EXTERNAL LINKS
7/30/24
Embrace the shake.
Phil Hansen has had multiple opportunities to learn how limitations or constraints can make you more creative rather than less, but only if you look for and embrace them.
I had to quit trying so hard to think outside of the box and get back into it.
You can see his artwork at philinthecircle.com.
7/15/24
Read More Fiction!
I picked up an old issue of the literary magazine Tin House last week, at random from the stack on a bookshelf in the living room, and I’ve been dipping into it almost daily. The first story I read was by Alice Munro, who died this past May. Two days later there was an article in my Facebook feed about a shocking personal incident Munro’s daughter waited to reveal about her mother until after her death. A coincidence. A couple of days later, I watched a multi-part video series about dogs rescued from a dog farm in South Korea. The Tin House story that I’d bookmarked to read next, I discovered that evening (written by Amy Hempel), was about a volunteer at a dog rescue facility. Two coincidences. Two intersections of life and art, the two part of each of which affected my experience of both. More stories to go. I wonder what awaits.
Reading fiction has all kinds of benefits. If you primarily read nonfiction, you’ll get other benefits, but not the ones you’d get from reading fiction. This article in Book Riot has suggestions on where to start delving into fiction and lots of links to specific books. I do read fiction, and I found the article interesting and useful. The web page has lots of ads, so if you’d prefer to avoid them, you can click on the pdf doc I created.
How to Start Reading Fiction (When You Only Read Nonfiction) (link)
How to Start Reading Fiction (When You Only Read Nonfiction) (pdf)
After fiction or nonfiction, the next big question is read or listen. I have a significant bias in favor of reading nonfiction, but can go either way when it comes to fiction.
6/23/24
If you’re anything like me, you’re automatically attracted to and intrigued by this title.
The author, Roman Krznaric, is a social philosopher at Oxford, who has written a book to be published next month titled History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity.
So this seems to be somewhat off the beaten path, which is another point in its favor, since the beaten path is just another term for the status quo.
In his article, Krznaric suggests that disruption can generate transformative change on a global scale, but only if specific conditions exist, those being, in his words: some kind of crisis (though typically not as extreme as a war, revolution or cataclysmic disaster), which combines with disruptive social movements and visionary ideas.
I’m certainly not claiming that transformative change will always take place if all three elements of the disruption nexus are in place: sometimes, the power of the existing system is simply too entrenched. My argument is rather that change is most likely when all three ingredients of the nexus are present.
He gives historical examples, and he uses climate change as a present-day crisis to which we might apply the disruption nexus. But the personal and the political have some interesting overlaps, and I’m intrigued by the idea of exploring how the disruption nexus might be useful in the context of personal transformational change.
6/15/24
In my What Do You Want? course, I ask people to make a list of things they’re putting up with—as opposed to things they don’t want. What you’re putting up with may be lurking around the edges of your conscious awareness. These are things you may think you should be able to tolerate, that you shouldn’t let get to you. They don’t rise to the level of things you don’t want, which are the ones you’re more likely to do something about. (Farther to Go! is the result of my ferocious dissatisfaction with my life, not of minor perturbations.) But the things you’re putting up with can create a mindset or habit of thought that affects your ability to focus on and identify what you really want.
All of that is covered in the article linked to below that says there’s a name for this which is the region-beta paradox.
Why Small Annoyances Can Harm Us More than Big Disruptions
Everyone puts up with mild annoyances each day whether it be at your job, with your family, your habits, your living environment or your body. You brush them off, thinking: this isn’t so bad, so it can’t affect me for very long. I’m not going to move apartments over a lack of natural light, or quit my job because my boss sends emails Friday nights at 10 pm. These complaints are minor, how much distress could they cause me over time?
I think there’s some useful information in this article, especially for anyone who hasn’t examined what they’re putting up with. But the focus seems to be on fixing rather than on transformational change, so it doesn’t get a wholehearted endorsement.
6/12/24
L.M. Sacasas, who writes a newsletter about technology and culture, suggests that just because we might be able to outsource and automate many of the daily tasks of life doesn’t mean we ought to.
This is something I’ve thought about off and on for years: the value of being able to take basic care of yourself, your space, your life.
[W]e must resist the temptation to imagine that the path to a meaningful or satisfying life is secured by the unquestioning acceptance of the promise of time-and labor-saving technologies. More often than we might realize, those labors themselves work on us, making us the kind of people who can make good art and fashion a good life.
