We're going to have to be patient...

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

Edward O. Wilson (1999) "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" New York: Vintage p. 280

E.O. Wilson on Postmodernism vs. the Enlightenment

All movements tend to extremes, which is approximately where we are today. The exuberant self-realization that ran from romanticism to modernism has given rise now to philosophical postmodernism (often called poststructuralism, especially in its more political and sociological expressions). Postmodernism is the ultimate polar antithesis of the Enlightenment. The difference between the two extremes can be expressed roughly as follows: Enlightenment thinkers believe we can know everything, and radical postmodernists believe we can know nothing.

Edward O. Wilson (1999) "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" New York: Vintage pp. 43, 44.

Stop the Madness!

"Sanity - consciousness - can only come into this world through you. You do not need to wait for the world to become sane, or for somebody else to become conscious, before you can be enlightened. You may wait forever. Do not accuse each other of being unconscious. The moment you start to argue, you have identified with a mental position and are now defending not only that position but also your sense of self. The ego is in charge. You have become unconscious."

Eckhart Tolle (1999) The Power of Now. Vancouver: Namaste. p. 159.

Thoreau on high discipline & infinite leisure

"It is worth the while to apply what wisdom one has to the conduct of his life surely. I find my self oftenest wise in little things & foolish in great ones. That I may accomplish some particular petty affair well i live my whole life coarsely. A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste no less in life than in housekeeping. keep the time -- observe the hours of the universe - not of the cars. What are 3 score years & ten hurriedly & coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure, in which your life in coincident with the life of the Universe. We live too fast & coarsely just as we eat too fast & do not know the true savor of our food. We consult our will & understanding and the expectations of men - not our genius. I can impose upon myself tasks which will crush me for life and prevent all expansion - & this I am but too inclined to do. One moment of life costs many hours, - hours not of business but of preparation and invitation. yet the man who does not betake himself at once & desperately to sawing wood is called a loafer - though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven - all the while which shall surely be opened to him - That aim in life is highest which requires the highest & finest discipline. How much - What infinite leisure it requires - as of a lifetime, to appreciate a single phenomenon! You must camp down beside it as for life - having reaching your land of promise & give yourself wholly to it.

Thoreau, Henry David. [28 December 1852, Journal 5: 412] (1999) "Uncommon Learning: Henry David Thoreau on Education" ed. Martin Bickman. New York: Mariner.

The Flavor of Life

"Many of our days should be spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man's genius must have suggested to him. Let not your life be wholly without object, thought it be only the quality of an insignificant berry that you will have tasted, but the flavor of your life to that extent, and it will be such sauce as no wealth can buy."

Thoreau, Henry David. [Extract from Journal IX: 36-38. 30 August 1856].
1999, New York: Mariner.

When an ism isn't an ism

Some rather old words from John Dewey could be applied to current arguments for current educational movements such as constructivism:

"Those who are looking ahead to a new movement in education, adapted to the existing need for a new social order, should think in terms of Education itself rather than in terms of some 'ism about education, even such an 'ism as "progressivism." For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an 'ism becomes so involved in reaction against other 'isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them."

John Dewey (1938) "Experience and Education" New York: Kappa Delta Pi

Exponential Change

The future is widely misunderstood. Our forebears expected it to be pretty much like their present, which had been pretty much like their past. Exponential trends did not exist one thousand years ago, but they were at that very early stage in which they were so flat and so slow that they looked like no trend at all. As a result, observers' expectation of an unchanged future was fulfilled. Today, we anticipate continuous technological progress and the social repercussions that follow. But the future will be far more surprising than most people realize, because few observers have truly internalized the implications of the fact that the rate of change itself is accelerating.

Kurzweil, Ray. (2005) "The Singularity is Near." London: Penguin. p. 11

Compelled to Share

We are compelled to share our ideas; that is how they come to life.  And when we share ideas they multiply and grow, forming a powerfully reinforcing circle.  You are not defined simply by what you own.  You are also what you share.  That should be our credo for the century to come.

Leadbeater, Charles (2008) "We-Think" London: Profile. p. 239

Outliers: Secrets to Success

It is not the brightest who succeed... Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf.  It is, rather, a gift.  Outliers are those who have been given opportunities - and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

Gladwell, Malcolm. (2008) Outliers.  New York: Little, Brown & Company.  p. 267

The New Hybrids: Company Meets Community

We-Think will not spread far nor sustain itself if it is confined to tasks for which people are prepared to volunteer.  People must find a way to make their livings from these collaboratives and invest in them.  We-think entrepreneurs are consequently desperately searching for viable business models that will allow them to earn some money without turning their backs on community values, while traditional companies are searching for ways to become more open and collaborative.  The We-Think gift economy needs to find an accommodation with the market economy in which goods and services have to be paid for.  The most exciting business models of the future will be hybrids that blend elements of the company and the community, of commerce and collaboration:  open in some respects, closed in others; giving some content away and charging for some services; serving people as consumers and encouraging them, when it is relevant, to become participants.  

We -Think will gradually change find fundamental aspects of economic life: how we work, consume, innovate, lead and own productive endeavours.

