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Inspirational Thinking Threatens Authoritarian Personalities

Most people think that all humans are pretty much alike. They always have been and they always will be. Some even believe that humans are a one-off, made in the image of God. Imagine that...a God that creates a system whereby you swallow and breath through the same narrow tube. Brilliant! One wonders why it took him so long to create Heimlich? In fact, fossils of at least a half-dozen proto-humans have now been identified and a few of those were close enough to us that (give or take a few tattoos) they might well pass as an opening act for the Backstreet Boys. So what, you may wonder, kept them from figuring out microphones and amplifiers and starting their own group? In a word - Inspiration. And yet, how can that be the whole story? Neanderthals were on Earth for twice as long as we've been here and yet the tools they made near the end of their time were almost identical to their very first efforts. They stopped at their "here and now" without ever being inspired to think about their "there and then." Modern man, Homo sapiens, left the rest in the dust only by going beyond immediate reality and creating what might be. We make some of our greatest gains when we see old things in new ways. Newton wasn't the first to see an apple fall from a tree and what did Einstein do if not look at the universe from a completely different perspective? My friend Kort Patterson does this all the time and his most recent column (in a super high IQ Intertel publication) deals with the topic of all those proto-humans and what it was that set us apart. While imagination is pretty much a given in man-like brains, inspiration is far less common. What's more, when it does occur it can be derived from entirely erroneously sources and interfered with at every level. Here are some examples courtesy of Kort: The Italian Renaissance, the foundation of our modern world, came about when the artistic and architectural achievements of the ancients were rediscovered. And yet, that discovery was mostly made-up. The Greeks and Romans would not have recognized what was presented in their name. They would have considered the surviving ruins - the straight lines and bare marble - as being both unfinished and decidedly ugly. And even what did remain intact was subject to censorship. Much of the unfettered sensuousness of Pompeii was plastered over by the sexually inhibited Victorians. Their repressive social order and applied perversity demanded a masochistic rejection of physical pleasure and a pious denial of human nature. The church tried doing much the same with scientific and technological advances but the inspiration of the few eventually created the prosperity now enjoyed by the many. Looked at in this way, much of human history is an account of anarchic creativity opposed by authoritarian attempts to control it. Kort ends with: Paradoxically, it has been creativity that has created ever more effective means for authoritarians to impose their authority. The question we face today is whether we're willing to learn from the mistakes of the past or whether we'll allow the primitive residue of authoritarianism to restrict and repress the imagination and creativity that defines us in the modern world? Visit Kort Patterson's archive of articles at: http://www.kortexplores.com/node_browser/nodes_by_category/vocabu...

Gilligan’s Island and Microsoft Office 03: Useless Fluff in My Head

I can still sing the theme song to Gilligan's Island . I'm complaining, not bragging. Talk about obsolete and useless information. I also still know how to use the Microsoft Office 2003 version of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Also obsolete, useless, and truly frustrating knowledge since there is limited knowledge transfer to Office 2007. Sometime I wonder if all my experiences and knowledge are buried away somewhere in my memory banks. Perhaps I have never deleted anything. Unexpected recollections convince me that a multitude of memories remain. For example, I can remember and sing the theme songs to a host of TV shows from the era of Gilligan's Island (watched in re-runs on the non-network channels when I was wasting away my youth). I haven't watched TV with any regularity in 25 years but those songs remain. My knowledge of TV theme songs seems stable and long-lasting. In contrast, my knowledge of Microsoft Office programs is currently in transition. Much of my knowledge learned for the 03 version is useless in the 07 instantiation. Finding the pull-down menu for even something as basic as saving the document has changed. Right now these two sets of knowledge are in conflict. I still have the 03 Office programs on the laptop I use, but most of my university's computers have been modernized (or ruined depending on one's perspective). Sometimes I can't perform seemingly simple tasks on any computer. There's a crucial distinction between Office 03 and Gilligan's Island. Soon I will forget how to use Office 03. I may, however, be doomed to hum Gilligan's theme song forever. With the Microsoft Office products, I am replacing the knowledge. I am learning the new ways to save, change paragraph formatting, and add error bars to graphs. Each time I perform a task in the 07 version, I strengthen that new knowledge. When I strengthen the new knowledge, I gradually weaken the connection to the old information. My knowledge is updated by new experiences. The updating takes the form of changing the use of a retrieval cue. With those Microsoft Office products, the retrieval cues might be: How do I change the spacing between paragraphs? In Word 03, I had one response to that cue that involved using a pull down menu. In Word 07, the method of finding that dialogue box is quite different (and quite frustrating at this moment). As I re-use the same retrieval cue, I lose the ability to recall the items that were once associated with that cue. I suspect that when I finally master the updated programs, Microsoft will release a newer version and my hard-earned knowledge will once again be obsolete. Interference is one common explanation of forgetting. My transition from Microsoft 03 to Microsoft 07 is a form of interference known as retroactive interference - new usage of knowledge makes it harder to recall the old information connected to the knowledge. I experience the same interference with students' names. As I learn the names of my current students, remembering the names of students from previous terms becomes more difficult. The difficulty is much greater if I re-use names (how many Jennifers have I known in 20 years of teaching?). For students with more unique names, I can remember them and their names more easily for longer periods of time because there is less interference - that is, I haven't re-used those names as frequently. Back to Gilligan's Island, from which I may never be rescued. I've gained no new knowledge during the intervening years that interferes with my ability to recall that theme song. With the right retrieval cue, such as the tune or the first line, I'll start singing that song ( Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale ). Some obsolete knowledge, such as how to perform tasks in Office 03, gets replaced by new knowledge. Some useful knowledge, such as students' names, also gets replaced (much to my dismay). But some obsolete knowledge sticks around, never gets updated, and becomes the fluff in my head. So is everything in my head somewhere? Maybe. The knowledge may be there waiting for the right retrieval cue. When that cue gets re-used and strongly connected to new information, however, the old knowledge may become impossible to retrieve. Unfortunately, nothing is going to replace Gilligan.

Friday Sprog Blogging: dreaming of snakes. [Adventures in Ethics and Science]

Dr. Free-Ride: So, you know how sometimes you have nightmares ? Younger Offspring: Yeah. Dr. Free-Ride: I had a nightmare the other night.* Younger Offspring: What was it? Dr. Free-Ride: Well, I was supposed to be picking up snakes with two sticks and moving them from one place to another. Younger Offspring: Why? Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

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Psychologyresearch.org.uk

Inspirational Thinking Threatens Authoritarian Personalities

Gilligan’s Island and Microsoft Office 03: Useless Fluff in My Head

Friday Cephalopod: In flagrante [Pharyngula]

Friday Sprog Blogging: dreaming of snakes. [Adventures in Ethics and Science]

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