Mindstructures

Development of Perception

Annemieke — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:39:26 +0000

The way we perceive the world is totally different from the way a young child perceives the world.

I always understood that was the case, but I could never really imagine how that child would perceive the world.

Or how that would develop into how we, as adults, view the world.

David Bohm describes that development of perception in the appendix of the book The Special Theory of Relativity. That book itself was too difficult for me to read, but as I heard him mention that appendix in an interview, I wanted to read that and see if it would make sense to me.

Well, it did. I found it very interesting to follow the development of perception, that Bohm writes about the research of Jean Piaget.

That research suggests that a young child views the world as a state of flux. The child does not see anything as permanent, he does not see cause and effect, he does not know things can be undone, he does not have our memory, he does not see itself different from the world, and so on. All that is coming into existence in a certain follow up.

I tried to distil the development into several steps, so I differentiated 16 stages. But there could just as well be more or less. There is no cut and dry separation, but for myself, I found it more clear to make a certain differentiation, in order to understand the development better.

Stage 1 – Functional aspects

This first stage is nothing more than inborn reflexes. These reflexes develop to fit different aspects of the environment. The environment gets recognised by functional aspects, like food to satisfy the hunger.

Stage 2 - Impulse followed by sensation

The next stage is the development of the circular reflex. The circular reflex is an outgoing impulse followed by an incoming sensory impulse. This is the beginning of perception. Impulse followed by sensation.

This circular reflex is carried along all further development. At a certain stage there is pleasure in the reflexes that are produced. The child does not yet understand the causal connection between the impulse and the sensation.

He discovers that by doing something he gets a pleasant sensation that is recognizable. Recognition that a past event has been repeated comes first. The ability to call up this event in the memory comes only much later.

At this stage there is only the knowledge that a certain impulse will lead to a certain pleasure.

Stage 3 – Permanence and coordination

To recognize a similarity is necessary before seeing something as permanent in the flux of process.

Another thing is being able to coordinate many different reflexes that are associated with a certain object.

So at first there is no realisation that the object that the child sees, is the same as the object that he hears. But later on comes a coordination. And with that the understanding that he sees what he hears and grasps what he sees.

Stage 4 – Recognise patterns

There is still no notion of a permanent object. When he is presented with something familiar, he makes an abstraction of recognizable totalities of sensation.

In the total flux of experience, he can now recognize a certain pattern. These combinations itself are experienced as totalities. The object is not recognized outside its normal context.

Stage 5 – Perceive out of normal context

When the child begins to follow a moving object with this eyes, he is able to recognize the invariance of its form, despite its movement. He is building up the reflexes to perceive objects apart from its normal context.

Stage 6 – Something can be undone

The next step is the realisation that something can be undone by a second operation. But he still has no idea of a permanent object, that exists when he does not see it.

He also does not see himself separate from the world. But he is building up the reflexes that are needed to see the difference.

Stage 7 – Cause and effect

He is now developing the notion of cause and effect.

At first it is a kind of sympathetic magic, because there is still no difference between internal and external, and all aspects of his experience are still seen as a single totality.

Later he begins to recognize other people, animals and objects as the cause of things that are happening.

Stage 8 – Coordinate visual with tactile and movement

At this time the notions of space and time are being built up. If the child handles objects and moves his body, he learns to coordinate his changing visual experiences with the tactile perceptions and bodily movements.

Stage 9 – Notion of permanent places and objects

At this stage he discovers that he can always return to a place in many different ways. There is the notion of permanent places and permanent objects.

Stage 10 – Start of memory

The child is gradually learning to call up images from the past, not just recognize something as familiar only as he sees it. Now true memory begins. With the difference between past and present. And later also future when he starts to form mental images of what he expects.

Stage 11 – Form an image of absent objects

This point in development is crucial, as the child is able to form an image of an absent object.

Stage 12 – Form image with perceived and unperceived things

Now he starts to form a mental image of the world, with both perceived and unperceived things. He is able to create or produce something.

Stage 13 – Distinction between self and world

This is the stage of distinction between the self and the rest of the world. Until now there was only one field of experiencing. Because of the ability to create a mental map of the world (to imagine) he sees places that are occupied by permanent objects. And one of these objects is himself.