So many articles about the supposed benefits of outsourcing these tasks of life echo what Sacasas says in his article:
[T]he promise of liberation traps us within the tyranny of tiny tasks by convincing us to see the stuff of everyday life and ordinary relationships as obstacles in search of an elusive higher purpose—Creativity, Diversion, Wellness, Self-actualization, whatever. But in this way it turns out that we are only ever serving the demands of the system that wants nothing more than our ceaseless consumption and production.
It seems to (always) come back to these questions: what do you want and who do you want to be?
6/7/24
This Is What a Neanderthal Conversation Would Have Sounded Like
This title is a little misleading. The article is more focused on the way Neanderthals used language rather than on what they sounded like when they spoke—although there is a bit of discussion about that, too. The author identifies different categories or types of words and compares modern humans with Neanderthals in terms of which of these types of words do we use that Neanderthals did or did not use.
Anthropology, neuroscience and genomics have converged on the view that Neanderthals’ brains had a different internal structure than ours. More of their brain matter was devoted to visual processing, restricting what was available for other tasks, such as language. They also had a smaller and differently shaped cerebellum, a brain structure that contributes to language processing, production and fluency. Moreover, several of the genetic changes that occurred in the H sapiens lineage after our split from the Neanderthals influenced our neural networks. These likely became more extensive, connecting what had previously been specialised and relatively isolated areas, to deliver what archaeologists have termed ‘cognitive fluidity’ and psychologists a ‘global workspace’. —Steven Mithen
Mithen and others point to the use of metaphor and abstract words (thought) as enabling the innovation, creativity, and even in some cases survival of modern humans and the likely absence of metaphor and abstract words as limiting Neanderthals’ ability to adapt to a changing environment or advance their art or their technology.
I’m interested in language, including what words mean, how we use them, and how we misuse them. And I found this article to be fascinating from the perspective of how the organization within the brain allows for some language possibilities but not for others, depending on the brain in question, and how language determines not only what is possible, but what kinds of things are possible.
5/29/24
Entertaining and astute:
My brain and I we are not friends. My brain and I we are classmates doing a group assignment called life and it’s not going great. —Fredrik Backman
5/17/24
What Films and Literature Reveal About the Voice in Your Head
Some research and some speculation about what an inner voice is for. I tend to think it serves multiple purposes, as does psychologist Charles Fernyhough, but no one mentioned in the article seems to link it specifically or primarily to what we’re paying attention to or what our attention is on, sort of like a moving reference point. Our inner voice is part of our consciousness, though, and we’re still trying to figure out what that’s for.
Ulysses aside, I tend to enjoy depictions of characters’ inner voices, especially in literature, but also in some films.
Some individuals claim not to have an inner voice. It’s called anendophasia. This is as difficult for me to imagine as aphantasia, the inability to generate mental pictures. What might that experience be like? Do people with anendophasia read less? Is that a dumb question?
Fernyhough helped develop the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire, which I had not heard of before and now want to find out more about. Something else to explore!
5/3/24
Is It Better to Live in “Clock Time” or “Event Time”?
When a person relies heavily on the clock to determine what to do and when to stop, research suggests they might also have a looser relationship with their own sense of control. This is because they look towards an external cue to guide their actions, according to Sellier [Anne-Laure Sellier is a professor of behavioural sciences at HEC Paris], and that external cue, rather than something within them, is what seems to control the world around them. Event-time people appear to believe, more than clock-time people do, that their actions make a meaningful difference in determining what happens to them. —Shayla Love, Psyche
As the author of the article acknowledges, most of us operate in both clock time and event time, but the mix is not the same for everyone. I wonder if there’s a third alternative, of if this is like extraverts and introverts where many people are ambiverts, somewhere in the middle but there are people on either end of the spectrum.
4/18/24
“If you’re creative, why can’t you create a solution?”
I was hooked by this question, one I think we should all be asking. This video opens up into a world I find myself wanting to enter. One way or another!
3/4/24
John Medina’s Brain Rules: Paying Attention to Attention
John Medina wrote Brain Rules, which is in my list of top 12 recommended books about the brain. I’ve been following him on Substack for a while. His posts are always concise and entertaining. This link is to the first post of his video series (“three minutes or less”) on the subject of attention.
2/9/24
‘I Listen to the Land’ – Poetry and Greenery Intertwine in Emilio Ambasz’s Architecture
Aeon shared this MoMA video today, but I first learned about Emilio Ambasz in the early 90s when I was researching architecture and architects. Barbaralee Diamondstein, who interviews him in a couple of clips in this video, edited a series of books titled American Architecture Now. In the second volume, Ambasz is quoted as saying:
The important thing is not to actually make a window but to create the possibility of looking through. I’m interested in the secret of looking through matter, the secret of going through matter, not in the door or the window.
and
Ambasz (the product maker) is anxious because he would like his products to be well received by man; Emilio (the architect) is anguished because he would like his architecture to be well received by angels.
