When I speak of visibility, I’m referring not to what’s visible to us, but how visible we are to others. To feel another’s attention is almost like being touched. If it’s positive attention, accepting and encouraging, it’s like being stroked. If it’s negative, critical and rejecting, it feels like we’re being hit. This isn’t just metaphor. If someone looks at us with contempt, it makes our heart race. We respond physically to how others react to our presence. The chemicals and muscle tension register whether we choose to consciously acknowledge it or not.
Psychologist Nathanial Branden feels that our most important social need is for visibility. We need to feel seen and responded to by others. It’s an affirmation that we exist. When we feel we are seen we feel connected to the world, when we feel we aren’t we're isolated. When people are listening in conversation it feels good, if they aren’t it’s frustrating. When a parent turns away from a child, the child feels unworthy of attention. The state of invisibility leads to whatever actions have been known to get attention in the past.
A few years ago, I was surprised to discover that every student in this very smart class of illusionism students had been diagnosed with attention problems. It bothered me that such an interesting and varied group of intelligent minds had been identified as defective. My concern grew when during the hardest assignment I gave that semester, the room was as quiet as a library, everyone thoroughly concentrated, and their attention held the whole evening. Throughout the semester the harder the assignment, the more complete their attention. This started me wondering how much of what we’re terming a defect might be boredom reflecting capacities we don’t consider in our model of education. Given the complex stimulation of the modern world from the beginning of life, these students may have developed intelligence that the 20th century educational model fails to take into account. What doesn’t fit the old model is diagnosed as a condition to be fought instead of a new capacity to nourish. The current methods of evaluation try to fit complex individuals into narrow slots thought up by someone who probably has an entirely different life experience. To succeed the student may have to override what they feel is interesting and important to adopt a standard that may not have any usefulness in their world. The way we approach standards today has too much to do with power. It serves to filter out all but those who match the values of those who set the standards. It puts people with different kinds of excellence at a disadvantage. Limited models of reality cloak the range of human perspectives. Everything else is invisible. Beyond the knowledge we fail to take into account is the disrespect implied by not seeing other points-of-view.
With loving, respectful attention people can grow and develop their particular capacities. Studies of motivation in ‘91 (Caine &Caine) have shown the superiority of internal motivators to external- whether punishment or reward. We have much better results when we feel we’ve chosen our own goals. They write, “…internal motivation becomes difficult to generate as people begin to see themselves as fulfilling only goals formed by others.” All researchers come to same conclusion- we need to abandon the “paradigm of behavioral contingency”. Neither carrots nor sticks got the best results.
Education needs to develop ways to see the individual and offer means for each to pursue projects that match and further their interests. To pay attention and offer the support we see as necessary, the student becomes more engaged, more visible, without being controlled.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Goodness
One of the first things that attracted me to the “I Ching” was the assumption that everyone knows right from wrong. It always counsels us to be “firm and correct”, never explaining what that is. The ancient Taoist belief was that if you wrote it down, spelled it out, people would figure out how to get around it, whereas if you looked at a world of constantly changing relationships, fairness and the right course of action could be judged individually. Every situation is different.
Erich Fromm distinguished two different types of ethics, referring to them as humanitarian and authoritarian. The attitude of the “I Ching” aligns well with the humanitarian mode which is golden rule based. We know what right is by what we do or do not want to be done to us. The study of mirror neurons gives that idea a concrete basis. What we see enacted, we feel inside through neuronal mimicry. This is working in all but the rare individuals psychiatry used to call sociopaths, who could hurt others without conscience because they were so disconnected from their own feelings that they could feel no sympathy for others. This would suggest that we can become more conscientious in our relations to others if we understand our own feelings better. Seek out the imagery that stirs our deepest places and reflect on what that shows. Pay attention when actions are out of proportion to the situation and search out the older pattern that was triggered.
Authoritarian ethics holds up obedience as the primary good and disobedience as the central evil. Yet people have done some terrible things while under orders. Obedience delivers us from the responsibility to understand right and wrong for ourselves. This is likely why Krishnamurti felt that all authority is an obstacle.
Goodness has nothing to do with the law. My efforts not to hurt others have nothing to do with being afraid of punishment. A picture of a young swimming star smoking pot at a party is only an issue because we treat obedience as more important than virtue. The fact that Michael Phelps is a role model has nothing to do with external obedience to authority. He’s an example to others because of his inner discipline and determination, his humility and genuineness, qualities anyone would do well to emulate. At the other end of the scale, we have authority’s representatives aiming all of their attention at the disobedience itself, since for them that is the more serious threat to cultural willingness to obey at all costs.