Everything on the map falls into two categories, what is inside the skin and what is not. And now he forms the concept of a self, distinct from the rest of the world.

And he also sees other selfs. Now a general picture is formed. A picture of a world in space and time, where separate and permanent entities can act on each other causally.

The child does not know it is making a mental map of the world. They find it difficult to distinguish between what is imagined or remembered in thought and what is actually perceived through their senses. They may even think that other people see what they are thinking about.

Stage 14 – Mental map as reality

At this point the mental map is seen as reality. What we see often depends on what we know about it. So we learn to see the world through a certain structure of ideas. We react immediately to each new experience before we have time to think.

That way we might believe that certain ways of perceiving the world cannot be otherwise. But in fact it was the way we discovered and build it ourselves when we were children. It often became habits that are only true in certain domains of experience.

Stage 15 – Translate perception into language

The next stage is about translating the perception of the structure of the world in thought and language. But that is very confusing as the ideas and words often contradict what is perceived. And the learning is a gradual process, step by step.

Stage 16 – Need for logical thought

And finally he learns the need for logical thought. With the wish to reflect on the structure of the world, and to communicate with other people. But also when he wants to apply his ideas to a practical problem.

This is a continuing process of development that builds up knowledge and understanding of the world. Mental images, ideas and words are getting a structure similar to the world as it is perceived.

From perception in a state of flux to the structure of a mental map

So the child begins with some kind of totality. A totality of sensation, perception and feeling. All in a sort of ongoing flow.

No recognizable structure with permanent characteristics.

The development of intelligence arises in a series of movements, which is how the child learns about the world.

What he learns is always based on his ability to see certain kinds of relationship. A correspondence between what he sees and what he hears. Between cause and effect. The possibility of undoing certain things.

The perception of some relationships is then followed by a corresponding mental image which functions as a kind of map. A map that represents the relationships.

Very soon immediate perception takes on the structures of these maps and he is no longer aware that the map only represents what has been perceived before.

Image: source

The Difference between a Problem and a Paradox

Annemieke — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 08:43:29 +0000

One of the most interesting, but at the same time hard to grasp, subjects that David Bohm wrote about, is inner conflict.

I talked about that in some earlier posts. The first one was a post called When the Mind is Trying to Escape the Awareness of Conflict, where it became clear that, according to Bohm, ignoring our inner conflict is the most important threat to creativity.

The next post was called Will Confusion Really be our Epitaph which I wrote after I started reading the book On Creativity. Somehow I sensed the importance of his observations and thoughts on the subject of inner conflict, and at the same time realised how common, but yet immensely difficult to handle, it is.

The third post was called How to Confront Inner Conflict Instead of Ignoring it, and it was about one sentence of Bohm, where he gives several examples of how we tend to ignore our inner conflicts. Examples that are so common and used by all of us all the time, without realising that we are doing it.

And now I was again reading in the book On Dialogue. I like the book a lot and wrote about the first chapter, On Communication, before in the post Dialogue as Creating something New Together. But this time I was especially struck by the chapter The Problem and the Paradox.

I feel like I could understand that on a deeper level now, after certain other views on the subject that I wrote about in my previous post called The Paradox of Civilization and the Shadow Carried by All.

In that post it became clear that, according to Carl Jung, the development of the collective has to go through the development of the individual. The development of the individual, independent of their native background, is of crucial importance. Of crucial importance for the individual itself, but also for the society as a whole. So with that in mind I read the chapter about The Problem and the Paradox again.

Careful Attention to the Paradox

The essence of that chapter is Bohm’s differentiation between the words ‘problem’ and ‘paradox’. He says that we often treat something as a problem and we want a solution. But some things, or even many things, especially those that have to do with the human psyche, are not a problem but a paradox. Which means they have no solution.

They have to be understood by paying very close attention. Or what he calls ‘sustained, serious, careful attention’. Not putting it forward, but stay with it. This goes for the individual psyche, but also for the total of society.