The second part of that last sentence has remained with me throughout the more than three decades since I read the words.
1/30/24
In a recent group discussion about the Art & Science of Transformational Change, we explored using art in the process of creating transformational change. I think this vision and expression of artist Helen Cammock articulates the concept beautifully.
What I want to do with art is have conversations that might effect some change. Art is about transformation. And so, in order to try to effect change I think that the transformation that I try to develop leaves and allows space for people to find their way in with it. We have a responsibility to each other I think to understand who we are and what our stake in life is I suppose.
Many of the conversations I have are about this idea of the collective and so of course I do have a sense of responsibility and that extends to my life as an artist as well. —Helen Cammock
1/26/24
Is Mental Time Travel Good For Us?
Well, of course it is! You didn’t really have to ask, did you?
In this Discover Magazine article, psychology professor Anna-Lisa Cohen says:
Our ability to disengage from the present and immerse ourselves in imaginary worlds is one of our most extraordinary gifts as humans and underlies some of our greatest accomplishments.
Here’s a two-page pdf version, if you’d like to print it.
1/24/24
The Book of Human Emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith is subtitled An Encyclopedia of Feeling from Anger to Wanderlust. Emotions, of course, are subjective experiences, which Watt Smith acknowledges. So the descriptions in her book are her descriptions. I don’t resonate with all of them (not that I’ve read the entire book yet). But that doesn’t really matter because pondering a particular emotion leads me to consider my perception of it along with instances when I’ve experienced it. A second benefit comes from the many descriptions of non-Western emotions, which fascinate me. Abhiman, for example:
Abhiman evokes the pain and anger caused when someone we love, or expect kind treatment from, hurts us. Sorrow and shock are at its root, but it quickly flourishes into a fierce, bruised pride. It is often translated into English as “wounded dignity” or “spiteful retaliation,” phrases with overtones of pettiness. In India, abhiman is a more acceptable, even expected response. To recognize abhiman as an inevitable part of our emotional life is to know that breaking the unspoken contracts of love and respect between families and allies is an extremely serious betrayal.
This is a book you can dip into or wander around in, to get you thinking or feeling–or thinking about feeling–and to remind you that there are dimensions of experience yet to be explored.
1/21/24
Idea Gardens: Planting creative seeds and letting them grow
This is a recent post by Austin Kleon. In it he quotes author Ann Patchett:
You will take bits from books you’ve read and movies you’ve seen and conversations you’ve had and stories friends have told you, and half the time you won’t even realize you’re doing it. I am a compost heap, and everything I interact with, every experience I’ve had, gets shoveled onto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted by worms, and rots. It’s from that rich, dark humus, the combination of what you encountered, what you know and what you’ve forgotten, that ideas start to grow.
1/14/24
I’ve been writing about sensory processing on the blog for the past couple of months, taking a look at human senses, supersenses, sensory disorders, and animal senses. Processing sensory data isn’t as straightforward as we tend to think it is. For example:
We don’t have a lot of conscious awareness of how complicated our physical bodies are when they move about the world and the processing involved in that.
12/30/23
I’m ready to do everything. Who will stop me?
https://aeon.co/videos/the-grit-of-cacti-and-the-drumbeat-of-time-shape-a-sculptors-life-philosophy
12/29/23
This article from Psyche focuses on using reading to heal hearts and minds. Reading fiction just makes us all around better people. Celebrate fiction writers. Read fiction. It’s a great intention for the new year.
Reading books is not just a pleasure: it helps our minds to heal.
I’m currently reading and re-reading Saul Bellow, an author I spent a lot of time with in the 60s and 70s.
He felt truth coming to him from the sun—a communication that was also light and warmth. -Saul Bellow, A Silver Dish, Collected Stories
12/26/23
Lively up yourself, as Bob Marley would have said. Watch, listen to, or read Lynda Barry.
The thing I love the most is to watch them blow their minds with their own minds. – Lynda Barry
12/17/23
One person’s reflections on liminal space and how it shows up for her in her own life. How or where does liminal space show up for you?
12/6/23
There’s real poetry in the real world.
Science is the poetry of reality.
-Richard Dawkins
This is one of melodysheep’s earlier videos, from the Symphony of Science series. The easiest way to find more is to search YouTube, which I recommend. My favorite is still Ode to the Brain, but I’m pushing “reality” these days.
11/28/23
This is one of my favorite videos. Never tire of watching it.
