Machiavelli: Adults and Kids are the Same
Childhood and Adulthood are one and the same.
Craziness for love is the natural human state. Nicolo Machiavelli, of all people -- who write the "Prince", instructing rulers to create fear and rule with fear instead of love -- discusses the significance of the childhood voice, saying that "The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There does exist a distinction between children and adults, but such distinctions are specious; they are superficial and nonexistent. On the fundamental level -- the significant level -- adults and kids are identical. Abandoning the childhood voice is a recipe for vacancy and void as an adult, but never understanding and being adult will create obstacles. Fuse childhood voice and adult demeanor to ensure incredible success and happiness. Machiavelli continues, "there are only individual egos, crazy for love". And that craziness for love -- creating, supporting, and giving love -- is healthy. The last thing I'd expect to hear from good ol' Nicolo is that kids and adults are fundamentally the same except for some minor superficial altercations. I would have expected him to say that adults have abondoned the inner child for a mature, powerful self, or something, but even this master of policits recognizes the power of the inner child voice and its parralells to adulthood.
Einstein
Childhood voice is success, time of freedom, and intuition.
"The purpose of education is to channel the childlike sense for lack of fear of failure and absence of fear of rejection into different areas of academia"
Rousseau
Childhood is time of freedom and intuition.
Rousseau contradicts himself saying that "childhood is the sleep of reason". Normally a dormant reason and conscious is not a good thing, but it could mean that the intuition is awake. Also, he also says that "man was born free and everywhere he is in chains". So that man, in childhood, when he was born, is free! So intuition and freedom are linked with childhood voice!
Aldous Huxley
Childhood is enthusiasm and path to genius.
"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm."
Kahlil Gibran
Children cannot be possessed, owned; their souls never housed in a house or with a family.
"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams."
You can give birth to, give love to, and give nurturing to a child, but you can never "own" or possess a child saying that it is your own. They generate their own thoughts and have tremendous incredible souls that can never be housed.
Childhood is GeniusPicasso. "What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood."
Educate Children. JFK"A child miseducated is a child lost. "
Respect Children. Plato. "Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence. "
Be not man fearing light. Plato. "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. "
Honesty is Childhood. Socrates. "An honest man is always a child."
1.28.2006
Identifying our Work
I've been shown the door a lot . However, quite often, I recognize the importance of understanding that I jump into situations that I don't want to be a part of and will get booted from, in order to say that I tried that option. Why not just cut to the chase and create more certainty with what I do want to do? An answer is that I don't know what I want to do, but I have some resourceful indicators. My brain never stops. It is constantly going when I am not in a situated situation. Check out your own signals and you'll create opportunities in the places that you want.
I have parents that are very interested in their work. They're great at it. However, I frequently get asked what is it that my parents do. I respond, saying my father is an innovation consultant and my mother is a writer and "professional mom". You can relegate any profession by emphasizing the minute modus operandi functionalities. Describing "what they do" as they make phone calls, give PowerPoint presentations to people, are passengers in airplanes, own a home, and drive around in cars. My mom certainly is a "professional mom". She devotes her time to, according to her book, "creating in [the] home as sanctuary of love, nurturing, and support" (Kuczmarski 8).
It's been great to grow up in a caring place, devoted to support and development, but it can make you a bit panicky at times, if I don't feel as if I am developing. The real transformation is maintaining connections with family, obviously, but becoming able to create one's own haven of fostering care, love, and nurturing healthy living. Additionally, Susan Kuczmarski "encourages teens to take time to appreciate their inner strengths as well as those of the people around them" (Kuczmarski 14).
Now it's fantastic having a mother who is not only incredibly wise and keen on the field of parenting, but devoted to always being available to listen, and interested in talking about problems and providing genuine help. However, a debilitating tendency that can arise in most teens -- *ahem* me, especially, about 5 years ago -- is to ricochet and reject this genuine help for fear of being a trophy child. If a teen believes he has really become a trophy child, things will change fast in that teen's life. I felt that being successful with friends, family, school, sports had all been for the sake of proving that my mother could raise a kid. Given the tumultuous melting pot of hormones, pubescent changes, and highschool peer pressure that a teen already copes with, now feeling like a trophy child hits the teen with a tidal wave of fear. The last thing that anyone wants is to be is some object that is paraded around to enhance the status of someone else. The definition of a trophy child or, more commonly, a trophy wife, engenders self-sabotage or an amputation of the relationship.
I felt as though I needed a clean slate, I needed to get wherever I was going without outside help. I switched schools, got into activities other than sports, pursued acting, pursued painting, read different books, dated different women, visited different places -- great things to do for becoming a cultural and eclectic person. However, I did them in a freakish attempt to make sure that I wasn't a gem of success for another person.
The important realization is that "you don't own success" no one does. Anyone who thinks that they are successful because of another person has got another thing coming.
Although not the most prudent response, the immediate reaction foranyone who feels their life has become an implement for Person B's success is to that sever ties with that person. If that can't be accomplished, the next -- with an even greater lack of prudence -- reaction is to sabotage the possibility that Person B could triumph from your success, even if that means throwing the monkey wrench into your own works. However, being a personally unsuccessful isn't a good solution because that has a negative effect on my one's. The best solution is to acknowledge that personal success can be admired and recognize by other people, but that ultimately, it is your own. You not only must acknowledge your success, but your must share it with yourself and others. In the process of emanating your own success with others, people who helped you along the may feel satisfied and content, even successful themselves, but you were always the one behind the wheel and accomplished it.
Ultimately, Susan Kuczmarski's writing, in regards to trying to listen, always be present to teens, and providing a nurturing, loving place for them to grow reveals quite an enormously sincere effort to parent. It is all quite interesting advice. However, some of her writings tend to be advice on being a parent, so that the teen feels parented, which is the last thing that a anyone would ever want. Susan Kuczmarski does an incredible job of being, simultaneously, a parent and friend. However, her writing should not be misinterpreted -- with guidelines for parents to lay ground rules, encouraging the teen to practice kindness, and controlling the balance of structure and flexibility in the household -- as advice on ways to be a parent, so that the teen feel parented. Feeling parented cogs up the human "machinery" in the anyone's mind. It specifically jeopardizes the teen because the teen is trying to create his own identity, individuate, cope with school, learn, cultivate a social sphere, and an enormous amount of other daunting tasks, and having to ward off the sensation of one person trying to be parented, creates a more bizarre sense of certainty. Leading the teen on his or her own path, versus having the teen not only discover and create his own path, but embark on it himself. A teen's job is to discover, create, and embark on his "flight" and the parent's job is to provide the fuel, cargo, and anything they'll need on that flight, and to supply a crash-landing runway for emergencies. Other than that, parents should be some of the best friends a teen can get, and, fortunately, I've had parents that make excellent friends.
The MAP System for Growth
Thomas Kuczmarski claims that the key to new product success involves three Ms -- measure, manage, motivate -- an A, for attitude, and three Ps -- plan, process, people. According to Managing New Products, you can't manage what you can't measure, and that the act of management can occur with creative and that "the cross-functional teams dedicated to executing the plan of course must be managed". However, teams or any entity that is dedicated to something does not need necessarily need management because they already would be motivated to do the task . It all depends on what the team is lacking, if they lack leadership, they need a leader, if they lack the capacity to administer jobs and responsibilities but collectively have the motivation, they need management. The final M, motivation, refers to motivation with "intangible, soft incentives, such as positive feedback and team structures that encourage employees to embrace risk, and "hard incentives" such as reward systems that enable employees to benefit from intelligent risk-taking" (Kuczmarski 11). While the notion that the "soft incentives" of positive feedback is a type of "hard incentive" reward system itself, this is remarkably similar to Joseph Nye's distinction between soft and hard power. Basically, Joseph Nye described two types of power in politics. There was soft power was power through attraction and co-option, the ability to shape the preferences of others, while hard power was the use of force, military might, carrots and sticks, coercing and threats, inductions and payments. It's difficult to classify military might and any hard-power coercion or induction as having anything but a crippling effect, let alone a motivating impact. The message of the article I wrote on soft-power and hard-power using Nye's references, was that power cannot be trounced by power. J.R.R. Tolkien writes, "Power is an ominous and sinister word in all" of his books (Tolkien. 152). Additionally, he writes that the ring in his tales can be allegorically considered as an example of the failure of trying to ward of power with power. While the distinguishing characteristic between an intangible "soft incentive" and a "hard" reward system is unclear, the necessity of motivation is genuine, for certain.
Attitude links the Ms and the Ps, making it a "linchpin" which makes a lot of sense because you sell yourself and a poor attitude cripples any exchange while a captivating attitude can only create more of it. Apparently, planning produces more breakthrough products. Furthermore, understanding that technology and businesses are in an ever-increasing process is vital to learning the art of building new products . It seems the new products shouldn't be managed, at all, but simply given a few subtle adjustments, having the product create a life of its own. The people-component of MAP basically only gives a reference to a reward system or "splash" that honors work outside of one's expertise. While such a dynamic concept as "people" engenders a smorgasbord of neglected considerations in the topic of "people" -- motivation, punctuality, esteem, proficiency, dynamism, commitment to the task, knowledge of their vocation, awareness of other employees, to name a few -- encouragement for growth outside of one's expertise certainly couldn't be a more significant emphasis.
Sincerely comprehending some of the clean and efficient phraseology used by Tom Kuczmarski simply engenders a sure-fire result of swift success.
Kuczmarski, Thomas. Managing New Products. Chicago: Book Ends Press, 2000.
I have parents that are very interested in their work. They're great at it. However, I frequently get asked what is it that my parents do. I respond, saying my father is an innovation consultant and my mother is a writer and "professional mom". You can relegate any profession by emphasizing the minute modus operandi functionalities. Describing "what they do" as they make phone calls, give PowerPoint presentations to people, are passengers in airplanes, own a home, and drive around in cars. My mom certainly is a "professional mom". She devotes her time to, according to her book, "creating in [the] home as sanctuary of love, nurturing, and support" (Kuczmarski 8).
It's been great to grow up in a caring place, devoted to support and development, but it can make you a bit panicky at times, if I don't feel as if I am developing. The real transformation is maintaining connections with family, obviously, but becoming able to create one's own haven of fostering care, love, and nurturing healthy living. Additionally, Susan Kuczmarski "encourages teens to take time to appreciate their inner strengths as well as those of the people around them" (Kuczmarski 14).
Now it's fantastic having a mother who is not only incredibly wise and keen on the field of parenting, but devoted to always being available to listen, and interested in talking about problems and providing genuine help. However, a debilitating tendency that can arise in most teens -- *ahem* me, especially, about 5 years ago -- is to ricochet and reject this genuine help for fear of being a trophy child. If a teen believes he has really become a trophy child, things will change fast in that teen's life. I felt that being successful with friends, family, school, sports had all been for the sake of proving that my mother could raise a kid. Given the tumultuous melting pot of hormones, pubescent changes, and highschool peer pressure that a teen already copes with, now feeling like a trophy child hits the teen with a tidal wave of fear. The last thing that anyone wants is to be is some object that is paraded around to enhance the status of someone else. The definition of a trophy child or, more commonly, a trophy wife, engenders self-sabotage or an amputation of the relationship.
I felt as though I needed a clean slate, I needed to get wherever I was going without outside help. I switched schools, got into activities other than sports, pursued acting, pursued painting, read different books, dated different women, visited different places -- great things to do for becoming a cultural and eclectic person. However, I did them in a freakish attempt to make sure that I wasn't a gem of success for another person.
