Sir Ken Robinson | The Direction of Intention

Creative Think [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 15, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

The truth is that I could talk with MM all day. Our calls are few and far between but it always feels as if we’re picking up a conversation from yesterday. His perspective on life is vast, deeply rooted like an oak tree, yet simple enough to play on a banjo. As per usual, he left me with a head-full-of-thoughts-to-think.

One of the thought-rocks he dropped on my head was this: we’ve lost touch with our connection to the humanities. And, we’ve lost that connection, not by accident, but through reckless intention. Years ago I was wide-eyed with disbelief when the local school system stripped history and the humanities from their course offerings to make more room for STEM; science, technology, engineering and math. “Short-sighted and fundamentally stupid,” I said to no one listening. Art was long gone. Music was nowhere to be found.

It’s hard to measure the real worth of the humanities on a test so it was sailed off the edge-of-the-curriculum-world. What , exactly, is the value of kindness, the worth of considering others, the merit of empathy and understanding interconnectivity? How important is it to know where you come from? The origin and cycles of knowledge and the grand mistakes of the past? What might be your intellectual lineage, your moral ancestry? How important is it to consider opposing ideas, to recognize there are many ways of seeing a single event? What happened the last time an out-of-control authoritarian impulse attempted to quash a diversity of opinion? How worthwhile might it be to understand that democracy is nothing more or less than an idea about how humans might create community together? It is not a given. It is not a fact. It is an ongoing relationship. The province of the humanities.

The operative word is “together.”

I laughed aloud the day after my call with MM. Two articles crossed my screen. Because I’m searching for jobs I’m paying attention to articles like The Ten Most Important Skills For Workers. You’ll not be surprised to learn that analytical thinking currently tops the chart but the king is about to be unseated by a new/old champion: creative thinking. Also rising in the top ten are “curiosity and lifelong learning” and “motivation and self-awareness” Of course, “unmotivated and unconscious” have probably never topped the list of desirable skills…though most factory work – and varieties of corporate work – generally produce those qualities in previously motivated human beings.

[I take a moment of silence to recount the multiple times I have, in my life, been told I was un-hire-able because I was too creative. “You’ll see how to improve things and want to make changes,” a manager famously told me. “My job,” he said, “is to keep that from happening. To maintain the status quo.” In another famous jaw-dropping moment, a potential employer told me I was not an attractive hire because I was educated so, “I would want things.”]. A cautionary tale to all those who currently fear exposure to ideas and the other purported horrors of the humanities and a fully educated mind.

Educated = curious = questioning. It’s simple.

Listen to Sir Ken Robinson ask a still-relevant question about whether or not our schools kill creativity. Killing creativity is the same as killing the humanities. Killing our humanity.

Ultimately the horse race between the analytical and the creative is itself symptom of the schooled ignorance. They are not really separate things. The right brain and left brain are only detached for the sake of study and discourse. They are ends of a spectrum and one cannot exist without the other. Like science and art: both are concerned with dancing to the beating heart and movement of the universe. They are two ways of walking at the yet-unknown. They are not oppositional.

Another quote from MM roared into my mind: if you ignore 100,000 years of human evolution, you might-could just miss the fundamentals.

It’s consilience. The unity of knowledge. The whole system. Heart and brain and gut. That’s the loop that MM and I regularly travel. We circle out and return once again to E.O. Wilson.

“One day we’ll figure it out,” posits MM. It’s another reason I adore our conversations: with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, he is, all the same, infinitely hope-full.

read Kerri’s blogpost about CREATIVE THINKING

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Filed under: Creativity, Education, Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, consilience, creative thinking, curioisty, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, desire, education, EO Wilson, evolution, gut, heart, hope, humanities, humanity, ideas, ignorance, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, learning, motivation, Sir Ken Robinson, story, studio melange, the melange, togetherness, unity of knowledge | Leave a comment »

Get Lost [on DR Thursday]

Posted on December 30, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“A person who never made a mistake never tried something new.” ~ Albert Einstein

Recently, I revisited Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk about schools killing creativity. Among his many points, the central idea was simple and clear: we reinforce knowing answers instead of the pursuit of the question. We reinforce “being right” when the beating heart of learning, the vibrant center of creativity, the foundation of scientific process, is to try-and-see-what-happens. To be “prepared to fail,” as he said, is to remove failure from the equation. A curious mind seeks discovery, not “rightness.” An experiment is meant to test a hypothesis not immediately arrive at the answer.

When Kerri and I stepped onto the trail, new to us, the signage was more than confusing. “It’s a loop,” I said, “What’s the worst that could happen?” We chose the orange trail and started walking. We followed the blazes rather than the signs. A storm or drunken ranger must have erected the signs because they were often out of alignment with the blazes. “If we followed that sign, we’d be in the creek,” Kerri said.

Early on in our hike, a man came crashing out of the woods. “Is this the trail?” he asked. “I think I’m bushwhacking,” he said. This man, I suspect, followed the signs. He was having a great time but was somewhat relieved to be back on the beaten path. He was the first of many. A woman stopped us. She and her husband were having a disagreement about which trail they were taking. “Is this the long or short loop?” she asked. We shrugged, a shadow of concern creeping up in the back of our minds.

There was supposed to be a waterfall somewhere on the trail. We asked more than a few people as we passed and received a marvel of contradictory instructions. “There’s a side path on the left.” “Somewhere ahead you’ll see a side trail on the right.” We took option B and had a lovely trek up the mountain but turned back when it became apparent that our choice did not include the waterfall. “Next time,” we said. It was late in the afternoon and we wanted to be back at the car before sunset.

With tired legs and lack of trust in the signage, we came to a trail crossroads. Orange went in three different directions. The sign that pointed the way to the parking lot did not inspire confidence but we followed it anyway. We passed an older couple, local hikers, that assured us we were on the right path. A couple crashed out of the woods, having lost the trail but were equipped with a GPS app: we were definitely headed in the right direction but had more than a mile to go to get back to the car.

“It does not feel good to feel lost,” we agreed. “Especially when the light is waning.”

Arriving back at the car, breathing a sigh of relief. “That was fun!” we laughed. “And stressful at the end.” We were never actually lost but we were successful at filling ourselves with doubt. We were grateful for the older couple that reassured us, the lost couple with the GPS that broke out of the woods exactly when we needed them.

And, we learned a lesson. Next time we’ll take the time to study the map. And, we’ll be equipped with a better app. Our lostness was always in our minds, in our doubt. The next time we lose ourselves in second guessing – and it is certain to happen – we’ll be better equipped to handle our self-imposed-disorientation.

In the meantime, we’re already whipping it up into a great survival story. I didn’t mention the bears or starting fire with flint and steel. Building a survival shelter from twigs. That version, the real story of our heroic adventure, is certain to come soon. Lostness, it seems, stimulates fabulous creativity.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE MOUNTAIN