The laws most often invoked to bring someone down are laws about lying, where a person’s human instinct for self-protection is brought into conflict with authority’s insistence on truth or penalty. The original offense may not seem that serious, but the disobedience involved in lying for self-protection can be inflated endlessly as disrespect for the “rule of law”. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about an affair, not for the affair itself. Long before humans evolved, creatures were using deception to protect themselves. Peter Breggin wrote that when children lie, it’s because they feel unfairly coerced. The same strategies are carried into adulthood.
The focus on the law is eroding our goodness, our ability to practice virtue because it develops the connections between us, because we choose to, because it enlarges us and helps us grow as human beings. Being good makes us feel good, not because it builds self -esteem but because in the act, we’re not thinking of ourselves at all but reaching out and participating in a bigger picture in which we are included. As social beings our reward system supports helping each other. It comes naturally. Led by our sense of beauty, we act in harmony with our situation and take pleasure in kindness.
Thich Nhat Hnan said smiling is mouth yoga. It stimulates good brain chemistry in ourselves and in everyone we smile at, lighting up their mirror neurons. It’s an easy way to spread goodness, positive brain chemistry and reinforce the goodwill within us.
Erich Fromm distinguished two different types of ethics, referring to them as humanitarian and authoritarian. The attitude of the “I Ching” aligns well with the humanitarian mode which is golden rule based. We know what right is by what we do or do not want to be done to us. The study of mirror neurons gives that idea a concrete basis. What we see enacted, we feel inside through neuronal mimicry. This is working in all but the rare individuals psychiatry used to call sociopaths, who could hurt others without conscience because they were so disconnected from their own feelings that they could feel no sympathy for others. This would suggest that we can become more conscientious in our relations to others if we understand our own feelings better. Seek out the imagery that stirs our deepest places and reflect on what that shows. Pay attention when actions are out of proportion to the situation and search out the older pattern that was triggered.
Authoritarian ethics holds up obedience as the primary good and disobedience as the central evil. Yet people have done some terrible things while under orders. Obedience delivers us from the responsibility to understand right and wrong for ourselves. This is likely why Krishnamurti felt that all authority is an obstacle.
Goodness has nothing to do with the law. My efforts not to hurt others have nothing to do with being afraid of punishment. A picture of a young swimming star smoking pot at a party is only an issue because we treat obedience as more important than virtue. The fact that Michael Phelps is a role model has nothing to do with external obedience to authority. He’s an example to others because of his inner discipline and determination, his humility and genuineness, qualities anyone would do well to emulate. At the other end of the scale, we have authority’s representatives aiming all of their attention at the disobedience itself, since for them that is the more serious threat to cultural willingness to obey at all costs.
The laws most often invoked to bring someone down are laws about lying, where a person’s human instinct for self-protection is brought into conflict with authority’s insistence on truth or penalty. The original offense may not seem that serious, but the disobedience involved in lying for self-protection can be inflated endlessly as disrespect for the “rule of law”. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about an affair, not for the affair itself. Long before humans evolved, creatures were using deception to protect themselves. Peter Breggin wrote that when children lie, it’s because they feel unfairly coerced. The same strategies are carried into adulthood.
The focus on the law is eroding our goodness, our ability to practice virtue because it develops the connections between us, because we choose to, because it enlarges us and helps us grow as human beings. Being good makes us feel good, not because it builds self -esteem but because in the act, we’re not thinking of ourselves at all but reaching out and participating in a bigger picture in which we are included. As social beings our reward system supports helping each other. It comes naturally. Led by our sense of beauty, we act in harmony with our situation and take pleasure in kindness.
Thich Nhat Hnan said smiling is mouth yoga. It stimulates good brain chemistry in ourselves and in everyone we smile at, lighting up their mirror neurons. It’s an easy way to spread goodness, positive brain chemistry and reinforce the goodwill within us.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Sense of Beauty
In her book “Neurophilosophy”, Patricia Churchland points out that our idea of five senses leaves out many very particular sensitivities, like our sense of position and awareness of interior states. I would like to suggest that beauty itself is a sense, attuned to proportion, harmony of form, and order. Like the other senses, it is a response to these qualities and not an idea about them.
The sense of beauty offers guidance. Science uses the concept of elegance as indicative of a good theory and many scientists and mathematicians refer to their sense of beauty as leading them to the answers they sought. Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Blink” described the ability to discern significance as an aesthetic sense. The expert knew the statue was fraudulent because she could feel something missing. Her body of knowledge and increased sensitivity to her subject enabled her to quickly see “what’s wrong with this picture.”
Beauty is not an external thing, but part of our deepest understanding. External perceptions of beauty are triggered by what enlivens the inner sense.
We are what we give our attention to and recognize ourselves in our response to what we admire. The concept of projection is true for positives as well as negatives. Just like we recognize our own negative qualities in the world and tend to call out others for faults we also possess, we recognize our best selves in the things we value. In an experiment that asked people in an office to pick the best worker and say why, most people chose the same person but the traits they listed reflected their own best qualities. What we admire activates corresponding patterns in our mind and strengthens them. We get pleasure from the experience because it aids our growth.