Instead of looking at the world through the pinhole of discrete things, what if we focused
on movements and processes? This could have implications across scales. Perhaps it could
even help us avoid problems.
11/18/23
Shankar Vedantam interviews Jonathan Adler on the Hidden Brain podcast. (Speaking for myself, I’m grateful a transcript is available.) As I’ve been saying for the past 10 years, it’s all stories and none of them are true. Poet Muriel Rukeyser put it more elegantly: the universe is made of stories, not of atoms. Might as well create stories that are expansive, maybe even transformational, as long as we’re making them up, anyway.
You can’t totally control the things that happened to you in your life. You have some more say about how you make sense of it. -Jonathan Adler
11/16/23
The Surprising Mental Health Resiliency of Magicians
A very recent study indicates that magicians, by and large, are not psychotic. This is good. Also:
[M]agicians demonstrated a very high ability to concentrate, lower levels of social anxiety, and fewer instances of unusual experiences, distorted thoughts and hallucinations. All of these traits are highly advantageous for the work of magicians, as they enable them to focus and pay attention to their craft without distractions.
I can’t help but wonder if magicians are less inclined to believe that experience–theirs or others’–is an accurate reflection of reality. If so, the counterintuitive outcome would be better mental health.
10/31/23
In an essay for Aeon, educational psychologist James Kaufman expounds on the theory of creativity that distinguishes between mini-C, little-C, pro-C, and big-C creatives (all of which are succinctly described in the short video below for those who might be wandering through the Imaginarium on a tight schedule.
Kaufman has been studying and writing about creativity for some time. In the article, he says:
It is so easy to minimise, or simply not even recognise, your own creative potential, much as I did earlier in my life. You may be setting up barriers to creative thought and behaviour without even knowing you are doing so; one of my goals in this essay is to help you recognise the hidden creative strengths – your shadow creativity, so to speak – that wait to be explored.
10/27/23
The second episode of David Eagleman’s two-part Inner Cosmos discussion on knowing oneself.
What a perplexing masterpiece our brain is and how lucky we are to be in a generation that has the technology and the will to turn our attention to it. It is the most wondrous thing we have and it is us.
My new favorite quote:
If our brains were simple enough to be understood we wouldn’t be smart enough to understand them.
10/25/23
What does it mean to know thyself? I have to agree with the intensity and excitement David Eagleman expresses about this topic: It surprises me that this isn’t what we’re talking about all the time? Why don’t we have world leaders coming together to dig their teeth into THIS question?
Exactly!
10/17/23
Just for fun? Or not. Neuroscience rap!
Baba Brinkman
10/12/23
This is a question we ought to be asking ourselves regularly. The link is to an article by Daniel Dennett, an excerpt from his latest book, I’ve Been Thinking, which is definitely worth checking out. Good thinkers know they could be wrong. Bad thinkers are certain they’re right.
9/29/23
Bodies in space. Expressing. Transcending spoken language. An example of how constraints are essential to creativity.
9/24/23
How imagination and intelligence work together in the brain to generate creativity: Scott Barry Kaufman gives a brief, generally good, description of the three functional brain networks and their role in the creative process. Although he doesn’t mention it in this short video, neuroscientists have determined that the only situations in which all three of these networks are active during the same time is during the creative process!
9/22/23
Why did music evolve? There’s no definitive answer to this question, but there are a number of theories under consideration. Four of them (auditory cheesecake, sexual selection, social bonding, and credible signaling) are discussed in this video. The article in the link that follows, from Nova, covers those and a few more.
What do you think? Share your opinion on the Farther to Go! 2.0 FB group page.
7 Theories on Why We Evolved to Love Music (Nova article)
8/29/23
Mind Mapping Rocks!
Mind Maps are a great way to access the associative part of your brain intentionally. The possibilities for using and creating with them are nearly endless. Check out what Etsy has to offer in terms of tools, templates, and ideas. If you’re already familiar with the process, you can up your game. If you’re new to it, you can get a crash course just by trying it out. Or you can learn more here.
8/26/23
Awe: Science’s Answer to Your Search for Happiness
A conversation with Dacher Keltner and John O. Reynolds, the former Postmaster of Yosemite National Park.
I had the good fortune of visiting Yosemite National Park twice while I lived in California. You can’t truly capture it in photographs; the scale is so grand. But the photo of my partner that’s in my office was taken there, so I see a glimpse of it every day. What an amazing and awe-inspiring place.