For ages, men have generally realized that thinking and feeling are commonly infected with greed, violence, self-deception, fear, aggressiveness, and other forms of reaction that lead to corruption and confusion. For the most part, however, all of this has been regarded as a problem, and thus men have sought to overcome or control the disorder in their own nature in countless ways. For example, all societies have instituted a set of punishments, aimed at frightening people into the right behavior, along with a set of rewards aimed at enticing them toward the same end. Because this has proved to be inadequate, men have further set up systems of morals and ethics, along with various religious notions, with the hope that these would enable people, of their own accord, to control their ‘wrong’ or ‘evil’ thoughts and feelings. But this, too, has not really produced the desired result.

So people try to control wrong or evil thoughts and feelings. The wrong and evil thoughts of themselves, but also of others. Or maybe in many cases, especially those of others, because it is also in the human nature to experience the others as wrong and evil. We have the feeling that we ourselves are either good or otherwise very well capable of doing the ‘right’ thing instead of the wrong or evil. And so by rules, law, religion, morals and systems of ethics we try to control the behavior of ‘that evil other’.

But as became clear in the previous post, according to Carl Jung, it is not possible to ‘pump morality into a system’. And Bohm says something similar.

The inward work and the outward work go hand in hand. But it has to be kept in mind that through centuries of habit and conditioning, our prevailing tendency is now to suppose that ‘basically we ourselves are all right’ and that our difficulties generally have outward causes, which can be treated as problems. And even when we do see that we are not in order inwardly, our habit is to suppose that we can point fairly definitely to what is wrong or lacking in ourselves, as if this were something different from or independent of the activity of thinking in which we formulate the ‘problem’ of correcting what is in error.

The process of thought, with which we think about our personal and social problems, is conditioned. It is controlled by the content which it seems to be thinking about. So our thoughts influence our problems, but our problems in return influence our thoughts. So they can not really be free or honest.

We need a deep and intense awareness, one that goes beyond the intellectual analysis of our confused process of thought. An awareness that is capable of getting to the root of the conflicting assumptions, where the confusion begins.

Such awareness implies that we be ready to apprehend the many paradoxes that reveal themselves in our daily lives, in our larger-scale social relationships, and ultimately in the thinking and feeling that appear to constitute the ‘innermost self’ in each one of us.

So we need to give full attention to the ‘problems’ that arise. By doing that, we might see beyond the problem and see a bigger whole. See that the mind, because of its conditioning, is caught in paradox.

Understanding that might clear the view to see other patterns. Other patterns that can lead to a way out of the paradox.

Image: source

The Paradox of Civilization and the Shadow Carried by All

Annemieke — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:13:14 +0000

A few days ago I followed the live stream of TEDx Amsterdam.

I really like the concept of TED and have watched many videos of their previous talks.

Those that have my special interest are the ones about the relation between the individual and society. That is why I was especially fascinated by the presentation of the speaker who more or less had to summarise the talks of the whole day, Louise Fresco.

There were a few things in her presentation that I found interesting. The first was her mention of the word ‘learning cycle’ instead of ‘learning curve’, a cycle instead of a straight line as a metaphor for how we learn.

That is very much how I see learning and development and certainly something I am going to explore in some future (hopefully sense making) blog posts.

What I also found very interesting was her mentioning of the third culture. About how we should bridge the gap between art and science. Also something I am really passionate about.

But in this post I want to focus on something else she said. Halfway her presentation she talks about the paradox of civilization.

Click here to view the embedded video.

First she talks about our human capacity to focus, to concentrate on something we personally find important, which requires passion and emotion.

But opposed to that, is another aspect of human nature, the need to control our impulses.

Civilization comes with greater control of impulses. We control violence, the state is there to control ourselves and control others. We also have something called self-control. Inner directed self-control, whereby we know there are certain things we don’t do anymore. You could argue that civilization is increasing control over human nature.

It is this control of our impulses that makes it possible for us to work together, to cooperate, to share ideas, to listen to one another, because if you continue shouting and I continue shouting, we can not listen.

So on the one hand we are, as a society, developing towards more and more civilization, what is characterized by more and more control. But as she points out, this control is getting out of hand.