When a beautiful work of art offers an insight into a feeling or paradox it can change our way of seeing. It is this power that Dave Hickey emphasizes in his book, “The Invisible Dragon”, writing, “Beauty…provided the image’s single claim to being looked at and to being believed”. Beauty has authority because it gets attention. If it’s more beautiful it keeps attention. Like plants have a tropism toward the sun, we have a tropism toward beauty.
Elaine Scarry, in her book, “On Beauty and Being Just”, writes that beauty “adrenalizes”. It stimulates the mind and draws it into contact with the place where beauty is discovered. She notes that beauty has no precedent. It is not something you can pin down, but is particular, yet you know it when you see it. The mirroring part of your brain brings the beauty inside. When we admire beauty we participate in it. It is the beautiful part of us that understands it. If the quality wasn’t in us we wouldn’t respond, couldn’t recognize it. This is true of human behavior as well as art. Attending a meeting of high school students taking a stand against violence, my admiration for their efforts reinforces the parts of me that know that caring and striving for a more just world connects us and is deeply beautiful. As Michael Samuels writes, in “Healing With the Mind’s Eye”, “Beauty is a force that links.”
Because of this capacity to connect, beauty is spiritually fortifying. I think of spirituality as what connects us to what’s beyond ourselves, criminality as what disconnects us. Being drawn to a work of art is a connection to the artist. The heart says, “yes” to a feeling recognized but perhaps never expressed before. We respond to what aligns with our own inner model.
Art educates our understanding of feeling. When we resonate with something it is because it’s already a part of us. We recognize and admire the qualities that we ourselves possess and strengthen them as we find them externally. Psychiatrist Alfred Adler said “Art may be esteemed the highest training for social life, inculcating into us attitudes of value and thus improving the nature of our responses.” Likewise, philosopher Susanne Langer felt that having beautiful objects around was essential to educating a child’s sense of proportion and quality.
Beauty nourishes our better selves, and because we love what is beautiful, beauty stimulates our ability to love.
The sense of beauty offers guidance. Science uses the concept of elegance as indicative of a good theory and many scientists and mathematicians refer to their sense of beauty as leading them to the answers they sought. Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Blink” described the ability to discern significance as an aesthetic sense. The expert knew the statue was fraudulent because she could feel something missing. Her body of knowledge and increased sensitivity to her subject enabled her to quickly see “what’s wrong with this picture.”
Beauty is not an external thing, but part of our deepest understanding. External perceptions of beauty are triggered by what enlivens the inner sense.
We are what we give our attention to and recognize ourselves in our response to what we admire. The concept of projection is true for positives as well as negatives. Just like we recognize our own negative qualities in the world and tend to call out others for faults we also possess, we recognize our best selves in the things we value. In an experiment that asked people in an office to pick the best worker and say why, most people chose the same person but the traits they listed reflected their own best qualities. What we admire activates corresponding patterns in our mind and strengthens them. We get pleasure from the experience because it aids our growth.
When a beautiful work of art offers an insight into a feeling or paradox it can change our way of seeing. It is this power that Dave Hickey emphasizes in his book, “The Invisible Dragon”, writing, “Beauty…provided the image’s single claim to being looked at and to being believed”. Beauty has authority because it gets attention. If it’s more beautiful it keeps attention. Like plants have a tropism toward the sun, we have a tropism toward beauty.
Elaine Scarry, in her book, “On Beauty and Being Just”, writes that beauty “adrenalizes”. It stimulates the mind and draws it into contact with the place where beauty is discovered. She notes that beauty has no precedent. It is not something you can pin down, but is particular, yet you know it when you see it. The mirroring part of your brain brings the beauty inside. When we admire beauty we participate in it. It is the beautiful part of us that understands it. If the quality wasn’t in us we wouldn’t respond, couldn’t recognize it. This is true of human behavior as well as art. Attending a meeting of high school students taking a stand against violence, my admiration for their efforts reinforces the parts of me that know that caring and striving for a more just world connects us and is deeply beautiful. As Michael Samuels writes, in “Healing With the Mind’s Eye”, “Beauty is a force that links.”
Because of this capacity to connect, beauty is spiritually fortifying. I think of spirituality as what connects us to what’s beyond ourselves, criminality as what disconnects us. Being drawn to a work of art is a connection to the artist. The heart says, “yes” to a feeling recognized but perhaps never expressed before. We respond to what aligns with our own inner model.