The important realization is that "you don't own success" no one does. Anyone who thinks that they are successful because of another person has got another thing coming.
Although not the most prudent response, the immediate reaction foranyone who feels their life has become an implement for Person B's success is to that sever ties with that person. If that can't be accomplished, the next -- with an even greater lack of prudence -- reaction is to sabotage the possibility that Person B could triumph from your success, even if that means throwing the monkey wrench into your own works. However, being a personally unsuccessful isn't a good solution because that has a negative effect on my one's. The best solution is to acknowledge that personal success can be admired and recognize by other people, but that ultimately, it is your own. You not only must acknowledge your success, but your must share it with yourself and others. In the process of emanating your own success with others, people who helped you along the may feel satisfied and content, even successful themselves, but you were always the one behind the wheel and accomplished it.
Ultimately, Susan Kuczmarski's writing, in regards to trying to listen, always be present to teens, and providing a nurturing, loving place for them to grow reveals quite an enormously sincere effort to parent. It is all quite interesting advice. However, some of her writings tend to be advice on being a parent, so that the teen feels parented, which is the last thing that a anyone would ever want. Susan Kuczmarski does an incredible job of being, simultaneously, a parent and friend. However, her writing should not be misinterpreted -- with guidelines for parents to lay ground rules, encouraging the teen to practice kindness, and controlling the balance of structure and flexibility in the household -- as advice on ways to be a parent, so that the teen feel parented. Feeling parented cogs up the human "machinery" in the anyone's mind. It specifically jeopardizes the teen because the teen is trying to create his own identity, individuate, cope with school, learn, cultivate a social sphere, and an enormous amount of other daunting tasks, and having to ward off the sensation of one person trying to be parented, creates a more bizarre sense of certainty. Leading the teen on his or her own path, versus having the teen not only discover and create his own path, but embark on it himself. A teen's job is to discover, create, and embark on his "flight" and the parent's job is to provide the fuel, cargo, and anything they'll need on that flight, and to supply a crash-landing runway for emergencies. Other than that, parents should be some of the best friends a teen can get, and, fortunately, I've had parents that make excellent friends.
The MAP System for Growth
Thomas Kuczmarski claims that the key to new product success involves three Ms -- measure, manage, motivate -- an A, for attitude, and three Ps -- plan, process, people. According to Managing New Products, you can't manage what you can't measure, and that the act of management can occur with creative and that "the cross-functional teams dedicated to executing the plan of course must be managed". However, teams or any entity that is dedicated to something does not need necessarily need management because they already would be motivated to do the task . It all depends on what the team is lacking, if they lack leadership, they need a leader, if they lack the capacity to administer jobs and responsibilities but collectively have the motivation, they need management. The final M, motivation, refers to motivation with "intangible, soft incentives, such as positive feedback and team structures that encourage employees to embrace risk, and "hard incentives" such as reward systems that enable employees to benefit from intelligent risk-taking" (Kuczmarski 11). While the notion that the "soft incentives" of positive feedback is a type of "hard incentive" reward system itself, this is remarkably similar to Joseph Nye's distinction between soft and hard power. Basically, Joseph Nye described two types of power in politics. There was soft power was power through attraction and co-option, the ability to shape the preferences of others, while hard power was the use of force, military might, carrots and sticks, coercing and threats, inductions and payments. It's difficult to classify military might and any hard-power coercion or induction as having anything but a crippling effect, let alone a motivating impact. The message of the article I wrote on soft-power and hard-power using Nye's references, was that power cannot be trounced by power. J.R.R. Tolkien writes, "Power is an ominous and sinister word in all" of his books (Tolkien. 152). Additionally, he writes that the ring in his tales can be allegorically considered as an example of the failure of trying to ward of power with power. While the distinguishing characteristic between an intangible "soft incentive" and a "hard" reward system is unclear, the necessity of motivation is genuine, for certain.
Attitude links the Ms and the Ps, making it a "linchpin" which makes a lot of sense because you sell yourself and a poor attitude cripples any exchange while a captivating attitude can only create more of it. Apparently, planning produces more breakthrough products. Furthermore, understanding that technology and businesses are in an ever-increasing process is vital to learning the art of building new products . It seems the new products shouldn't be managed, at all, but simply given a few subtle adjustments, having the product create a life of its own. The people-component of MAP basically only gives a reference to a reward system or "splash" that honors work outside of one's expertise. While such a dynamic concept as "people" engenders a smorgasbord of neglected considerations in the topic of "people" -- motivation, punctuality, esteem, proficiency, dynamism, commitment to the task, knowledge of their vocation, awareness of other employees, to name a few -- encouragement for growth outside of one's expertise certainly couldn't be a more significant emphasis.
Sincerely comprehending some of the clean and efficient phraseology used by Tom Kuczmarski simply engenders a sure-fire result of swift success.
Kuczmarski, Thomas. Managing New Products. Chicago: Book Ends Press, 2000.
1.27.2006
Becoming Distinctly Vocalized Conversationalists
People have different conversational voices all the time. You communicate with a very sensitive and meek, or paranoid person with a very slow, quiet, benign inflection and deliberate inflection. You talk to someone in wild and rambunctious tone with a deliberate, aggressive, roaring tones. If you chose not to use a different, compatible conversational voice, the former (anxious person) might be incredibly offended, even frightened by an uproarious voice and would shut-off and close-down everything you were saying. Similarly, the fervent, extroverted person would be bored or pathetic towards a dry, predictable vocalization, possibly finding it monotonous. The point is that the recipe for success in the conversational arena is authentically being able to not just speak with different intonations and intensity levels, but to take up almost distinct personalities to connect with the myriad different temperates and dispositions of the listener.
I remember talking with a colleague who would definitely fall into the category of the sensitive, anxious, quiet type. Whenever I approached him in a rambunctious, excited or aggressive manner, the conversation would go no where. I could be talking but nothing would be being heard because he would have closed me off. Fervent, robust communication with incompatible with my taciturn chum. I had to become, almost through "method" acting (a form of acting developed by Stanislovski where the actor doesn't mimic a role, but actually takes of the emotions of the character) a personality that possess a compatible voice. Similarly, with the extroverted, fervent person, I had to become a very robust speak, taking up a rich and resilient, sharp and sonorous voice. This is the opposite of guile; it's connecting with people in a much more real and direct manner because you still say the same message and talk about similar things, but through an interface of heightened compatibility.
Frequently, different "voices" create seemingly different interests, which, in reality, are manifestations of one's cohesive core. I remember trying to major in a Communications Media major in college, combining psychology, English, politics, drama, and computers. Got it passed by a committee but not the academic Board. So I had to craft my own unofficial pursuit of that major and in that process I realized similarities to those five areas of academia to five major qualities in each of my five family-members. My dad, with his strict regimen of being consistently on-time to work and his formulaic-like pattern of doing accounting at the end of everyday at the kitchen table was comparable to computer science. Mom's "whoops" and loud, articulate laughs and sayings was the equivalent of drama. My brother, James, with his deliberate studies and papers on political science symbolized political science. My fervent interest in personality, consciousness, motivation, and emotion made me somewhat of a symbol for psychology. And my brother, Thomas, with his lucid and sagacious judgment, frequently utter the wisest word choice in a simple conversation represented English. The point is that your interests are crafted from those surrounding you. People are the core of those interests and in five representations above, I had manifested my interests in people into academia (and vice versa, possibly). English, psychology, politics, drama, and computers were all aspects of my core personality, just displayed through different, but interconnected voices.
Using a variety of conversational demeanors and personalities is anything but disingenous. It is connective and more real because you connect to people on level that is compatible with them; a stance that will generate more from the relationship. If you were in a different, incompatible conversational demeanor, dialogue would not occur, so having the capacity to adapt with that dialogue is even more vital and important.
You can maintain an interconnected mentality and resonance by integrating the ideal self with the dream self. Rogers -- a prominent psychologist who put forth, among other concepts, "client-centered therapy" -- claims that the self directs behavior, and that there exists a conflict between the real and the ideal self. Why not let the ideal self become the real self? Why not embrace the process of dreaming and use those aspirations as stepping stones for the creation of this real self? Abandon the internal conflict. Create the external dream with an intrinsic intention, meaning that the process -- and transforming dreams into reality not instantaneous, but a process -- is cherished as much as the end-result.
I remember talking with a colleague who would definitely fall into the category of the sensitive, anxious, quiet type. Whenever I approached him in a rambunctious, excited or aggressive manner, the conversation would go no where. I could be talking but nothing would be being heard because he would have closed me off. Fervent, robust communication with incompatible with my taciturn chum. I had to become, almost through "method" acting (a form of acting developed by Stanislovski where the actor doesn't mimic a role, but actually takes of the emotions of the character) a personality that possess a compatible voice. Similarly, with the extroverted, fervent person, I had to become a very robust speak, taking up a rich and resilient, sharp and sonorous voice. This is the opposite of guile; it's connecting with people in a much more real and direct manner because you still say the same message and talk about similar things, but through an interface of heightened compatibility.
Frequently, different "voices" create seemingly different interests, which, in reality, are manifestations of one's cohesive core. I remember trying to major in a Communications Media major in college, combining psychology, English, politics, drama, and computers. Got it passed by a committee but not the academic Board. So I had to craft my own unofficial pursuit of that major and in that process I realized similarities to those five areas of academia to five major qualities in each of my five family-members. My dad, with his strict regimen of being consistently on-time to work and his formulaic-like pattern of doing accounting at the end of everyday at the kitchen table was comparable to computer science. Mom's "whoops" and loud, articulate laughs and sayings was the equivalent of drama. My brother, James, with his deliberate studies and papers on political science symbolized political science. My fervent interest in personality, consciousness, motivation, and emotion made me somewhat of a symbol for psychology. And my brother, Thomas, with his lucid and sagacious judgment, frequently utter the wisest word choice in a simple conversation represented English. The point is that your interests are crafted from those surrounding you. People are the core of those interests and in five representations above, I had manifested my interests in people into academia (and vice versa, possibly). English, psychology, politics, drama, and computers were all aspects of my core personality, just displayed through different, but interconnected voices.
Using a variety of conversational demeanors and personalities is anything but disingenous. It is connective and more real because you connect to people on level that is compatible with them; a stance that will generate more from the relationship. If you were in a different, incompatible conversational demeanor, dialogue would not occur, so having the capacity to adapt with that dialogue is even more vital and important.
You can maintain an interconnected mentality and resonance by integrating the ideal self with the dream self. Rogers -- a prominent psychologist who put forth, among other concepts, "client-centered therapy" -- claims that the self directs behavior, and that there exists a conflict between the real and the ideal self. Why not let the ideal self become the real self? Why not embrace the process of dreaming and use those aspirations as stepping stones for the creation of this real self? Abandon the internal conflict. Create the external dream with an intrinsic intention, meaning that the process -- and transforming dreams into reality not instantaneous, but a process -- is cherished as much as the end-result.
1.26.2006
The Bicameral Mind and Consciousness
In 1976, Julian Jaynes took a break from his Princeton instruction to write the ground-breaking "Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", in which he detailed specific accounts on the nature of consciousness from a variety of civilizations -- the Sumerians, Mayans, Asians, Hebrews, and most significantly, the ancient Greeks. In his account of the mind's consciousness, Jaynes references ancient texts, saying that characters in the Iliad "possess no general consciousness" (Jaynes 69). Additionally, he drew psychological connections between the language centers of the brain --Broca's area, Wernick's area, and the supplemental motor cortex. According to Frank Wallace, his conclusions "will rank among the five most important books ever written by the year 2000" (Wallace 1).