But here is to the paradox of today, one that we haven’t touched but one that I feel very strongly about and would like to share with you. Yes, we have a learning curve in our societies of increased control. But we also see today in the last few years an increasing move towards uncontrollable things. Uncontrollable behavior, unselfcontroled behavior.

That actually goes against the grain of what has been the great movement of our society of control of human nature.

Many, many thoughts went through my mind when I heard that. Personally I think it all is part of the process, but I am by far not sure how to get that into words. Many of my previous posts were about that theme, but somehow I am not yet capable of bringing my points across in some understandable way.

The shadow carried by all

But this paradox of civilization also made me think again of an article ‘Shadow carried by all says Jung’. It is an article from the archives of the New York Times, and it touched upon this paradox.

In the article, Jung says that morality is not something that can be forced upon someone. We all carry a shadow and it is very likely suppressed and isolated from our consciousness. But along with this shadow, or hidden within, or however that might work, we also have an inherent morality.

But if we force our understanding of morality on someone else it will not work, at least that is what I understand of the following quote.

To live with a saint might cause an inferiority complex or even wild outburst of immorality in individuals less morally gifted. You cannot pump morality into a system where it is not indigenous, though you may spoil it.

The only way things can change, is with a change in individuals.

Such problems can only be solved by a general change of attitude. It begins with a change in individuals. The accumulation of such individual changes only will produce a collective solution.

So we can not force morality upon others. The only way to become moral, is by working through the shadow.

The paradox of civilization

So I guess the paradox of civilization has to do with individual development. The individual needs space to go through this development. Society develops through a gradual increasing civilization, but at a certain point it needs to stop and give the individual the space to go through their own shadow.

And discover their own inherent moral nature.

Image: source

The Map and the Territory

Annemieke — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:10:10 +0000

Some time ago I watched the video ‘The divided brain and the making of the western world’ from Iain McGilchrist.

The talk was really very interesting, so I started reading his book, ‘The Master and his Emissary’ that does a very good job in looking at research on the difference between the left and right hemispheres of our brains.

But the book has many pages and in the meantime I was still fascinated by the writings of David Bohm, so I did not finish it yet. Now a few days ago on Googleplus, I saw a quote that made me watch that video again.

At the end of his talk McGilchrist mentioned this quote by Einstein and said that he came across it when he finished his book. Now reading that quote and watching the video again, made me realise how close this research from the book came to the thoughts of Bohm.

Iain McGilchrist’s view on the left and right hemisphere of the brain is very close to David Bohm’s view of wholeness and fragmentation. Very close to many of Bohm’s thoughts about perception, coherence, wholeness, communication and so on.

Anyway the quote was the following:

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant but has forgotten the gift.

And the video was this one:

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Animated version of the video)

Instead of transcribing the whole video, I want to highlight those parts that seem similar to the thoughts of David Bohm.

Two models of life

He starts the talk by saying that in our time, there are generally two models of life.

One which lingers in biology is a sort of scientific materialist one which views knowledge as making certain one fact and then adding to that, one builds up a picture of an external world which is independent of our knowledge and which is our duty to become aware. Almost as if were machines that were passively receiving information.

The other view is the opposite that says that reality is just in our heads and we make it all up.

Now the view of McGilchrist is somewhere inbetween.

Attention and Context

He says that reality changes with the nature of attention that we pay to it.

Things come into being through a kind of interactive process, the intention we pay to the world changes what we find there, and what we find there changes the attention we pay. Similarly we can’t understand something by knowing one little thing out of context and adding another little thing out of context.

There needs to be a kind of sense of what it is we dealing with because we need to apply a certain model. We only understand things by comparing them by something else we think we know even better.

Like David Bohm, Iain McGilchrist says context is everything in understanding. We have to understand it implicit, and when we make it explicit, we change their nature.

The difference between right and left

The general view is that the two brainparts have different tasks, like one does emotions and the other reason. But as it turns out, both are very much involved in both. But still there is this division in the brain, and it is very asymmetric.

The right hemisphere gives sustained, broad, open, vigilance, alertness

where the left hemisphere gives narrow, sharply focused attention to detail.

People who lose their right hemisphere have a pathological narrow attention.

