Chris Lott
May/June 2009
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So ideas were these perfect, invisible things outside of us. The highest
calling of men (and women, if you are one) was to reveal aspects of
these forms, to uncover something of the essential nature of things.
Our capacity to do so necessarily asymptotic, the dividing line coming
[5]
arbitrarily close to-- but never quite transgressing-- the golden curve
that separates our intelligible realm from the realm of forms.
Now, I don’t want to put Plato on too high a pedestal—he did, after all,
famously expel the poets from his ideal Republic, accusing us of
creating third-rate and third-removed imitations of an already mimetic
world—but this idea of the idea as an uncovering persisted and
informed our creative consciousness without serious competition for
close to 2000 years (which is about 1996 years longer than any idea
[7] I’ve ever had has lasted), in part because—despite being conceived
during that Godless Greek Interregnum—the theory of forms very
neatly dovetails with the significant religions that followed.
And while not typically a literal philosophy held by many today, I’d
argue that this conception remains, not just in religious refractions of
the world, but underlying the complexities of many fields of thought,
such as aesthetics, where our notion of the intensity of the beautiful
painting or tasty, delicious bacon is still in part derived from a
subconscious, apposite frame of idealized beauty, again, beauty-ness
and bacon-ness.
Humanism
It was as a reaction to the educational and philosophical traditions built
upon the Platonic ground that we were given our second idea of the
idea (not to mention a new conception of education that continues to
inform our graying and decrepit system). The Humanists, convinced
that the Greeks and Romans really had it going on… except for a few
*tiny* caveats regarding the potential power and perfectibility of
people… developed a new idea of the idea that put human creation
squarely at its center.
The role of humans wasn't one of toil to uncover what was already
there, but to create as capably as possible, new, beautiful things that
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most powerfully realized our potential and divinity; rather than seek to
draw as close as possible to the sun outside the cave, instead move
incrementally toward increasingly sufficient mimesis. Those wild and
wacky humanists maintained we could create new things that were
composed of the human spirit and reflected, through realizing our
potential, the "real" spirit of the god that gave that potential to us.
Consider how fundamental this change is in understanding who (and
what) we as humans are... In the humanist light we are makers, with
creative powers of our own, in our own small way made of the stuff of,
not just by, the gods. It's no surprise that along with a new conception
of ideas came the first instances of "creativity" as a discrete action
undertaken by humans, as a state of mind, as a happening.
So, no matter how we put the pieces together now, the modern idea of
the idea and the problematic of creativity are fundamentally aspects of
the same undertaking.
And Babbage and Lovelace begat Stibitz and the Harvard Mark I, which
begat ENIAC, and through connecting ENIAC's children in the service of
protecting the United States during the inevitable nuclear conflagration
the ARPANET was born, which thanks to the squeeze of the not-so-
[1 invisible hand came the Internet, which allowed Al Gore to invent the
1] network of the people, the World Wide Web, from which today we
derive social networks which allow all the lonely people to connect to,
hookup with, and hate on, each other.
Legacy of Industrialism
I'm dwelling on this history a bit because it's important. Because
through history we understand the vast themes from which ideas are
born and culture built... and a significant theme emerging from this
history that influences our stance toward—and use of—technology
today happens to be one that is considered least by the geeks, gamers,
facebookers, bloggers, and the twittering digerati.
In the service of commerce and progress, the factory was itself a vast
automaton that subsumed and consumed the indentured humans
within it. So I ask you… if we function perfectly within such a machine,
receiving input and producing output just like everything else being
ingested and shat out around us, then haven’t we, in essence, become
machines ourselves?
This matters because we live in-- and in many cases, including mine,
often promote-- a complex, partially inherited machinery that we also--
in the tradition of building airplanes in the sky-- build as we go. And
from-- and in support of-- that machinery we've haphazardly
"developed" (a term I use loosely given the varied motivations,
irrationality and levels of obliviousness that characterize the processes)
an educational system that has managed to retain most of the least
productive characteristics of the original educational systems that grew
around two conceptions of the idea of the idea I outlined (in the first
case scholasticism, in the second humanism).
And in this machine, we attempt to create.
Kinds of Ideas
We all know there are many different shades in the spectrum of ideas:
abstract, fulfilled, unfulfilled (valueless), sarcastic:
Good Ideas
When we speak positively of ideas we almost always speak of ideas
paired with their execution or implementation… or at least some plan
for doing so. Traveling faster than light and discovering oddly human-
like seductive green aliens is an idea… it’s only a good idea in the form
of Star Trek.
Good ideas engender their own questions. Good ideas-- and this was
the great, liberating and thus terrifying, insight of postmodernism and
post-structuralism-- constantly undermine themselves, creating new
ground we can build upon only with new ideas.
Quite simply, talent and creativity and genius operate, by and large in
spite of-- if not in direct opposition to-- the academy. This isn't a wholly
[1 bad thing... fine edges can be keenly honed by the friction of the
5] stones which they are drawn against... but those same stones can also
batter blades into plowshares and the life out of an intellectual body.
Some of this is readily embodied, even natural to, social networks and
applications, but much of it is not. And where it is, such activities and
capacities are squelched by a conformity that stems from well-meaning
attempts to provide consistency (which is often mistaken for fairness)
or out of simply being overwhelmed by the demands of the media on
top of all the other demands of teaching.
Old "Doc" Bloom owns a hardware store, but he's become famous
for his miracle cures for arthritis. He always has a long line of
patients outside his store, waiting to see him.
One day a little old lady, completely bent over, shuffles over,
leaning on her cane. When her turn comes she creeps into the
store... and emerges just 20 minutes or so later walking
completely erect, her head held high and a beatific smile on her
face.
And the woman looks at her and answers "He gave me a longer
cane."