Julian's comments of the Greeks and Hebrews possessing no consciousness is highly debatable because in Homer's account of the fifty days of the tenth year of the Trojan war, there had to have been at least some intelligent consciousness to construct the Trojan Horse contraption and for the heroes of the Iliad to perform some of the feats described in the epic. Similarly, many could argue that characters in the Bible -- such as Cain choosing to slay his brother, Abel -- acted out of their own volition.
However, Jaynes provides scintillating evidence illustrating how ancient characters, specifically the Greeks, seemed to be controlled by something other than their own consciousness. After all, the writers of the Bible, despite the profoundly evocative evidence of which they describe, do not appear to have a conscience or, at the least, introspection. It is not until later writings of the Old Testament, like in Ecclesiastes do the writers take up a distinctively introspective tone. In the first verse of Ecclesiastes, the writer states how his studies revealed him that wisdom is meaningless: "I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heaven burden God has laid on men! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind" (Bible Ecclesiastes 1:13). I would have to strongly disagree with this writer because he then on to say that, in addition to wisdom, pleasures, toil, and advancement are meaningless. Sure, maybe toil could be labeled as purposeless, but wisdom can generate knowing which can help others in their process, and pleasures can provide temporary satisfaction.
The writer encourages one to stand in awe of God, which, personally, I feel is a way of simply method of acquiring more blind followers to the Christian faith, but respect for an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent force -- given that one exists -- would definitely be a good thing. The writer takes quite a derogatory and brusque tone, telling the reader that God lacks time for fools, of which I strongly disagree because he later says to "fear God and keep his commandments...For he will bring every deed into judgment" (Bible Ecclesiastes 12:13). People should never live in fear of anything. It is a flaw in Christianity, in my mind, to encourage -- basically demand -- anyone to live in fear and awe of any power, regardless of its capacity for judgment. One should be in awe of themselves; as Janyes has speculated the only "God voices" are those of our own mind. Listen to and stand in awe of your own certainty. The point is clear, however, the writer, reflecting on what qualities are meaningful and the culmination of some of his studies, has taken a more reflective non-bicameral tone. Janyes These are gross speculations, but most people would have at least a scintilla of reflection after witnessing Noah's Flood, Thus began the Jaynes' Theory of Consciousness.
Jaynes argues that these ancient heroes had no grasp of subjectivity and introspection, lacked all cognizance of one's own level of awareness, possessed no "internal mind to introspect upon" (Jaynes 75). According to Jaynes, in this state of mental bicameralism and the absence of inner monologue, people commonly experienced external god forces pushing the automatons around with "voices". However, Jaynes brilliantly asserts that those "external God voices" did not come from external deity, but rather from the other half -- the "speaking half" -- of one's own mind. Janyes says that the speaking half of one's mind It is difficult to label Achilles, Agamemnon, or Moses as people that did not act on their own accord. Where they people who were greatly in touch with spiritual connections and intentions? Yes, but not necessarily people that were robots to some divine voice. Instead, Janyes puts forth the possibility that even the divine messages they received came from the other half of their own mind simply "waking up".
What could have been possibly waking up were intrinsic motivations. There exists two major branches of psychological motivation -- extrinsic motivation , working for external reward, and intrinsic motivation, working for the pleasure of the activity itself. It's amazing that, if the bicameral mind theory has veracity, the heroes of ancient Greece were not worshipping external deities and making sacrifices to the God voices they heard, but rather, they were obeying the commands of their own mind and making sacrificial worship to the right-side of their brain! In short, they had sincere connection to there inner voice.
It was certainly a different time back then. Today, such divine invocations from external voices would be swiftly mis-diagnosed as schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, or some other disorder from the frightening annals of "abnormal psychology". If you've seen the movie Dr. Strangelove, then you've witnessed the erratic, explosive gestures where Dr. Strangelove's hand seems to have a life of it's own, a condition also known as "alien hand syndrome", or AHS. Alien hand syndrome is a neurological disorder that can occur with damage (or surgery) to the corpus callosum, which frequently is fount in the surgical severing of the callosum for extremely epileptic patients. Cases of AHS can get so severe that one hand begins to "fight" with the other hand, so that, for example, if the left handed opened the refrigerator to grab bowl of pasta, the right would just as quickly shove the pasta back into the fridge and slam the fridge shut! The halves of the brain failed to reach a "compromise" before taking action could be one explanation. AHS has drawn the attention of scholars and scientists interested psychological volition, philosophy of action, and human consciousness. Risking the possibility of AHS to cure epilepsy? Tough choice, but fortunately, thanks to advancements in surgical technology people don't have to make that choice, but the ancients with the possible existence of a "bicameral mind", most certainly had difficulties with hallucinations, visions, and voices from the other half of their mind!
Jaynes points out that as civilization developed and the right-brain dominance over the left decreased, consciousness truly emerged. The concept of divination and spirituality emerged when bicameralism faded (the brain halves fused) and the need for an explanation of "all those voices" arose. Interesting that during the re-integration of the cerebral halves, kids were have said to have more voices from the "gods", but lost these abilities with later schooling. This could imply that schooling generated more of a conscience or that it caused the right-brain to "listen" and the left-brain to "speak" whether or not that is a beneficial shift or not.
Getting into the anatomical details, Janyes Theory focused on the primary communication and language centers of the brain, namely Broca's area and Wernicke's area both connected to each other with the arcuate fasciculus. In neuroscience-speak, Broca's area is a.k.a Brodmann's area 44, located in the left frontal lobe around the triangular section of the inferior frontal gyrus, and Wernicke's area is a.k.a Brodmann area 22, found on the left posterior temporal lobe close to the temporo-parietal junction. Both of these, you'll notice, are located on the left hemisphere of the brain, which could relate to Janyes theory of the left-"listening brain" and right speaking brain. However, Broca's area is connected with the motor mechanics of using larynx muscles to produce and comprehend speech and, while Wernicke's area, on the other hand, being involved in receiving information and transforming it into linguistic words, is all "listening". In short, Broca's gets the words in your mind out, while Wernicke's puts the information in your mind into words. With Broca's aphasia, you can comprehend, but speak in stilted, random manner, while one with Wernicke's aphasia cannot comprehend words, but can speak them in a semi-meaningful manner.
The loss in the ability to speak or understand spoken language due to brain damage of Broca's area results in "non-fluent aphasia" and "fluent aphasia" if speech command is lost in Wernicke's area. Frequently, conjugations and pronoun-understanding may been lost with the retention of nouns and verbs, but without a logical ordering in speech production. While someone suffering from Broca's aphasia comprehends a majority of what they pick up, their speech production is jumbled. For example, to say they went to the store, they might say "store went, I say", or something similar. Wernicke's aphasia, known as "fluent-aphasia" produces aphasia that sounds more coherent, but lacks meaning. The decrease in comprehension levels is visible in Wernicke's aphasia, as well. While it is a sad situation because 72% of aphasics are isolated from work, 50% have taken speech-therapy only to be less excluded, there exists a National Aphasics Association (NAA) that helps those in need.
(en.wikipedio.org 1)
But with the rise of consciousness came the fear of acting with one's own volition, which brought the uncertainty of doubt. In this doubt, man began to think:
Well, using one's own mind and one's own authority isn't a problem at all. It's a solution! The Matrix and Blade Runner from the cyberpunk genre -- where tensions between hackers, A.I. and mega-corporations brew in the not-so-distant future -- Neotech, and the concept of Validate Your Life have latched onto the vital task of abandoning the guilt of consciousness to escape the fallacy of Original Sin and of consciousness, and embrace those strengths.
Look at famous works like Hawthorne's The Birthmark and the punishment and expulsion from the Garden of Eden in the Bible to see that consciousness is frequently a condemned change, when it should be promulgated. Neotech, the mortal enemy of mysticism, which uses "non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge such as 'just knowing'," engenders using one's own reason and senses to make conclusions. "People knowledgeable about fully integrated honesty or Neotech have the tools to control their own lives and destinies, free from crippling mysticism and harmful false authority" (Wallace 11). While Neotech has a fantastic goal, remembering to listen to intuition now and then is fine if just, for the least, to try to create a reconciliating synthesis between Neotech and mystic philosophies.
The Neotech approach certainly does have a stronger case because it chooses not to betray, but to utilize one's own mind. For about two years in my life, I took up a mysticism approach and tried to seriously commit to astrology, signs, and lots of other voodoo before it felt as though it took me absolutely nowhere in no direction. However, there exist different degrees and criteria for progress that could fit "mysticism success", but Neotech is much more logical and applicable. It's important to acknowledge mental conscience, but also vital -- sometimes more vital -- to obey the spiritual, mystical body. Ultimately, a reconciling balance of neotech-mind-consciousness and mysticism-spiritual-heart creates freedom. In Buddhist thought, Nirvana is not a place that one arrives at or discovers, but it is an acquired internal state free of desires and fears. Recognizing the history of bicameral mentality is vital to not only honoring and respecting, but it is essential to protecting and perpetuating the current human state of consciousness and insight.
en.wikipedia.org. Broca's Area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca%27s_area
Holy Bible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1984.
Jaynes, Julian. Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976..
Wallace, Frank. Consciousness: The End of False Authority. I & O Publishing Co., 1991.
Xiong, Joseph. Aphasia: A language Disorder. Biology 202: Serendip, 1999. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro99/web1/Xiong.html
Julian's comments of the Greeks and Hebrews possessing no consciousness is highly debatable because in Homer's account of the fifty days of the tenth year of the Trojan war, there had to have been at least some intelligent consciousness to construct the Trojan Horse contraption and for the heroes of the Iliad to perform some of the feats described in the epic. Similarly, many could argue that characters in the Bible -- such as Cain choosing to slay his brother, Abel -- acted out of their own volition.
However, Jaynes provides scintillating evidence illustrating how ancient characters, specifically the Greeks, seemed to be controlled by something other than their own consciousness. After all, the writers of the Bible, despite the profoundly evocative evidence of which they describe, do not appear to have a conscience or, at the least, introspection. It is not until later writings of the Old Testament, like in Ecclesiastes do the writers take up a distinctively introspective tone. In the first verse of Ecclesiastes, the writer states how his studies revealed him that wisdom is meaningless: "I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heaven burden God has laid on men! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind" (Bible Ecclesiastes 1:13). I would have to strongly disagree with this writer because he then on to say that, in addition to wisdom, pleasures, toil, and advancement are meaningless. Sure, maybe toil could be labeled as purposeless, but wisdom can generate knowing which can help others in their process, and pleasures can provide temporary satisfaction.
The writer encourages one to stand in awe of God, which, personally, I feel is a way of simply method of acquiring more blind followers to the Christian faith, but respect for an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent force -- given that one exists -- would definitely be a good thing. The writer takes quite a derogatory and brusque tone, telling the reader that God lacks time for fools, of which I strongly disagree because he later says to "fear God and keep his commandments...For he will bring every deed into judgment" (Bible Ecclesiastes 12:13). People should never live in fear of anything. It is a flaw in Christianity, in my mind, to encourage -- basically demand -- anyone to live in fear and awe of any power, regardless of its capacity for judgment. One should be in awe of themselves; as Janyes has speculated the only "God voices" are those of our own mind. Listen to and stand in awe of your own certainty. The point is clear, however, the writer, reflecting on what qualities are meaningful and the culmination of some of his studies, has taken a more reflective non-bicameral tone. Janyes These are gross speculations, but most people would have at least a scintilla of reflection after witnessing Noah's Flood, Thus began the Jaynes' Theory of Consciousness.