Deceiving and empathy

Then he goes on about the human’s frontal lobes. The purpose of that part of the brain is that it inhibits the rest of the brain. It stops the immediate happening, standing back from immediate experience.

That way we can read other people’s mind and intentions. That way we can deceive them. Or we can have empathy.

Both, deceiving and empathy, are only possible because there is a sort of necessary distance. If you stay to close, you would just bite. But if you stand back you see another individual with feelings, values and interests, that you can bond with.

We use our left hemisphere (our right hand) to make things and use language to grasp things. It provides a simplified version of reality. Not the territory but the map.

Right is more integrated with our bodies.

The right hemisphere has this broad open attention. It is more integrated with our bodies. It has the direct experience (I think David Bohm would call that perception) where the left hemisphere takes that information and uses it in a cleaver way by symplifying it. It re-presents it.

Words for realities.

The newness of the right hemisphere makes it a devil’s advocate, it is always on the lookout for things that might be different from our expectations. It sees things in context. It understands implicit meaning. Metaphor, body language, emotional expression in the face.

It deals with an embodied work, in which we stand embodied in relation to a world that is concrete. It understands individuals, not just categories. It actually has a disposition for the living rather than the mechanical.

Left vs Right

So the left hemisphere:

is dependent on denotative language and abstraction, yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are: known, fixed, static, isolated, de-contextualised, explicit, disembodied, general in nature but ultimately lifeless.

And the right hemisphere:

yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnect, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world. And the things never fully graspable. Never perfectly known as we think. And this world exists in a certain relationship, rather than just an objective starts.

Left is a closed system

There is something of a closed system, a selfreferring loop, that is not capable of looking at a bigger whole.

The knowledge that is mediated by the left hemisphere is however within a closed system. It has the advantage of perfection, but the perfection is bought ultimately the price of emptiness, of self-reference. It can mediate knowledge only in terms of a mechanical rearrangement of the things it already knows.

So both hemispheres offer two versions of the world.

Our western world and the left hemisphere

In our modern world we developed something that looks very much like the worlds left hemisphere world.

We prioritise the virtual over the real. The technical becomes important. Bureaucracy flourishes. The picture however is fragmented. There is a loss of uniqueness. The how is subsumed in what. And the need for control leads to paranoia in society and we need to govern and control everything. Everything that should be implicit becomes explicit. And the life is drained.

What is the reason of that dominance? McGilchrist thinks there are three reasons for that.

Self-consistent

One is the left hemisphere’s talk is very convincing because it shaved everything that it doesn’t find fit for this model off and cut it out. So this particular model is entirely self-consistent, largely because it made itself so and is therefore very compelling.

Media

I also call the left hemisphere the Berlusconi of the brain because it controls the media. It is very vocal on its own behalf. The right hemisphere doesn’t have a voice. And it can’t construct these same arguments.

Mirrors

And I also think, rather more importantly there is a sort of hall of mirrors effect. The more we get trapped into this, the more we undercut and ironise things that might have lead us out of it. And we just get reflected back into more about what we know, about what we know, about what we know.

He ends by saying that all this does not mean that the left hemisphere is not important.

Nobody can be more passionate in an age where we neglect reason, and we neglect careful use of language, nobody can be more passionate than myself about language and about reason. It is just that I am even more passionate about the right hemisphere and the need to return what that knows to a broader context.

So the essence seems to be that the right hemisphere is the master. According to the Einstein quote it is what is called intuition. Or what Bohm says wholeness.

The left hemisphere is the emissary. Or what Bohm calls fragmentation.

This left hemisphere (or fragmentation or emissary) is very important. It provides a focus of attention. Or what we did for the last century, getting to know more and more of one subject. Very narrow focus. Specialisation. Which is very important.

But now we need to get in touch with the right hemisphere of our brain. Use our intuition. See the wholeness. Connect the dots. See the bigger picture. Get an overview. Get back to the surface and look at each other’s findings.

And stop confusing the map with the territory.

Picture source

How Matter is Influenced by Meaning

Annemieke — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:07:43 +0000

In the book ‘The Essential David Bohm’ is a chapter called Soma-significance and the Activity of Meaning, which was very interesting in how he thinks that mind and matter interact.