Art educates our understanding of feeling. When we resonate with something it is because it’s already a part of us. We recognize and admire the qualities that we ourselves possess and strengthen them as we find them externally. Psychiatrist Alfred Adler said “Art may be esteemed the highest training for social life, inculcating into us attitudes of value and thus improving the nature of our responses.” Likewise, philosopher Susanne Langer felt that having beautiful objects around was essential to educating a child’s sense of proportion and quality.
Beauty nourishes our better selves, and because we love what is beautiful, beauty stimulates our ability to love.
Monday, February 2, 2009
New Mind
When I wrote the May post, “Mental Organism”, I was visualizing my “Imaging Ideas” class as something like a soliton, an area of multiple, flowing motions organized into one form that maintains its shape. The eye of Jupiter is the best example, all swirling gases, maintaining a spiral form, an open system, always new, as the visible aspect flows through the organizing form. Hurricanes are such distinct dynamic forms that we give them names.
At the constructive end of the soliton spectrum are human groups organized around a purpose. Like currents in a stream pulled into a specific shape by the size and position of stones at the bottom, the beauty of the emerging form reflects the variety of sensibilities in the group. Every class has its own character, and my previous essay reflected on the dissolving of that unique group mind. Now my thoughts are turning on the emergence of a new class as its own mental form, multiple individual currents, pulled together and held in place for the lifetime of the semester by the external structure of the class, sharing different ways of seeing around the themes of the session.
Every new perspective enlarges my own, both in the physical structure of my brain and in my response to future events. Growth stimulates the reward system and the soliton of a class is new at every meeting, as people’s moods and recent interactions reflect the life experience flowing through each personal mind and into our group mind. It shimmers with the variety of lives reflected and propels my mind in new directions. I would never think some of the thoughts I get to think were it not for the stimulus of an unexpected observation from someone else.
Entirely focused on the unfolding dynamics of various situations and the best way to handle them, the I Ching uses visual images from the natural world to reflect the patterns of being. “Progress like a hamster”, not a good outlook, refers to the fear-led accumulations of hoarded stuff we can build like a dead shell around us. Shifting attention to the flow of life, rather than the symbols of life, is endlessly varied and fascinating. The pleasure of being part of the new class soliton is having so much new stimulation concentrated in one form, every individual a cosmos of their own.
Chaos theory observes that the same forms repeat at various scales. Thinking about all the different ways we participate in mental solitons within ourselves and in groups offers a different kind of image to consider our physical selves and particular lives as simply an external condition through which consciousness flows. This image helps me break free of the cultural idea of a person as an “isolated consciousness in a bag of skin” as Alan Watts put it. As a highly complex soliton, participating in other solitons, each situation gives rise to its own kinds of thoughts which require more minds than my own. I am actively connected to multiple unfolding processes, which then ripple on into situations I may never be aware of. A new class is a microcosm of how, through our interconnected thinking and doing, we participate in the growth of the universe.
At the constructive end of the soliton spectrum are human groups organized around a purpose. Like currents in a stream pulled into a specific shape by the size and position of stones at the bottom, the beauty of the emerging form reflects the variety of sensibilities in the group. Every class has its own character, and my previous essay reflected on the dissolving of that unique group mind. Now my thoughts are turning on the emergence of a new class as its own mental form, multiple individual currents, pulled together and held in place for the lifetime of the semester by the external structure of the class, sharing different ways of seeing around the themes of the session.
Every new perspective enlarges my own, both in the physical structure of my brain and in my response to future events. Growth stimulates the reward system and the soliton of a class is new at every meeting, as people’s moods and recent interactions reflect the life experience flowing through each personal mind and into our group mind. It shimmers with the variety of lives reflected and propels my mind in new directions. I would never think some of the thoughts I get to think were it not for the stimulus of an unexpected observation from someone else.
Entirely focused on the unfolding dynamics of various situations and the best way to handle them, the I Ching uses visual images from the natural world to reflect the patterns of being. “Progress like a hamster”, not a good outlook, refers to the fear-led accumulations of hoarded stuff we can build like a dead shell around us. Shifting attention to the flow of life, rather than the symbols of life, is endlessly varied and fascinating. The pleasure of being part of the new class soliton is having so much new stimulation concentrated in one form, every individual a cosmos of their own.
Chaos theory observes that the same forms repeat at various scales. Thinking about all the different ways we participate in mental solitons within ourselves and in groups offers a different kind of image to consider our physical selves and particular lives as simply an external condition through which consciousness flows. This image helps me break free of the cultural idea of a person as an “isolated consciousness in a bag of skin” as Alan Watts put it. As a highly complex soliton, participating in other solitons, each situation gives rise to its own kinds of thoughts which require more minds than my own. I am actively connected to multiple unfolding processes, which then ripple on into situations I may never be aware of. A new class is a microcosm of how, through our interconnected thinking and doing, we participate in the growth of the universe.
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