Jaynes argues that these ancient heroes had no grasp of subjectivity and introspection, lacked all cognizance of one's own level of awareness, possessed no "internal mind to introspect upon" (Jaynes 75). According to Jaynes, in this state of mental bicameralism and the absence of inner monologue, people commonly experienced external god forces pushing the automatons around with "voices". However, Jaynes brilliantly asserts that those "external God voices" did not come from external deity, but rather from the other half -- the "speaking half" -- of one's own mind. Janyes says that the speaking half of one's mind It is difficult to label Achilles, Agamemnon, or Moses as people that did not act on their own accord. Where they people who were greatly in touch with spiritual connections and intentions? Yes, but not necessarily people that were robots to some divine voice. Instead, Janyes puts forth the possibility that even the divine messages they received came from the other half of their own mind simply "waking up".
What could have been possibly waking up were intrinsic motivations. There exists two major branches of psychological motivation -- extrinsic motivation , working for external reward, and intrinsic motivation, working for the pleasure of the activity itself. It's amazing that, if the bicameral mind theory has veracity, the heroes of ancient Greece were not worshipping external deities and making sacrifices to the God voices they heard, but rather, they were obeying the commands of their own mind and making sacrificial worship to the right-side of their brain! In short, they had sincere connection to there inner voice.
It was certainly a different time back then. Today, such divine invocations from external voices would be swiftly mis-diagnosed as schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, or some other disorder from the frightening annals of "abnormal psychology". If you've seen the movie Dr. Strangelove, then you've witnessed the erratic, explosive gestures where Dr. Strangelove's hand seems to have a life of it's own, a condition also known as "alien hand syndrome", or AHS. Alien hand syndrome is a neurological disorder that can occur with damage (or surgery) to the corpus callosum, which frequently is fount in the surgical severing of the callosum for extremely epileptic patients. Cases of AHS can get so severe that one hand begins to "fight" with the other hand, so that, for example, if the left handed opened the refrigerator to grab bowl of pasta, the right would just as quickly shove the pasta back into the fridge and slam the fridge shut! The halves of the brain failed to reach a "compromise" before taking action could be one explanation. AHS has drawn the attention of scholars and scientists interested psychological volition, philosophy of action, and human consciousness. Risking the possibility of AHS to cure epilepsy? Tough choice, but fortunately, thanks to advancements in surgical technology people don't have to make that choice, but the ancients with the possible existence of a "bicameral mind", most certainly had difficulties with hallucinations, visions, and voices from the other half of their mind!
Jaynes points out that as civilization developed and the right-brain dominance over the left decreased, consciousness truly emerged. The concept of divination and spirituality emerged when bicameralism faded (the brain halves fused) and the need for an explanation of "all those voices" arose. Interesting that during the re-integration of the cerebral halves, kids were have said to have more voices from the "gods", but lost these abilities with later schooling. This could imply that schooling generated more of a conscience or that it caused the right-brain to "listen" and the left-brain to "speak" whether or not that is a beneficial shift or not.
Getting into the anatomical details, Janyes Theory focused on the primary communication and language centers of the brain, namely Broca's area and Wernicke's area both connected to each other with the arcuate fasciculus. In neuroscience-speak, Broca's area is a.k.a Brodmann's area 44, located in the left frontal lobe around the triangular section of the inferior frontal gyrus, and Wernicke's area is a.k.a Brodmann area 22, found on the left posterior temporal lobe close to the temporo-parietal junction. Both of these, you'll notice, are located on the left hemisphere of the brain, which could relate to Janyes theory of the left-"listening brain" and right speaking brain. However, Broca's area is connected with the motor mechanics of using larynx muscles to produce and comprehend speech and, while Wernicke's area, on the other hand, being involved in receiving information and transforming it into linguistic words, is all "listening". In short, Broca's gets the words in your mind out, while Wernicke's puts the information in your mind into words. With Broca's aphasia, you can comprehend, but speak in stilted, random manner, while one with Wernicke's aphasia cannot comprehend words, but can speak them in a semi-meaningful manner.
Broca's area and Wernick's area
The loss in the ability to speak or understand spoken language due to brain damage of Broca's area results in "non-fluent aphasia" and "fluent aphasia" if speech command is lost in Wernicke's area. Frequently, conjugations and pronoun-understanding may been lost with the retention of nouns and verbs, but without a logical ordering in speech production. While someone suffering from Broca's aphasia comprehends a majority of what they pick up, their speech production is jumbled. For example, to say they went to the store, they might say "store went, I say", or something similar. Wernicke's aphasia, known as "fluent-aphasia" produces aphasia that sounds more coherent, but lacks meaning. The decrease in comprehension levels is visible in Wernicke's aphasia, as well. While it is a sad situation because 72% of aphasics are isolated from work, 50% have taken speech-therapy only to be less excluded, there exists a National Aphasics Association (NAA) that helps those in need.
(en.wikipedio.org 1)
But with the rise of consciousness came the fear of acting with one's own volition, which brought the uncertainty of doubt. In this doubt, man began to think:
- "Man is made to feel guilty. He is condemned for having lost his innocence by inventing consciousness. He is condemned for assuming the responsibility to use his own mind to guide his life. He is condemned for exchanging his nature-made bicameral mind with a man-invented conscious mind." (Wallace 10).
- Considering the "problems" from exchanging in a animal-like conscious-less state for a brain, man is given automatic solutions if becomes obsequious to authority. Here, man erroneously exchanges self-responsibility for personal decisions to lead one's life fore as well discarding his ability to follow his own mind.
Well, using one's own mind and one's own authority isn't a problem at all. It's a solution! The Matrix and Blade Runner from the cyberpunk genre -- where tensions between hackers, A.I. and mega-corporations brew in the not-so-distant future -- Neotech, and the concept of Validate Your Life have latched onto the vital task of abandoning the guilt of consciousness to escape the fallacy of Original Sin and of consciousness, and embrace those strengths.
Look at famous works like Hawthorne's The Birthmark and the punishment and expulsion from the Garden of Eden in the Bible to see that consciousness is frequently a condemned change, when it should be promulgated. Neotech, the mortal enemy of mysticism, which uses "non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge such as 'just knowing'," engenders using one's own reason and senses to make conclusions. "People knowledgeable about fully integrated honesty or Neotech have the tools to control their own lives and destinies, free from crippling mysticism and harmful false authority" (Wallace 11). While Neotech has a fantastic goal, remembering to listen to intuition now and then is fine if just, for the least, to try to create a reconciliating synthesis between Neotech and mystic philosophies.
The Neotech approach certainly does have a stronger case because it chooses not to betray, but to utilize one's own mind. For about two years in my life, I took up a mysticism approach and tried to seriously commit to astrology, signs, and lots of other voodoo before it felt as though it took me absolutely nowhere in no direction. However, there exist different degrees and criteria for progress that could fit "mysticism success", but Neotech is much more logical and applicable. It's important to acknowledge mental conscience, but also vital -- sometimes more vital -- to obey the spiritual, mystical body. Ultimately, a reconciling balance of neotech-mind-consciousness and mysticism-spiritual-heart creates freedom. In Buddhist thought, Nirvana is not a place that one arrives at or discovers, but it is an acquired internal state free of desires and fears. Recognizing the history of bicameral mentality is vital to not only honoring and respecting, but it is essential to protecting and perpetuating the current human state of consciousness and insight.
en.wikipedia.org. Broca's Area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca%27s_area
Holy Bible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1984.
Jaynes, Julian. Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976..
Wallace, Frank. Consciousness: The End of False Authority. I & O Publishing Co., 1991.
Xiong, Joseph. Aphasia: A language Disorder. Biology 202: Serendip, 1999. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro99/web1/Xiong.html
1.25.2006
The Nature of “Real and Professional” Work
There exists a warped perception in nature of and pursuit of authentic work. Real and authentic work is always incredibly challenging and meaningful, but always appears simple, fun, and casual.
The truly successful people have a very different definition of real, authentic work. The successful people pursue harder tasks more often, take up seemingly unattainable goals more frequently. The most distinguishing characteristic of a successful person is that they accomplish those daunting feats with the appearance of grace, ease, and fun. Look at Michael Jordan on the basketball court. He is working harder than most of the other players on the court because he is always hustling and on the ball, but is he grunting and complaining about the fatigue of dribbling up and down the court? No! He has his tongue hanging out while slam-dunking a shot and is also having the most fun on the court out of most all other players.
Examine Mick Jagger, who is not only an extremely successful musician, but a remarkably charismatic inspiration. After seeing the Rolling Stones play at the United Center, there is no doubt that Mick, Richards, Watts, and Wood had the jam-packed stadium’s 24,500 audience members standing up, dancing, and clapping with their creativity, control, and mastery of their energy. It is not necessarily is musical talent that is so inspiring; Mick Jagger’s mother claimed, “He was always the least musical of the family” (Sandford 87). Getting that many people so inspired and into the music is about as prodigious of a task as you can get, and it is guaranteed that that it was not accomplished by whining “This is too hard” or “This work is too tough”. They are so successful because they not only cultivate the energy to inspire countless crowds but they channel it in meaningful activities, all while making it appear as if they are having so much fun on stage. The delete the burden and toil of their work. Is there work real, authentic work based on exerting themselves for the goal? For certain. But are the also having a dynamically fun and charismatic experience? For certain, as well. It is the combination of real work with real enjoyment and play that makes profound success.
We should delete working for works sake, working for x number of ours so we can “feel good that at least we worked”. We should alter the quality of our work so that it is not something we desire to terminate because it is drab and dull, but rather, something that is entertaining, poignant, and purposeful. You don’t complain or exclude people because something is entertaining, poignant, and purposeful, but it is something that needs tremendous focus.
Real, authentic work is about a connection to a prodigious task and discovering a stylish process of joy, excitement, and evocative energy. Real work is never complaining about how much “work” the work is; it is making a true challenge look nothing like work. Consider the most successful athletes. Phelps looks like an otter swimming a gold-medal pace 400 medley. 10,000-meter gold-medalist Haile Gebrselassie from Ethiopia looks like a graceful gazelle in his races. He doesn’t even were shoes. The point is that these people aren’t thrashing and grasping in the water, panting and out of breath on the track, exhausted and withered on the stage. They frequently accomplish the most daunting tasks with tremendous style, never dismaying their confidence and always keeping it awake and alert.
A tremendous amount of people work for work’s sake, creating a vacant, counterfeit expectation of productivity. I remember countless times being shunned because people couldn’t mix work with play. I have heard people say, verbatim, “You have to leave because I have to do real, professional work”. I’ve seen patronization in many forms but that’s about as supercilious as it gets. It implies that my interaction with that person is not real and not professional for one thing. Most importantly, it reveals something remarkably sad about that person. Most people weren’t doing “real and professional work” when they’ve said that. They simply plan to go send emails or sometimes something as casual as lunch. Any claim that sending emails or making a few phone calls is "real and authentic work" is a joke.
The point is that “real and professional work” is a fantastic endeavor, but the irony is that the authentically real and the genuinely professional work occurs very rarely and when it does, it never feels like work! People like Mick Jagger, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, and other great souls work harder than any other person in honing their message, channeling their intention, and activating their charisma, but one reason why they are so great is that they choose to delete “burden” connotation of work. The definition of work is a mental or physical activity down to reach a desired result.