Well, actually he says that interacting is not the way it works. And therefore the word ‘Psycho-somatic’ is not right, for explaining what he meant to say.

So he came up with two different words that should better reflect what he saw as the process of this ‘mind and matter exchange’.

In this post I want to write down Bohm’s differentiation between those three words: Psycho-somatic, Soma-significance and Signa-somatic.

Psycho-somatic

The reason for Bohm to come up with two different concepts is that he is not satisfied with the common concept of Psycho-somatic. Psycho-somatic indicates that there is a relationship between the mental (psycho) and the physical (somatic), but they are separate.

The term psycho-somatic suggests two different kinds of entities, each existent in itself – but both in mutual interaction. In my view such a notion introduces a split, a fragmentation, between the physical and the mental that doesn’t properly correspond to the actual state of affairs.

So that is why he suggests the introduction of a new term that he calls Soma-significance.

Soma-significance

This concept emphasizes more the unity of the mental and the physical. The meaning of the body.

To bring out how soma and significance are related, I might note that each particular kind of significance is based on some somatic order, arrangement, connection and organization of distinguishable elements – that is to say, structure.

Then he goes on with an example.

The printed marks on this piece of paper carry a meaning which is apprehended by a reader. In a television set the movement of electrical signals communicated to an electron beam carries meaning to a viewer. Modern scientific studies indicate that such meanings are carried somatically by further physical, chemical and electrical processes into the brain and the rest of the nervous system where they are apprehended by ever higher intellectual and emotional levels of meaning.

But it also works the other way around, which he gives a different name.

Signa-somatic

Signa-somatic is the other side of the same process. Every meaning at a certain level is affecting the body at a more manifest level.

Consider for example, a shadow seen in a dark night. Now if it happens, because of the person’s past experience, that this means an assailant, the adrenalin will flow, the heart will beat faster, the blood pressure will rise and he will be ready to fight, to run or to freeze. However if it means only a shadow, the response of the soma is very different. So quite generally the total physical response of the human being is profoundly affected by what physical forms mean to him. A change of meaning can totally change your response.

So the meaning of something (shadow), affects the physical (metabolism). Which is different from something physical (marks on a piece of paper), that affects the meaning (mind of the reader).

A change of meaning is a change of being

So this is different from psycho-somatic. With psycho-somatic you say that mind affects matter as if they were two different substances. But there are no two different substances, there is only one flow.

But if the meaning changes, so does the flow.

Therefore any change of meaning is a change of soma and any change of soma is a change of meaning.

As a given meaning is carried into the somatic side, you can see that it continues to develop the original significance. If something means danger, then not only adrenalin, but a whole range of chemical substances will travel through the blood, and according to modern scientific discoveries, these act like ‘messengers’ (carriers of meaning) from the brain to various parts of the body. That is, these chemicals instruct various parts of the body to act in certain ways. In addition there are electrical ‘signals’ – they are not really signals – carried by the nerves, which function in a similar way. And this is a further unfoldment of the original significance into forms that are suitable for ‘instructing’ the body to carry out the implications of what is meant.

Bohm talks about levels. Levels of somatic unfoldment of meaning. Each level goes toward a more manifest somatic state. And this goes on until the action finally emerges as a physical movement of the body that affects the environment.

So there is a two-way movement of energy. Each level of significance acts on the next more manifest somatic level. And the perception carries the meaning of the action back in the other direction.

Image: Source

Serious about Creativity

Annemieke — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:15:07 +0000

Recently I came across a very interesting woman, Paula Scher.

I saw a Tedtalk from a few years ago where she talked about design, play and being serious.

In that talk she differentiates between being solemn and being serious.

Differentiating between those words is not natural for me, because I have a general feeling of the word serious but not for the word solemn. And even looking it up in the dictionary did not make me understand the real difference.

But I very much understand her differentiation in concepts (or at least I think I do) and I very much understand her idea of playing. In not having that phase made cut and dry and carved in stone. With no playful trial and error anymore. Of using accepted forms. Of playing by the rules.