Leadbeater, Charles (2008)  "We-Think"  London: Profile. p.91

Personality as self-fulfilling performance

The best way to achieve the insulational state of numbness is to be swamped by routine activities.  The old-fashioned superficiality of routine blends seamlessly with the new superficiality, the surface quality of ubiquitous representation -- and this hybrid accelerates constantly, as you take on more and more.  Adult busyness is constituted, as we all know, by innumberable things we "have to do."  People we have to be nice to, meetings we have to go to, events we have to attend, and, above all, deadlines we have to meet.  And, of course, by little interventions of chance, glitches in the flow that you have to deal with as you move from one thing you have to do to the next thing you have to do.  The result is a simulation of reality convincing enough to pass for the original, for most of us, most of the time.  It is only when the ultimately real descends upon us in the form of tragic accident, illness, death, or a miraculous recovery, the birth of a child -- only then does that simulation stand revealed for what it is.

Most of us want to be, as the old saying goes, "creatures of habit" -- even though we know that those habits are constructs, we can mostly forget it if the pace is sufficiently demanding and our roles are sufficiently rewarding.

And "roles" now means more than sociology intended, don't forget, more than "mother," "neighbor," "boss," and so on.  The term also refers to character and personality, to Method acting -- even though, when you perform yourself out of habit as a busy adult, you can forget that it's a performance in a way you couldn't when you were an adolescent.

Are you a "no-nonsense kinda guy" who is "good in a crisis" and "doesn't suffer fools gladly" but "doesn't hold a grudge" either?  Or maybe you are "sort of wacky" and people "never know what you'll say next," but you are "always there" for your friends, and you "really listen" and "give good advice" too?  Whatever the particulars, to the extent that you are mediated, your personality becomes an extensive and adaptable tool kit of postures of this kind.  As you immerse yourself in the routines of adulthood, they ramify in all directions, in various combinations, depending on settings and likely consequences -- which you assess automatically at all sorts of levels, from the moment-to-moment flicker of expression on the faces of people you are with, to the long-term likelihood of professional advancement.  You become an elaborate apparatus of evolving shtick that you deploy improvisationally as circumstances warrant.  Because it is all so habitual, and because you are so busy, you can almost forget the underlying reflexivity.

de Zengotita, Thomas.  (2005) "Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It."  Bloomsbury, New York. pp. 186-7.

Tools for Conviviality

In a golden period in the 1970s Illich set about dissecting the failings of modern institutions, the professionals who organise them and the systems they design, in a series of short polemics:
Deschooling Society, Limits to Medicine, Disabling Professions and Tools for Conviviality. He argued that as people become dependent on the expert knowledge of professionals they lose faith in their capacity to act. His solution was that people should spend less time as consumers, more as producers of their own well-being. And for that to be possible they need more convivial, easy-to-use tools.

Illich's most optimistic book, Tools for Conviviality, which inspired Felsenstein and others in the hacker community in the 1970s, put the challenge this way:

I believe a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows us to produce and consume.

Convivial institutions work through conversation rather than instruction, through co-creation between users and producers, learners and teachers, rather than delivery from professionals to clients; and through mutual support among peers as much as by means of professional service.


Illich, Ivan, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973)
quoted in
Leadbeater, Charles, We-Think(London: Profile, 2008) p.44

Pecha-Kucha Night

Last night I attend Pecha-Kucha Night at the Powerhouse Arts Centre/Museum in Brisbane. The basic concept is that a series of presenters discuss their topic in the format of 20 slides x 20 seconds each. Last night I saw some joyful kinetic art, the launch of the Park(ing) Space project for Brisbane, a stonemason/architect who creates modern art headstones, a furniture designer who works with bamboo, and a number of other ideas and artists that I most probably wouldn't have been exposed to.

I'm looking forward to checking out these evenings when I get back to Shanghai. Pecha-Kucha nights are held in cities all over the world, and they're a fantastic opportunity to be exposed to creative and innovative thinking and people.

Check out the ever-expanding list of cities/events at the Pecha-Kucha website.

It's weird when you wake up one morning and realize that your entire adult life is based upon the decision of a teenager.

Stew (Writer/narrator of Passing Strange)

[from a television interview on ABC News]

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Chin-Ning Chu, author of The Asian Mind Game, offers up some advice on those who'd steal your serenity in Thick Face, Black Heart.

Keep a respectful distance from those who would steal your peace and serenity.  In your daily life, you will run into this type of person around every corner.  These people are not necessarily cunning or ruthless, nor are they a real threat to your career or personal objectives, but they are eternally annoying.

They operate by thriving on their own inferiority.  Their actions and words are very cutting, even though people are nice to them.  They also are gutless.  On the one hand, they play up to the ruthless and cunning types who treat them like dirt, and yet they are mean to people who are decent and kind to them.  These serenity stealers are people to be avoided.  Life put them in a place that they resent because they feel it is beneath them.  To get even with life, they react by attacking those who are nice to them, while being very agreeable to those who abuse them.