The truly great workers do three unique things:
Basically the formula for “real and professional” work is a colossal goal, an unique style and vitality, and a way to eliminate toil and difficulties in something that is tremendously difficult.
Far too often, people misconstrue “real and professional work as putting the nose to the grindstone while doing something we don’t enjoy and but are obligated to do. That is not creative, not dynamic, and not alive. Most work is dead. It is tedious, repetitive and insipid. Spanish Philosopher Baltasar Gracian suggests that we “Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.” This is the epitome of creating real work for ourselves. Authentic, real, professional work doesn’t even have to be difficult, just as long as we attempt that work with the mentality opposite the nature of the work. If it’s easy, make it hard; if it’s challenging, make it easy. Real and authentic work tricks our doubt so that our confidence remains activated and shines regardless of the task.
Sandford, Christopher. Mick Jagger: Rebel Knight. London: Omnibus Press, 2003.
The truly successful people have a very different definition of real, authentic work. The successful people pursue harder tasks more often, take up seemingly unattainable goals more frequently. The most distinguishing characteristic of a successful person is that they accomplish those daunting feats with the appearance of grace, ease, and fun. Look at Michael Jordan on the basketball court. He is working harder than most of the other players on the court because he is always hustling and on the ball, but is he grunting and complaining about the fatigue of dribbling up and down the court? No! He has his tongue hanging out while slam-dunking a shot and is also having the most fun on the court out of most all other players.
Examine Mick Jagger, who is not only an extremely successful musician, but a remarkably charismatic inspiration. After seeing the Rolling Stones play at the United Center, there is no doubt that Mick, Richards, Watts, and Wood had the jam-packed stadium’s 24,500 audience members standing up, dancing, and clapping with their creativity, control, and mastery of their energy. It is not necessarily is musical talent that is so inspiring; Mick Jagger’s mother claimed, “He was always the least musical of the family” (Sandford 87). Getting that many people so inspired and into the music is about as prodigious of a task as you can get, and it is guaranteed that that it was not accomplished by whining “This is too hard” or “This work is too tough”. They are so successful because they not only cultivate the energy to inspire countless crowds but they channel it in meaningful activities, all while making it appear as if they are having so much fun on stage. The delete the burden and toil of their work. Is there work real, authentic work based on exerting themselves for the goal? For certain. But are the also having a dynamically fun and charismatic experience? For certain, as well. It is the combination of real work with real enjoyment and play that makes profound success.
We should delete working for works sake, working for x number of ours so we can “feel good that at least we worked”. We should alter the quality of our work so that it is not something we desire to terminate because it is drab and dull, but rather, something that is entertaining, poignant, and purposeful. You don’t complain or exclude people because something is entertaining, poignant, and purposeful, but it is something that needs tremendous focus.
Real, authentic work is about a connection to a prodigious task and discovering a stylish process of joy, excitement, and evocative energy. Real work is never complaining about how much “work” the work is; it is making a true challenge look nothing like work. Consider the most successful athletes. Phelps looks like an otter swimming a gold-medal pace 400 medley. 10,000-meter gold-medalist Haile Gebrselassie from Ethiopia looks like a graceful gazelle in his races. He doesn’t even were shoes. The point is that these people aren’t thrashing and grasping in the water, panting and out of breath on the track, exhausted and withered on the stage. They frequently accomplish the most daunting tasks with tremendous style, never dismaying their confidence and always keeping it awake and alert.
A tremendous amount of people work for work’s sake, creating a vacant, counterfeit expectation of productivity. I remember countless times being shunned because people couldn’t mix work with play. I have heard people say, verbatim, “You have to leave because I have to do real, professional work”. I’ve seen patronization in many forms but that’s about as supercilious as it gets. It implies that my interaction with that person is not real and not professional for one thing. Most importantly, it reveals something remarkably sad about that person. Most people weren’t doing “real and professional work” when they’ve said that. They simply plan to go send emails or sometimes something as casual as lunch. Any claim that sending emails or making a few phone calls is "real and authentic work" is a joke.
The point is that “real and professional work” is a fantastic endeavor, but the irony is that the authentically real and the genuinely professional work occurs very rarely and when it does, it never feels like work! People like Mick Jagger, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, and other great souls work harder than any other person in honing their message, channeling their intention, and activating their charisma, but one reason why they are so great is that they choose to delete “burden” connotation of work. The definition of work is a mental or physical activity down to reach a desired result.
The truly great workers do three unique things:
- They delete the toil and tedious operations of work.
- There work generates prodigiously important result and functions for a remarkable purpose.
- The manufacture a modus operandi for accomplishing their colossal task that makes the endeavor incredibly fun, stylish, charismatic and enticing.
Basically the formula for “real and professional” work is a colossal goal, an unique style and vitality, and a way to eliminate toil and difficulties in something that is tremendously difficult.
Far too often, people misconstrue “real and professional work as putting the nose to the grindstone while doing something we don’t enjoy and but are obligated to do. That is not creative, not dynamic, and not alive. Most work is dead. It is tedious, repetitive and insipid. Spanish Philosopher Baltasar Gracian suggests that we “Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.” This is the epitome of creating real work for ourselves. Authentic, real, professional work doesn’t even have to be difficult, just as long as we attempt that work with the mentality opposite the nature of the work. If it’s easy, make it hard; if it’s challenging, make it easy. Real and authentic work tricks our doubt so that our confidence remains activated and shines regardless of the task.
Sandford, Christopher. Mick Jagger: Rebel Knight. London: Omnibus Press, 2003.
1.24.2006
The Success of Deletion
The stimulating and clarifying effects of deletion generate an inimitable empowerment in our pursuit of certainty. Susan Collins writes, "letting go of what we have can be a challenging process bringing up old fears and insecurities. Letting go of friends and partners, familiar jobs and homes will create the space for new people and situations -- the space for our dreams" (Collins 31). Deletion creates, enabling us to "move past the "false security of simply having someone or something" (Collins 31). It's extremely common to fear letting go of something simply because we have it.
The resourcefulness of an item, relationship, or experience is far too often a lesser priority than the possession of that thing. In other words, people want to have something just for the sake of possessing it, rather than having its desired effects. I remember being in relationship with a group of people that condescendingly castigated we with no cause. Such chidings occurred with a very distinct pattern. Every time I would return to that group and I was in an extremely clear and good zone -- like a scintillating reunion with some old friends, or an invigorating party, or some evocative experience like seeing a great movie, concert, or sporting event – they displayed great and virulent confrontation. I discovered that group of people vilified me and fallaciously penalized me whenever I was feeling very centered.
Such vicious vituperation shocked my system, and because of their deceitful revilement, which was largely provoked by fear, I typically apologized and played the role of the victim. It is unclear as to whether or not they felt out of control or felt frightened or simply didn't like it when I was in such a state of great happiness, but such reasons are irrelevant because becoming victimized by their nebulous remonstrations smashed my confidence, buried my enthusiasm, and, to say the least had a very destructive impact on my life.
The worst part was that whenever I tried to stand up for myself and tell the person that they were being horrible and having a terribly negative impact on me, they would team up and collectively say that I was wrong-doer. This created a debilitating doubt for me. I not only had to falsely be satisfied with the false belief that I had done something wrong, but I had to be in accordance with their terrible. It became a very tedious battle between who was really harming whom. They would create rules and limiting provisos to which I had to agree and completely and not only deny how much suffering they caused me, but pretend that they brought me happiness. The wouldnt' settle for anything less in politics of the extremely dysfunctional relationship. To say the least living with that group of people was incredible vapid. It's important to delete those experiences and then share them in the process of moving on and forgiving because in sharing them, you honor any emotive dislikes and likes.
However, I didn't let go and decide to move on because of fearing there would be a scarcity. Fortunately, I recognize that pattern and understand that with that awful group of people there were too options, conflict or me playing the victimized role. The word “decide” in Latin, decidere, means to "cut away from". Fortunately, I realized that cutting away that group had a very empowering effect because I could enjoy my zeal. Every decision makes an incision in our life experience; our goal is to discard the debilitating experiences and make way for harmonious and provocative growth.
Think about food consumption in regards to addition or deletion. Everyone knows that certain foods – fried foods, foods heavy on white sugar, and excessive carbs – can weigh us down, burden, and drain us. But people frequently eat when they are drained to add an energy boost. Deleting, choosing not to eat the heavy food, deciding not to purchase the useless knickknack that will clutter our life, exertion instead of recuperation, at times, is the solution for supreme control of happiness.
Deleting or adding things always has a chain reaction of cause-and-effect.
The important thing with all this deletion is to never throw out the baby with the bathwater and to always exchange something incapacitating for something fulfilling. In other words, don't delete all foods. Delete heavy, draining foods and replace them with nourishing foods. Delete debilitating relationships and add fulfilling friendships. There is this great line from the movie Chocolat:
Americans have been choosing more often to buy imported cars (addition), which forces a domestic automakers like Ford to downshift. Ford then had to “delete” 30,000 jobs and close 14 of its primary factories because of the decreased demand for domestic cars (Popely 1). So deleting can cause changes and tension in people related that that cut. Those Ford works were no doubt distraught with the lay-offs, just as a partner may be distraught when you choose to end a destructive relationship. But the deletion must occur. Ford would have to file Chapter 11 if it didn’t “delete”. Similarly, we would continue to suffer tremendous agony if we didn’t delete negative relationships. Could you imagine if you kept “adding” and didn’t “delete” every spam your encountered or considered purchasing every advertisement you saw throughout your life? We would end up in a mental hospital. While adding the right things can certainly boost our vitality, introducing negative things to our life can seriously cripple us. Given the right choices, deleting keeps us centered on our ardent intention.
When trying to determine the resourcefulness of a relationship to a person, place, or thing, examining its effect should be the top priority. We must stop holding on to people or places or items that weigh us down, create stagnant deterioration of our endeavors, and have a degenerative impact on our authenticity.
Susan Collins concludes, "The difference between a live body and a dead one is movement and change -- completing and deleting, breathing in and breathing out, eating and eliminating, working and resting. We know someone's dead when they're rigid and hard" (Collins 32). If you really want to classify the work that you do as authentic, real, professional work, you have to create an enormously important task that requires a tremendously difficult process to accomplish, but then make that nearly impossible process appear simple, easy, and energizing. The living are dynamic and adaptive; they change and add to energizing things to their life as often as they take away static and destructive things in their life. Similarly, the thriving work is not a burden, accomplishes a tremendous goal, and has an inimitable style and charisma to it.
Collins affirms, "We feel like we're dying when we're doing the same things over and over, no longer choosing and no longer enjoying them" (Collins 31). Again the power of choice to delete is far to frequently over-looked as a method to improve our life and reacquaint ourselves with long-lost vim and vigor. It is alto-often that when distraught, depressed, or upset we turn to adding things to our life when we should be deleting the relationship limits our capacity, or the thing that confines our zeal. Abandon and "cut away" relationships, places, and things that stifle our concentrated intention. Your effulgence is never to be extinguished and charisma, never to be deactivated.
Collins, Susan. Our Children are Watching. Barrytown: Barrytown Ltd., 1995.
Popely, Rick. “Patriotism doesn’t sell cars today.” Chicago Tribune. Jan. 24, 2006.
