where we had the dictate of not doing anything on our own and submitting it to an architect with half a clue for "approval". There was a senior scientist on the project that was driving a lot of the requirements from the background. He caught me at configuring my own system and doing it in my own way. Instead of coming down on me, he smiled like a Jesuit and said, "It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission."

I work in the software industry, where personal responsibility, creativity and intelligence are essential to building good solutions. If you accept personal responsibility for the success of your projects, they will generally be successful. I'm amazed at how often someone has a bad idea and people will just go with it. Doing things badly just because everyone else does them badly is a twisted sort of teamwork, but it attracts mediocre people like flies, because it doesn't require you to think for yourself, or accept responsibility for failure. If you are doing group think and the project fails, the group is at fault and you can always point a finger. If I accept responsibility and if the project fails, I fail. Suddenly, I have a hell of a lot more incentive to do a good job. Of course, I trust my own competence, so I'm more inclined to take personal responsibility.