They cannot help themselves; their actions are involuntary.  The serenity stealers steal into your heart and confidence with their sweet, charming exteriors.  But after you allow them to get close to you, they will snap at you in order to diminish you in their eyes.  They try to temporarily elevate their own inner power and feel good for a moment, but are useful remorseful afterward.  They can't help themselves, and so the pattern continues.

It is important not to interact with them in a similar manner.  If you do, they will make a lifetime career of attacking you.  These people are masters of "death by a thousand cuts."  You should always keep them at arm's length.  They will make a lifetime career of attacking you.  Then they will eternally respect you and solicit your friendship.  They will then transfer their troublesome energy to someone else.

Chu, Chin-Ning (1995)  Thick Face, Black Heart.  Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards.  p.239.

Productive Procrastination

Andrew Kibbe's wonderfully useful blog, Tools for Thought, has once again grabbed my attention with Uncommon Sense on Managing Priorities, which suggests that low-priority tasks are not necessarily tasks to be ignored. Aside from the fact that Kibbe reminds us that any task on a to-do list is worthy of attention, I particularly appreciated the idea that 'low priority' tasks can actually function as gateway tasks to get us psychologically primed (ie. motivated) to attack those looming, dreaded high priority tasks that need to be completed.

Try this experiment: the next time you find yourself procrastinating on an important task, find the easiest thing on your list that can be completed in a few minutes, do it, and see if you feel more capable of handling the important task or less. Some people call this productive procrastination. I call it productivity. After all, any action you decide to do is procrastination of everything else that, by default, you’ve decided not to do.

Boy, interrupted. (by teacher)

Krashen and Brown recently published this research paper in the Singapore Tertiary English Teachers Society journal: What is Academic Language Proficiency? [download PDF]

Their paper flies in the face of current popular pedagogical 'wisdom' that suggests that nearly everything needs to be taught explicitly to students.

Specifically, they suggest that metacognitive strategies (supposedly designed to assist students with creating a deeper understanding of material) may actually be getting in the way of students' learning.  They quote the experience of one middle school teacher who had encouraged students to pause at intervals during their reading to create visual associations:

After a few weeks, her students rebelled, and told her that "Metacognition was interfering with the reading zone ... (it) disrupted the flow of a great story; ate up precious hours that could have been devoted to living inside another great story, and wasted their time as readers ... not one student could name a positive effect of the strategies on his or her reading performance".

'Conventional wisdom' usually looks at tools that have the potential to be useful, and advance the implementation of these tools or strategies in day-to-day contexts.  However, 'common sense' (which is possibly closer to 'enduring wisdom') might be worth considering when 'useful' tools and strategies are actually creating unnecessary detours from the simple enjoyment of learning.  Sometimes spending too much time on the scaffolding may unnecessarily slow down the building process.

...some strategies are teachable and useful to learn.  Others are less useful, limited only to conscious language learning and deliberate memorization.  Still others, those that all humans naturally possess and use, may be counterproductive to teach.

Ref:  Krashen and Brown (2007).  STETS Language and Communication Review, Singapore Tertiary English Teachers Society.

An Experience of Being Alive

People say that what we are seeking is a meaning of life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth.

It's not complicated - it's just emotionally difficult

Just because something has been a lot of work or consumed a lot of time doesn't make it productive or worthwhile.

Just because you are embarrassed to admit that you're still living the consequences of bad decisions made 5, 10, or 20 years ago shouldn't stop you from making good decisions now.  if you let pride stop you, you will hate life 5, 10, and 20 years from now for the same reasons.  

...Pride is stupid.

Being able to quit things that don't work is integral to being a winner.  Going into a project or job without defining when worthwhile becomes wasteful is like going into a casino without a cap on what you will gamble: dangerous and foolish.

"But you don't understand my situation.  It's complicated!" But is it really?  Don't confuse the complex with the difficult.  Most situations are simple -- many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.  The problem and the solution are usually obvious and siimple.  it's not that you don't know what to do.  Of course you do.  you are just terrified that you might end up worse off than you are now.  

I'll tell you right now: If you're at this point, you won't be worse off.  Revisit fear-setting and cut the cord.

Ferris, Timothy (2007) "The 4-Hour Workweek."  Crown, New York.  pp. 222, 223.

John Stuart Mill (1869): Active learning through discourse

A person who derives all his instruction from teachers or books, even if he escape the besetting temptation of contenting himself with cram, is under no compulsion to hear both sides; accordingly it is far from a frequent accomplishment, even among thinkers, to know both sides; and the weakest part of what everybody says in defence of his opinion, is what he intends as a reply to antagonists. It is the fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic - that which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, without establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate result; but as a means to attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it cannot be valued too highly; and until people are again systematically trained to it, there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical departments of speculation. On any other subject no one's opinions deserve the name of knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced on him by others, or gone through of himself, the same mental process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy with opponents. That, therefore, which when absent, it is so indispensable, but so difficult, to create, how worse than absurd it is to forego, when spontaneously offering itself! If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds and listen to them, and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater labor for ourselves.

John Stuart Mill

"On Liberty" (1869), Chapter 2.