The resourcefulness of an item, relationship, or experience is far too often a lesser priority than the possession of that thing. In other words, people want to have something just for the sake of possessing it, rather than having its desired effects. I remember being in relationship with a group of people that condescendingly castigated we with no cause. Such chidings occurred with a very distinct pattern. Every time I would return to that group and I was in an extremely clear and good zone -- like a scintillating reunion with some old friends, or an invigorating party, or some evocative experience like seeing a great movie, concert, or sporting event – they displayed great and virulent confrontation. I discovered that group of people vilified me and fallaciously penalized me whenever I was feeling very centered.
Such vicious vituperation shocked my system, and because of their deceitful revilement, which was largely provoked by fear, I typically apologized and played the role of the victim. It is unclear as to whether or not they felt out of control or felt frightened or simply didn't like it when I was in such a state of great happiness, but such reasons are irrelevant because becoming victimized by their nebulous remonstrations smashed my confidence, buried my enthusiasm, and, to say the least had a very destructive impact on my life.
The worst part was that whenever I tried to stand up for myself and tell the person that they were being horrible and having a terribly negative impact on me, they would team up and collectively say that I was wrong-doer. This created a debilitating doubt for me. I not only had to falsely be satisfied with the false belief that I had done something wrong, but I had to be in accordance with their terrible. It became a very tedious battle between who was really harming whom. They would create rules and limiting provisos to which I had to agree and completely and not only deny how much suffering they caused me, but pretend that they brought me happiness. The wouldnt' settle for anything less in politics of the extremely dysfunctional relationship. To say the least living with that group of people was incredible vapid. It's important to delete those experiences and then share them in the process of moving on and forgiving because in sharing them, you honor any emotive dislikes and likes.
However, I didn't let go and decide to move on because of fearing there would be a scarcity. Fortunately, I recognize that pattern and understand that with that awful group of people there were too options, conflict or me playing the victimized role. The word “decide” in Latin, decidere, means to "cut away from". Fortunately, I realized that cutting away that group had a very empowering effect because I could enjoy my zeal. Every decision makes an incision in our life experience; our goal is to discard the debilitating experiences and make way for harmonious and provocative growth.
Think about food consumption in regards to addition or deletion. Everyone knows that certain foods – fried foods, foods heavy on white sugar, and excessive carbs – can weigh us down, burden, and drain us. But people frequently eat when they are drained to add an energy boost. Deleting, choosing not to eat the heavy food, deciding not to purchase the useless knickknack that will clutter our life, exertion instead of recuperation, at times, is the solution for supreme control of happiness.
Deleting or adding things always has a chain reaction of cause-and-effect.
The important thing with all this deletion is to never throw out the baby with the bathwater and to always exchange something incapacitating for something fulfilling. In other words, don't delete all foods. Delete heavy, draining foods and replace them with nourishing foods. Delete debilitating relationships and add fulfilling friendships. There is this great line from the movie Chocolat:
"We can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do, by what we deny oursleves, by what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include".We should be indulging in the richness of our life.
Americans have been choosing more often to buy imported cars (addition), which forces a domestic automakers like Ford to downshift. Ford then had to “delete” 30,000 jobs and close 14 of its primary factories because of the decreased demand for domestic cars (Popely 1). So deleting can cause changes and tension in people related that that cut. Those Ford works were no doubt distraught with the lay-offs, just as a partner may be distraught when you choose to end a destructive relationship. But the deletion must occur. Ford would have to file Chapter 11 if it didn’t “delete”. Similarly, we would continue to suffer tremendous agony if we didn’t delete negative relationships. Could you imagine if you kept “adding” and didn’t “delete” every spam your encountered or considered purchasing every advertisement you saw throughout your life? We would end up in a mental hospital. While adding the right things can certainly boost our vitality, introducing negative things to our life can seriously cripple us. Given the right choices, deleting keeps us centered on our ardent intention.
When trying to determine the resourcefulness of a relationship to a person, place, or thing, examining its effect should be the top priority. We must stop holding on to people or places or items that weigh us down, create stagnant deterioration of our endeavors, and have a degenerative impact on our authenticity.
Susan Collins concludes, "The difference between a live body and a dead one is movement and change -- completing and deleting, breathing in and breathing out, eating and eliminating, working and resting. We know someone's dead when they're rigid and hard" (Collins 32). If you really want to classify the work that you do as authentic, real, professional work, you have to create an enormously important task that requires a tremendously difficult process to accomplish, but then make that nearly impossible process appear simple, easy, and energizing. The living are dynamic and adaptive; they change and add to energizing things to their life as often as they take away static and destructive things in their life. Similarly, the thriving work is not a burden, accomplishes a tremendous goal, and has an inimitable style and charisma to it.
Collins affirms, "We feel like we're dying when we're doing the same things over and over, no longer choosing and no longer enjoying them" (Collins 31). Again the power of choice to delete is far to frequently over-looked as a method to improve our life and reacquaint ourselves with long-lost vim and vigor. It is alto-often that when distraught, depressed, or upset we turn to adding things to our life when we should be deleting the relationship limits our capacity, or the thing that confines our zeal. Abandon and "cut away" relationships, places, and things that stifle our concentrated intention. Your effulgence is never to be extinguished and charisma, never to be deactivated.
Collins, Susan. Our Children are Watching. Barrytown: Barrytown Ltd., 1995.
Popely, Rick. “Patriotism doesn’t sell cars today.” Chicago Tribune. Jan. 24, 2006.
1.22.2006
On the Veracity of Smiles
In a book buy, the "Scrumdiddlyumptious Story-teller", Roald Dahl, he describes a certain type of facial expression. Dahl writes, "I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant that he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile anytime you want, simply be moving your lips. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you with his mouth, but his eyes stay the same. It's sure to be a phony" (9).
Dahl points out the remarkably significant distinguishing characteristic of an authentic countenance or a superficial gesture. The harmony of the twinkling eyes and mouth-smile always ensures a smile derived not from some forced and spurious facial gimimck, but a smile that comes from one's joyful emotions. Looking for this harmony in other people can quickly reveal who is congruency or disingenuousness. Connect with the congruency and be genuine with your own expressions by having harmony in how you feel. This congruency creates compatibility with your own intuition, transforming emotions from being complicated, quirky gizmos, to simple beacons of clarity and happiness.
Dahl points out the remarkably significant distinguishing characteristic of an authentic countenance or a superficial gesture. The harmony of the twinkling eyes and mouth-smile always ensures a smile derived not from some forced and spurious facial gimimck, but a smile that comes from one's joyful emotions. Looking for this harmony in other people can quickly reveal who is congruency or disingenuousness. Connect with the congruency and be genuine with your own expressions by having harmony in how you feel. This congruency creates compatibility with your own intuition, transforming emotions from being complicated, quirky gizmos, to simple beacons of clarity and happiness.
1.20.2006
Compuer Hacking
I was just brushing up on my computer interests and came across a much more conclusive site of Kevin D. Mitnick. When I first heard about him, and this almost fanatic following, it was via bumper stickers branding "Free Kevin", promotional websites, and rallies. Thanks to more media updates, there's a much clearer picture of this situation, now.
Apparently accused with 25 counts of alleged federal computer and wire fraud violations in December 1992, the Kevin Mitnick case has become wildly blown out of proportion. The government has tried to tack on additional allegations. Fortunately, they conceded these were against the facts.
The government requested 32 months, but he has been sentenced 22 months by the court and has been in custody since his arrest in February 1995, his sentence satisfied.
Litigators have been trying to make makes Kevin into an Example. Making him out to be a "Cyber-boogie-man", by hyping the prosecution exaggeration the value of the losses, making him to be menacing when he's just a curious computer intellectual.
"Claim of $80 million." Kevin was alleged to have caused losses over $80 million, but he did not aim to destroy property with malicious intent nor make money, only pursue his intellectual curiosity.
"Longer sentence ensure more guilty pleas". The government hopes longer sentencing will cause future hackers in the future to buckle at the knees and plead guilty -- a frightening and menacing scare tactic. "Divert attention from government Internet Control". The government aims to use the scrutiny of Mitnick as a diversion to draw attention away from its ambitions to control the telecommunications systems.
This, personally, seems a bit of stretch. The other claims are legit, but this one is a bit out there. The government -- via Arpanet -- created the "parent” of the Internet in the first place. J.C.R. Licklider first created the Advanced Research Project Agency Network for the Department of Defense in 1962, making it the first packet-switching network. A major advancement form the previous "circuit-switching", which tied up an entire circuit for one communication, "packet-switching" use a single communications data link to communicate with simultaneous machines by assembling the data into packets. The first network email was sent in 1971 and the military branched off their own network, MILNET, in 1984. So the government created the original framework in the beginning, since then, however, the Internet has thrived and dynamically grown into a thing of itself with many creators, ranging from computer enthusiasts, private corporations, network administrators, international networks, and internet service providers, to name a few. So, while the government did have a huge hand in setting up the initial blueprint for the Internet with ARPANET, like vendor who sells painters canvas, the Internet is free reign now -- its own creation. While the painter does have a connection with the canvas supplier, the canvas vender certainly cannot claim the painting as it's own.
Overall, the Kevin Mitnick case is an interesting one not only because it involves a hacker, but also because it is covering new legal territory in unexplored areas of litigation. The curiosity, however, and the vehement support of Kevin is the most fascinating part of the story.
Apparently accused with 25 counts of alleged federal computer and wire fraud violations in December 1992, the Kevin Mitnick case has become wildly blown out of proportion. The government has tried to tack on additional allegations. Fortunately, they conceded these were against the facts.
The government requested 32 months, but he has been sentenced 22 months by the court and has been in custody since his arrest in February 1995, his sentence satisfied.
Litigators have been trying to make makes Kevin into an Example. Making him out to be a "Cyber-boogie-man", by hyping the prosecution exaggeration the value of the losses, making him to be menacing when he's just a curious computer intellectual.
"Claim of $80 million." Kevin was alleged to have caused losses over $80 million, but he did not aim to destroy property with malicious intent nor make money, only pursue his intellectual curiosity.
"Longer sentence ensure more guilty pleas". The government hopes longer sentencing will cause future hackers in the future to buckle at the knees and plead guilty -- a frightening and menacing scare tactic. "Divert attention from government Internet Control". The government aims to use the scrutiny of Mitnick as a diversion to draw attention away from its ambitions to control the telecommunications systems.
This, personally, seems a bit of stretch. The other claims are legit, but this one is a bit out there. The government -- via Arpanet -- created the "parent” of the Internet in the first place. J.C.R. Licklider first created the Advanced Research Project Agency Network for the Department of Defense in 1962, making it the first packet-switching network. A major advancement form the previous "circuit-switching", which tied up an entire circuit for one communication, "packet-switching" use a single communications data link to communicate with simultaneous machines by assembling the data into packets. The first network email was sent in 1971 and the military branched off their own network, MILNET, in 1984. So the government created the original framework in the beginning, since then, however, the Internet has thrived and dynamically grown into a thing of itself with many creators, ranging from computer enthusiasts, private corporations, network administrators, international networks, and internet service providers, to name a few. So, while the government did have a huge hand in setting up the initial blueprint for the Internet with ARPANET, like vendor who sells painters canvas, the Internet is free reign now -- its own creation. While the painter does have a connection with the canvas supplier, the canvas vender certainly cannot claim the painting as it's own.
Overall, the Kevin Mitnick case is an interesting one not only because it involves a hacker, but also because it is covering new legal territory in unexplored areas of litigation. The curiosity, however, and the vehement support of Kevin is the most fascinating part of the story.
1.07.2006
Graduation Party
Well, I graduated and am officially psyched to say that I am now an alumnus of The Colorado College. Wow, so much work for that little sheet of diploma paper, but I didn't do it for the degree...for the experience, of course.