OK, since that joke [did/didn’t] go over, let's try this one on for size
(that's an advance pun attack, as you'll see):
The tailor says "no no no... just bend your elbow like this... see,
that pulls up the sleeve."
The man says, "OK, but now look at the collar! When I bend my
elbow the collar goes halfway up the back of my head."
"So?" the tailor says. "Just raise your head up and back... perfect."
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1]
"Wait!" the man says, "Now the left shoulder is three inches lower
than the right!"
"No problem" the tailor says, "Just bend your waist way over to
the left and it evens out."
[2
So the man leaves the store wearing the suit, his right elbow
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crooked and sticking out, his head up and back, and all the while
leaning down to the left. The only way he can walk is with a
jerking, spastic gait.
As he's making his way down the street, two people walking on
the other side notice him.
"Look at that poor crippled guy," the first says. "My heart goes out
to him."
[2 "Yeah," says the second, "that's sad. But his tailor must be a
3] genius! That suit fits him perfectly!"
From research into tasking and focus we know that attention benefits
[2 from-- and needs-- training. There's a wealth of research demonstrating
4] both the largely negative effects of burgeoning communication and
entertainment technology on our ability to pay attention and simple
(but not necessarily easy) ways to improve it. Ironically, the currency of
the "attention economy" quantifies and rewards intermittent,
lightweight engagement... working in opposition, most of the time, to
what we tend to mean about when we talk about attention.
This is going to sound crazy to some, but one of the best ways to
[2 improve concentration and the fundamental skill of listening, and one
5] which directly ties into the activities of self-criticism and meta-
cognition, is meditation. Research over the last few years has
demonstrated the physical effects of meditation on brain activity both
during meditation and after. I don’t know that I see much prospect of
formal meditation becoming a regular part of our curriculum and
activities…
Contemplation
I continue to believe that the vast majority of significant creative acts
are essentially individual... or perhaps it’s more accurately to say they
[2
wouldn’t exist but for an essential component of individual activity.
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[2
8] It’s easy to promote productive solitude, particularly if it is paired with
skills at concentrating and paying attention, but it’s not as clear how to
make these a recognized part of our educational activities, particularly
in light of the push towards social technologies and public
performances.
Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Me-Haj Tjixent-MeHaji) has published an
extensive amount of information on the idea of flow, aka being “in the
groove” or “in the zone.” Which is, I think, a way of summarizing the
greatest state of mind for creativity (and happiness)
Some characteristics of flow include:
[3 It’s one of those strange paradoxes that the path to flow, as the path to
2] a creative state of mind where ideas can be conceived, comes through
what is often dismissed as rote practice
But with these easy and valuable connections comes the double-
barbed lure of hearing our mellifluous words resoundingly cheered in
the echo chamber and confusing reality with wishful thinking when
[3
that doesn’t happen. Healthy communities (healthy democracies for
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that matter) and meaningful learning demand individual capacity for
diverse engagement and self-criticism. And not just self-criticism, but a
critical ability that includes perspectives of history and tradition, not
just the culture of the moment. Building this capacity demands
undertaking that diverse engagement, which doesn't happen if you
remain solely in the network of affinity and familiarity.
Our activities need to explicitly engage this artificial (in the literal
sense) economy, making it real. The beauty of the virtuous circle,
which is explicitly rendered in collaborative systems that provide a
sense of reputation, is that it indeed does work even when it is overtly
artificial... we respond to recognition even when that recognition is
prompted...
The ourobouros that is the virtuous circle can't exist without a sensible
philosophy of-- and mechanism for handling-- intellectual property. The
distorted, complicated, mass-media-interest driven system we are
slaves to is a yoke worn by individuals inside a prison that confines--
and is slowly leaching the vitality from-- an information commons.
Most importantly, these are the concrete skills and the operational
place where we can solidify and become something more than lost,
functionally lonely somnambulant specters wandering inside our
cavernous machines, self-consuming commodity zombies… we can
realize some of our potential to be mindful walkers, eyes wide open,
embedded in genuine communities.
Virtue
A few years ago, through interactions with people like Scott and Brian,
who you’ve heard from here, and other idols of mine, including Gardner
Campbell, Barbara Ganley and Nancy White, I had a sudden, blazing
personal insight into this whole ball of wax of teaching and learning.
I realized, in a deep and very direct way that everything I talk about
w/r/t education, everything I seek for myself and to share, everything I
hope for… all are profoundly informed by and intertwined with two
emotions: trust and love.
It might seem obvious, but I realized that in the end what I am trying to
do in my work and teaching is to A) find ways to trust my friends and
[4
students and mentors alike and to trust my resilience while being
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vulnerable in the ways necessary to learn, and B) discover and
rediscover my love for learning, for the subjects I learn of and teach,
and for my friends, students and mentors. Trust is really a refraction of
love, and both are products of vulnerability and humility.
Now, I may be one of those crazy banished poets, but this realization
stunned and scared me, not just for obvious personal reasons-- these
emotions can be terrifying—but because they represent personal
character traits and virtues, which were once considered the most
essential features of humanitas, toward which education was directed
but are now dismissed if not the victims of outright hostility.
We can return to Plato now and recognize that when he says to love
what is rightly and orderly means to love what feels right and fits in a
fundamental way we recognize in those fine moments of flow.
But it turns out that I’m not alone. Positive psychology is a relatively
recently named branch of psychology that studies the strengths and
capacities needed for individuals and communities to thrive and
[4 methods for nurturing genius and talent.
6]
Positive psychology is derived from humanist psychology, which itself
has deep roots in ancient greek philosophies, including Platonism and
stoicism, as well as the humanism of the Renaissance and some
Romantic conceptions of emotional expression.
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