I have a sense of being quiet and that I’m small and insignificant and find peace in that, I feel I’m aware of kind of big things that I’m part of. And then in the body I tear up quite readily, and I suspect a lot of our listeners do. I get the chills. I feel a warmth in my chest. And those are all mind and body markers of this state that’s often so hard to describe with words, but science is making a lot of progress in figuring it out. -Dacher Keltner
8/18/23
The Transformative Power of Classical Music | Benjamin Zander
“You can’t go to South Africa without thinking about Mandela in jail for 27 years. What was he thinking about? Lunch? No, he was thinking about the vision for South Africa and for human beings. This is about vision. This is about the long line. Like the bird who flies over the field and doesn’t care about the fences underneath, all right?”
Brilliant, inspirational, educational, and entertaining.
8/13/23
Can Using Aromatherapy Oils Every Night Help Improve Memory?
The results of a small study indicate that it can. Given the small size, however, those results are not very robust. Still, there don’t seem to be any downsides. I plan to give this a try in the near future. I’ll report my own results.
The researchers concluded that minimal olfactory enrichment using an odorant diffuser at night significantly improves verbal memory and the integrity of a specific brain pathway.
7/26/23
In addition to using supernatural explanations for things we don’t understand (see the 7/25/23 link below), humans often turn to superstition. This Nautilus article by Jim Davies, who was the director of the Science of Imagination Laboratory at Carleton University in Ottawa when he wrote it, explores how this works and what role dopamine might be playing.
7/25/23
Humans crave certainty, which is why we are always looking for explanations. Supernatural explanations may, indeed, fill the gaps, but “supernatural explanations can be a barrier for human action. When humans view phenomena as the purview of gods, they may be less likely to support secular intervention.”
God of the Gaps: How the Supernatural Explains What We Can’t
7/15/23
I’ve been reinvestigating the importance of curiosity in the process of creating transformational change, as well as curiosity as a form of attention. Austin Kleon, author of “Steal like an Artist” and other books, has written several excellent blog posts on the topic. I especially resonate with his take on ignorance. The posts are informative, inspiring, and full of links (just in case something sparks your curiosity).
Four Posts on Curiosity (Austin Kleon)
7/10/23
“The signals in our brain are as necessary for our experience of reality as the sensory signals that come from the world.” -Lisa Feldman Barrett
6/22/23
This is a report on some recent research that indicates: “people with higher intelligence scores take longer to solve complex problems because they are less likely to jump to conclusions. The study also links problem-solving ability to differences in brain connectivity and synchrony between brain areas.” I heard myself saying, “Yes. Yes. … Yes.” So I’m sharing it.
Intelligent People Take Longer to Solve Hard Problems
6/21/23 (Happy Solstice)
Greg Dunn is a neuroscientist and an artist (and also a technological genius). This is a clip of a presentation of his work at The Franklin Institute. “Self Reflected” is the title of one of his pieces but it applies to all of them, really. You can find more examples if you look on You Tube.
6/12/23
Here’s a summary of recent research linking dopamine responses to difficulty maintaining weight loss. The website (Neuroscience News) is kind of a cluttered mess and their style includes repeating the same thing multiple times. But the original research is behind a paywall, and I think this is really fascinating information that’s worth checking out!
Obesity and the Brain: Stubborn Dopamine Responses Hamper Weight Loss
6/10/23
Picture this! If you can’t do that, you might have aphantasia.
6/1/23
“Findings reveal a direct link between cognitive prowess and activity levels, mental health’s impact on knowledge accumulation, and a strong positive correlation between cognitive abilities and open-mindedness.”
Untangling the Human Mind: The Interplay Between Cognition and Personality
5/26/23
Another episode of NOVA about the brain and our mistaken belief that we are consciously in control of our actions.
There’s a mention of Phineas Gage that, for me, makes this episode less stellar than it could have been. I looked up an article I remember reading a while ago (nine years as it turns out) and have linked to it below. Some may find it even more interesting than the NOVA episode.
Phineas Gage: Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient
5/22/23
Excellent video from NOVA explaining why our experience is not an accurate reflection of reality!
5/8/23
A video and multiple links within a link from The Marginalian.
5/5/23
If you’re satisfied with living an ordinary life, aim for balance. Otherwise, check out:
The Joys and Rewards of an Asymmetric Life
Note: You have to register for a free account to read the article online, so if you don’t want to do that, here’s a pdf version: The Joys and Rewards of an Asymmetric Life
4/27/23
Five videos about free will (or the lack thereof):
1. The Great Free Will Debate (Big Think)
2. Three Ways to Think about Free Will (Aeon video; click on link.)
3: Brian Greene and Neil deGrasse Tyson Talk about Free Will (The Creative Science)
4. You Don’t Have Free Will but Don’t Worry (Sabine Hossenfelder)
5. Compatibilism (CrashCourse)