I just had the most eclectic and scintillating parties of my life. Complete with elementary school, high school, and college friends, godparents, relatives, family friends, neighbors, professors, the principal of my elementary school, and immediate family, it was an amazing celebratory congregation.
Here is a shot of me with four of some of my best friends bringing back the elementary school days!
(Left to Right: Jimmy Davis, Jeff Zheng, myself, Kira Hesser, Anna Morro. Jimmy and Jeff are math geniuses, Kira and Anna really know how to paint the town read, and as as for me, I'm just happy to be in there presence.)
Me with my two hysterical and fervently alive God parents, Sally and Denny Parsons. Warning: Sally and Denny really know how to paint the town red, too. Hey, they kind of have to have an expertise in "living it up" being godparents and all.
Denny and myself:
Finally, the cake. My brother, James, has a notorious piece of celebration cake that he has saved, thankfully wrapped in SaranWrap, ever since his 6th grade "HMS Pinafore Celebration Party".
He's 20 now, so the well-preserved and petrified slice of cake, still in our freezer, is over 8 years old.
Here are some shots of the graduation cake and a slice of the cake that, albeit overly-ambitious, I hope will top James's legendary record some day.
It was by far one of the most enlivening and fun parties I've ever seen. And as for the gifts...I brought in the loot! Just kidding. Seriously, though, I was shocked because I thought I'd just experience everyone's presence, but everyone brought presents. It was a fanstastic and memorable experience.
I just had the most eclectic and scintillating parties of my life. Complete with elementary school, high school, and college friends, godparents, relatives, family friends, neighbors, professors, the principal of my elementary school, and immediate family, it was an amazing celebratory congregation.
Here is a shot of me with four of some of my best friends bringing back the elementary school days!
(Left to Right: Jimmy Davis, Jeff Zheng, myself, Kira Hesser, Anna Morro. Jimmy and Jeff are math geniuses, Kira and Anna really know how to paint the town read, and as as for me, I'm just happy to be in there presence.)
Me with my two hysterical and fervently alive God parents, Sally and Denny Parsons. Warning: Sally and Denny really know how to paint the town red, too. Hey, they kind of have to have an expertise in "living it up" being godparents and all.
Denny and myself:
Finally, the cake. My brother, James, has a notorious piece of celebration cake that he has saved, thankfully wrapped in SaranWrap, ever since his 6th grade "HMS Pinafore Celebration Party".
He's 20 now, so the well-preserved and petrified slice of cake, still in our freezer, is over 8 years old.
Here are some shots of the graduation cake and a slice of the cake that, albeit overly-ambitious, I hope will top James's legendary record some day.
It was by far one of the most enlivening and fun parties I've ever seen. And as for the gifts...I brought in the loot! Just kidding. Seriously, though, I was shocked because I thought I'd just experience everyone's presence, but everyone brought presents. It was a fanstastic and memorable experience.
1.03.2006
Genius: One Craziness, Hold the Insanity, To Go, Please
When Confucius wrote, "better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without," he meant that attempting to thrive, with the potential for incurring a blemishing failure, is always superior to remaining impeccable and safe by never undertaking anything. Geniuses are people who always thrive because they undertake "enterprises of great pitch and moment" by using their own lunacy for creativity, while abandoning fear (Shakespeare 32). Everyone was always a diamond in the rough at one time or another. By polishing and adroitly seizing the right opportunities, one creates successful intellectual capacity equivalent to a genius. Geniuses are those rare gems who always courageously attempt to emancipate their own craziness into robust and resourceful applications.
Genius is a frequently misused banality. Usually it connotes a hyper-intelligent, but socially incompetent, individual. James Gleick states, "Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity." Definitively, a genius is someone who possesses a particular type of intelligence -- "level of analysis, comprehension, and insight that produces results that have the potential to redefine an area of knowledge" (Gleick). Even though attentive comprehension, incredibly analysis skills, and thorough insight creates intelligence, the single number one key factor for genius and certainly for any type of success is craziness.
You must be crazy to be successful.
Crazies can be sinkers or drainers, or they can be geniuses, affluent eccentrics. Crazy people sink to a watery grave or they can swim, generating tremendous erudition, applied intelligence, and wealth. Michael Gelb explain the avenues in which craziness can be channeled to create tremendously enriching outcomes. "Crazy people who are productive are geniuses. Crazy people who are rich are eccentric. Crazy people who are neither productive nor rich are just plain crazy." Clearly, the goal is to not minimize the insanity, but to channel the "non compos mentis" (Latin, literally meaning, not having control of one's mind) into creativity by dancing with your own craziness to create productive eccentricity and genius. In other words, you can be crazy one of two ways: Successful crazy or Insane crazy. Both successful crazy and Insane crazy people have somewhat of a psychopathology at their core, but insane crazy people destroy and create malign, while the successful crazy people auspiciously channel that core into creative, nourishing, inventive acts. The trick is to not remonstrate craziness, but to herald it.
C.S. Lewis writes that Jesus -- given his outrageous claims of being able to enact miracles, revive the dead, exorcise the demons, and more -- was a "Lunatic, a Lord, or a Liar". Saying he was the son of God could only mean that he was a complete nutso, a total liar, or an actual lord. This is not implying that we all are either a lord, lunatic, or a liar, but that we must take up honesty to avoid lies, and embrace productivity and wealth to negate the insanity and the wretched suffering from lunacy. There are some brilliant comedians, for example, who would not be funny if they weren't crazy. Instead of suffering and combating their craziness in an ornery denial, they allowed it to flourish. Gelb reminds us that crazy people who are neither productive nor rich and active, simply wallow in their lunacy. However, productively committing to that unknown can generate a wild, but galvanizing roller-coaster of success.
Truly though, most of the successful people are lunatics. The unparalleled, superlative intelligence or strength or artistic ability -- whatever the attribute -- can only be reached by an unparalleled, superlative method, a unique unconventional method. If the superlative could be acquired by simply following the status quo with a simple, ho-hum, convenvtional method, it would mean that everyone could be much more or much less intelligent, but that procedure could never be the path of a genius because genius possesses "exceptional" creative power, intellectual ability or some other ability. Key emphasis on the exceptional. If everyone else has that same intellectual ability and creative power, it ceases to be an exception. In his book GENIUS, author James Gleick describes mathematician Richard Feynman as a "'Renaissance Man' were that term not so diluted from its application to everyone from television sitcom stars who scribble a few lines of poetic doggerel to major league athletes who speak in complete sentences. Instead, let's just say that, in this Jewish-American son of a New York uniform salesman, we find a remarkable marriage of transcendental intellect, hubris, and frat house debauchery. A "character" to be sure. But also a genius." A renaissance man possessing transcendental brainpower, pride, and an affinity for parties? With all of those zany characteristics stewing together in the same melting pot, how on earth could Feynman be anything but a little crazy? He was very much crazy, but this made him very much a genius.
Similarly, Picasso was psychotic, John Nash, inventor of Game Theory, was a diagnosed schizophrenic, Einstein, incredibly eccentric, the list goes on. This certainly does not exclude people who lack psychological disorders or eccentricities from becoming wealthy, exceptionally intelligent, or immensely successful, but it does mean that you have to get in the water. Gelb writes, "Geniuses and crazy people are both out in the middle of a deep ocean; geniuses swim, crazy people drown. Most of us are sitting safely on shore. Take a chance and get your feet wet". Picasso, Nash, Einstein, and all the other successful crazies swam and, in doing so, they churned up all kinds of enlightening inventions of art, math, and physics.
The rich and famous, the eccentrically intelligent, the superbly successful people are not normal! They work different hours, eat different foods, have different beliefs, different logic. Normal is staying on the shore. Normal is safe, innocuous, harmless, average, and typical. It is a constant, but does not imply, necessarily, goodness; it certainly does not imply craziness, productive or unproductive. Think about it, normalcy certainly never implies genius, wealth, or supreme success. If someone is exceptional in anything you never refer to them as "normal". While normal is not an insult; it is safe and without risk, but drab, discolored and debilitating towards expansive, but, channeled craziness. Don't avoid being normal, it's important to have a stability zone in life. You can have a comfort, normal, constant zone with the types of books you read, people you interact with, rituals you have, exercise you perform, and other invariates. Constancy can be the eye in the tornado of successful craziness.
Clearly, the correct measuring of craziness, is the ingredient to success. Important to note that while "normal" may not insinuate genius, the "state of normalcy" should never be relegated as an inferior state of being. Normal is simple, commonplace, prevalent, but it is never lesser or inferior. Obviously, most of the time, to be different, one must get off the conventional, well-beaten path and listen to his own drum beat. Or one could make their own impression within a well-beaten path, but some form of divergence from the norm must occur. The trick is avoid having that divergence from being a meandering, dismal distraction, and, instead, make it productive by maintaining resilience, generating a high-faculty of concentration, and having immense faith in the process.
Faith is needed for success. Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose, and many times the scintillating endeavor for creating success, demands faith to take the necessary risks. The risks necessary to success can be undertaken with or without faith. Risks endeavored without faith become frightening and disturbing changes of tumult. Risks endeavored with faith transform fearful moments of doubt into inspiring and dynamic moments of exciting "Satori" because you have the confidence from perseverance and the awareness that risk is pursuing a goal.
Satori is a Zen word meaning, ""sudden awakening". Satori is "insight into our fundamental nature...not the result of abstract mental concepts or ideas but rather a momentary, experiential fusing of body, mind, and emotions" (Millman 92). When your emotional and physical energies flow freely you are experiencing the inner peace and power of the moving inner experience of Satori. A great method for acquiring Satori is creating craziness channeling in structure by using sound judgment for our decisions.".
Additionally, Famous story-teller, Roald Dahl, writes. "Most of the really exciting things that we do in our lives scare us to death" (52). Crazy endeavors possess the dichotomous quality of being frightening and exciting because you know that task is a stepping-stone to achieving a goal, but in the back of your mind, you know you are "acting crazy', abandoning the norm, and are entering the unknown. Don't purposefully pursue things that make you afraid, but that closeness to fear, is often an ingredient in things that are certainly exciting. Risk, craziness, and fear with the linchpin of faith, self-confidence, and personal belief, become invigorating and stimulating excitement. We must never abandon tact because prudence ensures success, but we must avoid "paralysis by analysis", while still analyzing our past, connecting it with the present, and moving forward with certainty.
We must abandon the reliance on restricting compartments for structure. Compartments provide obligation and structure. While the benefits of structure and support are undeniably vital to growth, obligation can get messy. The best position remains outside of the cubicle by creating your own self-defined responsibilities. Define your own vocational department. Get your life aligned by identifying your interests and passions, access the freedom to discover those investments, experience the happiness from being prudent about your future, but passionate about your present, and the elaborate the happiness by expressing it.
The trick for happiness is to not avoid lunacy, but to embrace craziness, while engaging prudence. Tactfully create the resources you need to channel the non-normal, wild, sincere talent into productive outlets. Bach, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Haydn -- masters in setting different, totally new Baroque, Romantic, and Renaissance-Baroque movements -- had the attributes for would-be "crazies" if failed to discover a piano, and music. Instead, their talent was channeled into sound and logical craziness, a productive zone, making incredible "crazy" -- different, setting totally new periods and movements -- and successful symphonic classical composition.
George Orwell asks, "What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?" Nothing at all. A person, operating at high faculty of intelligence, yields to no obstacle. Abraham Lincoln failed 13 times trying to get elected into Congress, trying any more seemed like lunacy, but he persisted in his "crazy pursuit" and became the sixteenth President of the United States. Dogged, but calculated, persistence in any noble endeavor propitiously transforms the insane process into prodigious success because it is within that inner tenacity that we discover our subtle genius.
All success and true genius is acquired with the risk of admitting your own craziness. Athletes who train copious hours, insane number of miles, do so with a twinge of looniness; musicians who have psychotic fits on stage producing the greatest performances imaginable embrace being bonkers and engage their craziness; and the greatest breakthroughs in science, medicine, mathematics, and chemistry occur with a zany and warped hunch that proves to be a new vaccine, cure, or discovery. Success -- whether or not it is derived from genius -- is everything or nothing at all
Success is not categorical; it is never kind of successful;it is black-and-white and make it or break it . Some people could argue that unhealthy crazies like John Wayne Gacey, Jeffrey Dommer, Ted Kazinski were all "successful", possibly notorieties, because they were certainly crazy (you'd have to be to murder that way), turned heads and became well known names. However, they were unsound, unlogical, destructive crazy people that were unsuccessful in every way possible. They drew attention, but did not experience an iota of success. Craziness is only successful if it is channeled into creativity. Notice the etymological backbone of "creative" is create, not destroy. Success is expansive and ultimately good. A twinge of craziness mixed with dogged persistence combined in a concoctive of harmonious connection with humanity, creates a powerful elixer of genius and success.
Embrace the craziness, hold off the lunacy by being productive, but never deny that you're nuts. Denying your insanity limits yourself. Give testimony that you will recognize, honor, and nurture your wild crazy side is not an ominous crutch, but as an exhilarating springboard for cataloging ingenuity.
Gleick, James. Genius, New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
Shakespeare. Hamlet. New York New Haven Press, 1999.
Genius is a frequently misused banality. Usually it connotes a hyper-intelligent, but socially incompetent, individual. James Gleick states, "Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity." Definitively, a genius is someone who possesses a particular type of intelligence -- "level of analysis, comprehension, and insight that produces results that have the potential to redefine an area of knowledge" (Gleick). Even though attentive comprehension, incredibly analysis skills, and thorough insight creates intelligence, the single number one key factor for genius and certainly for any type of success is craziness.
You must be crazy to be successful.
Crazies can be sinkers or drainers, or they can be geniuses, affluent eccentrics. Crazy people sink to a watery grave or they can swim, generating tremendous erudition, applied intelligence, and wealth. Michael Gelb explain the avenues in which craziness can be channeled to create tremendously enriching outcomes. "Crazy people who are productive are geniuses. Crazy people who are rich are eccentric. Crazy people who are neither productive nor rich are just plain crazy." Clearly, the goal is to not minimize the insanity, but to channel the "non compos mentis" (Latin, literally meaning, not having control of one's mind) into creativity by dancing with your own craziness to create productive eccentricity and genius. In other words, you can be crazy one of two ways: Successful crazy or Insane crazy. Both successful crazy and Insane crazy people have somewhat of a psychopathology at their core, but insane crazy people destroy and create malign, while the successful crazy people auspiciously channel that core into creative, nourishing, inventive acts. The trick is to not remonstrate craziness, but to herald it.
C.S. Lewis writes that Jesus -- given his outrageous claims of being able to enact miracles, revive the dead, exorcise the demons, and more -- was a "Lunatic, a Lord, or a Liar". Saying he was the son of God could only mean that he was a complete nutso, a total liar, or an actual lord. This is not implying that we all are either a lord, lunatic, or a liar, but that we must take up honesty to avoid lies, and embrace productivity and wealth to negate the insanity and the wretched suffering from lunacy. There are some brilliant comedians, for example, who would not be funny if they weren't crazy. Instead of suffering and combating their craziness in an ornery denial, they allowed it to flourish. Gelb reminds us that crazy people who are neither productive nor rich and active, simply wallow in their lunacy. However, productively committing to that unknown can generate a wild, but galvanizing roller-coaster of success.
Truly though, most of the successful people are lunatics. The unparalleled, superlative intelligence or strength or artistic ability -- whatever the attribute -- can only be reached by an unparalleled, superlative method, a unique unconventional method. If the superlative could be acquired by simply following the status quo with a simple, ho-hum, convenvtional method, it would mean that everyone could be much more or much less intelligent, but that procedure could never be the path of a genius because genius possesses "exceptional" creative power, intellectual ability or some other ability. Key emphasis on the exceptional. If everyone else has that same intellectual ability and creative power, it ceases to be an exception. In his book GENIUS, author James Gleick describes mathematician Richard Feynman as a "'Renaissance Man' were that term not so diluted from its application to everyone from television sitcom stars who scribble a few lines of poetic doggerel to major league athletes who speak in complete sentences. Instead, let's just say that, in this Jewish-American son of a New York uniform salesman, we find a remarkable marriage of transcendental intellect, hubris, and frat house debauchery. A "character" to be sure. But also a genius." A renaissance man possessing transcendental brainpower, pride, and an affinity for parties? With all of those zany characteristics stewing together in the same melting pot, how on earth could Feynman be anything but a little crazy? He was very much crazy, but this made him very much a genius.
Similarly, Picasso was psychotic, John Nash, inventor of Game Theory, was a diagnosed schizophrenic, Einstein, incredibly eccentric, the list goes on. This certainly does not exclude people who lack psychological disorders or eccentricities from becoming wealthy, exceptionally intelligent, or immensely successful, but it does mean that you have to get in the water. Gelb writes, "Geniuses and crazy people are both out in the middle of a deep ocean; geniuses swim, crazy people drown. Most of us are sitting safely on shore. Take a chance and get your feet wet". Picasso, Nash, Einstein, and all the other successful crazies swam and, in doing so, they churned up all kinds of enlightening inventions of art, math, and physics.
The rich and famous, the eccentrically intelligent, the superbly successful people are not normal! They work different hours, eat different foods, have different beliefs, different logic. Normal is staying on the shore. Normal is safe, innocuous, harmless, average, and typical. It is a constant, but does not imply, necessarily, goodness; it certainly does not imply craziness, productive or unproductive. Think about it, normalcy certainly never implies genius, wealth, or supreme success. If someone is exceptional in anything you never refer to them as "normal". While normal is not an insult; it is safe and without risk, but drab, discolored and debilitating towards expansive, but, channeled craziness. Don't avoid being normal, it's important to have a stability zone in life. You can have a comfort, normal, constant zone with the types of books you read, people you interact with, rituals you have, exercise you perform, and other invariates. Constancy can be the eye in the tornado of successful craziness.
Clearly, the correct measuring of craziness, is the ingredient to success. Important to note that while "normal" may not insinuate genius, the "state of normalcy" should never be relegated as an inferior state of being. Normal is simple, commonplace, prevalent, but it is never lesser or inferior. Obviously, most of the time, to be different, one must get off the conventional, well-beaten path and listen to his own drum beat. Or one could make their own impression within a well-beaten path, but some form of divergence from the norm must occur. The trick is avoid having that divergence from being a meandering, dismal distraction, and, instead, make it productive by maintaining resilience, generating a high-faculty of concentration, and having immense faith in the process.
Faith is needed for success. Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose, and many times the scintillating endeavor for creating success, demands faith to take the necessary risks. The risks necessary to success can be undertaken with or without faith. Risks endeavored without faith become frightening and disturbing changes of tumult. Risks endeavored with faith transform fearful moments of doubt into inspiring and dynamic moments of exciting "Satori" because you have the confidence from perseverance and the awareness that risk is pursuing a goal.
Satori is a Zen word meaning, ""sudden awakening". Satori is "insight into our fundamental nature...not the result of abstract mental concepts or ideas but rather a momentary, experiential fusing of body, mind, and emotions" (Millman 92). When your emotional and physical energies flow freely you are experiencing the inner peace and power of the moving inner experience of Satori. A great method for acquiring Satori is creating craziness channeling in structure by using sound judgment for our decisions.".
Additionally, Famous story-teller, Roald Dahl, writes. "Most of the really exciting things that we do in our lives scare us to death" (52). Crazy endeavors possess the dichotomous quality of being frightening and exciting because you know that task is a stepping-stone to achieving a goal, but in the back of your mind, you know you are "acting crazy', abandoning the norm, and are entering the unknown. Don't purposefully pursue things that make you afraid, but that closeness to fear, is often an ingredient in things that are certainly exciting. Risk, craziness, and fear with the linchpin of faith, self-confidence, and personal belief, become invigorating and stimulating excitement. We must never abandon tact because prudence ensures success, but we must avoid "paralysis by analysis", while still analyzing our past, connecting it with the present, and moving forward with certainty.
We must abandon the reliance on restricting compartments for structure. Compartments provide obligation and structure. While the benefits of structure and support are undeniably vital to growth, obligation can get messy. The best position remains outside of the cubicle by creating your own self-defined responsibilities. Define your own vocational department. Get your life aligned by identifying your interests and passions, access the freedom to discover those investments, experience the happiness from being prudent about your future, but passionate about your present, and the elaborate the happiness by expressing it.
The trick for happiness is to not avoid lunacy, but to embrace craziness, while engaging prudence. Tactfully create the resources you need to channel the non-normal, wild, sincere talent into productive outlets. Bach, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Haydn -- masters in setting different, totally new Baroque, Romantic, and Renaissance-Baroque movements -- had the attributes for would-be "crazies" if failed to discover a piano, and music. Instead, their talent was channeled into sound and logical craziness, a productive zone, making incredible "crazy" -- different, setting totally new periods and movements -- and successful symphonic classical composition.
George Orwell asks, "What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?" Nothing at all. A person, operating at high faculty of intelligence, yields to no obstacle. Abraham Lincoln failed 13 times trying to get elected into Congress, trying any more seemed like lunacy, but he persisted in his "crazy pursuit" and became the sixteenth President of the United States. Dogged, but calculated, persistence in any noble endeavor propitiously transforms the insane process into prodigious success because it is within that inner tenacity that we discover our subtle genius.
All success and true genius is acquired with the risk of admitting your own craziness. Athletes who train copious hours, insane number of miles, do so with a twinge of looniness; musicians who have psychotic fits on stage producing the greatest performances imaginable embrace being bonkers and engage their craziness; and the greatest breakthroughs in science, medicine, mathematics, and chemistry occur with a zany and warped hunch that proves to be a new vaccine, cure, or discovery. Success -- whether or not it is derived from genius -- is everything or nothing at all
Success is not categorical; it is never kind of successful;it is black-and-white and make it or break it . Some people could argue that unhealthy crazies like John Wayne Gacey, Jeffrey Dommer, Ted Kazinski were all "successful", possibly notorieties, because they were certainly crazy (you'd have to be to murder that way), turned heads and became well known names. However, they were unsound, unlogical, destructive crazy people that were unsuccessful in every way possible. They drew attention, but did not experience an iota of success. Craziness is only successful if it is channeled into creativity. Notice the etymological backbone of "creative" is create, not destroy. Success is expansive and ultimately good. A twinge of craziness mixed with dogged persistence combined in a concoctive of harmonious connection with humanity, creates a powerful elixer of genius and success.
Embrace the craziness, hold off the lunacy by being productive, but never deny that you're nuts. Denying your insanity limits yourself. Give testimony that you will recognize, honor, and nurture your wild crazy side is not an ominous crutch, but as an exhilarating springboard for cataloging ingenuity.
Gleick, James. Genius, New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
Shakespeare. Hamlet. New York New Haven Press, 1999.
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