As opposed to being in the moment and use what is available. Of seeing patterns. Connecting dots. Just playing, taking chances and just being unaware of any rules because it is all new and very exciting. But still taking it very serious.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some excerpts:

Being solemn is easy. Being serious is hard. Children almost always begin by being serious, which is what makes them so entertaining when compared with adults as a class. Adults, on the whole, are solemn.

That’s because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, but more comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is commonplace.

Solemn design is often important and very effective design. Solemn design is also socially correct, and is accepted by appropriate audiences. It’s what right-thinking designers and all the clients are striving for. Serious design, serious play, is something else. For one thing, it often happens spontaneously, intuitively, accidentally or incidentally. It can be achieved out of innocence, or arrogance, or out of selfishness, sometimes out of carelessness. But mostly, it’s achieved through all those kind of crazy parts of human behavior that don’t really make any sense.

Serious design is imperfect. It’s filled with the kind of craft laws that come from something being the first of its kind. Serious design is also — often — quite unsuccessful from the solemn point of view. That’s because the art of serious play is about invention, change, rebellion — not perfection. Perfection happens during solemn play.

But something happened to it, and what happened to it was, it became very popular. And that is a kiss of death for something serious because it makes it solemn.

The institutions are solemn, and so is the design. They’re better crafted than the Public Theater was, and they spend more money on them, but I think that that moment comes and goes. The best way to accomplish serious design — which I think we all have the opportunity to do — is to be totally and completely unqualified for the job.

I think what she said was very much in line with what David Bohm, Friedrich Schiller and Ken Robinson said, only they used different words to describe the concepts.

Ken Robinson talks about an aesthetic experience in which your senses are operating at their peak, when you are present in the current moment, when you are resonating with the excitement of this thing that you are experiencing, when you are fully alive.

David Bohm talks about creativity, which he thinks is essential for the whole of life. If you get stuck in a mechanical, repetitious order, then it will degenerate. Civilizations got stuck in a certain repetition and then the creative energy gradually dies away. They vanish, not only because of external pressure, but because they internally decay.

And Friedrich Von Schiller talks about the instinct of play which lets the two opposing instincts (the sensuous and the formal instinct) act together. Even though they are each others total opposite, it is possible to play with them, let them be there at the same time. As long as they are playing together, there has to be no conclusion on what is true and what is false. During the play, the mind can be physical and moral at the same time. The play takes the dynamics out of feeling and passion. And it takes the moral out of reason. So feeling can be in harmony with rational ideas.

Although they use different words, an aesthetic experience (Robinson), creativity (Bohm) and the instinct of play (Schiller), they all seem to mean the same thing: seeing patterns that emerge from an underlying reality, having a feeling of concepts that can not be fully described with existing words.

My feeling is that what Paula Scher describes is exactly that. She saw new patterns, just by playing and not being bothered with knowledge and rules. And she did something with what she saw, she made it manifest.

Understanding the Meaning of Concepts

Annemieke — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:00:56 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

We bring up our children with too much conceptual abstractions, that they have to memorize. They have to learn concepts without realizing the underlying reality. Learn concepts without understanding the meaning. They have to learn what others think is important.

And slowly along the way, they lose the ability to think creative.

It is like a box that is filled with bottles of water, thinking it is full, and all the water is separate. Without realizing that pouring the water out would leave plenty of room for more, while all the water can mix.

From the post The Concept of Water / Music from Pressure Points by Camel / Image Source / More Videos

An Aesthetic Experience

Annemieke — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 19:35:21 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ken Robinson on Aesthetics and An-Aesthetics:

An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak.

When you are present in the current moment. When you are resonating with the excitement of this thing that you are experiencing. When you are fully alive.

An an-aesthetic is when you shut your senses off, and deaden yourself to what is happening.

We are getting our children through education by anaesthetizing them. We should be doing the exact opposite. We should not be putting them to sleep.

We should be waking them up to what they have inside of themselves.

Sir Ken Robinson in the video Changing Education Paradigms / Blogpost From Aesthetics to An-Aesthetics / Music from Bach’s Air / Image Source / More Videos

The Artist and the Scientist in Dialogue with the World

Annemieke — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:40:15 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

David Bohm on Art, Science and Dialogue:

Artists are not just ‘expressing themself’, not just ‘pushing outward what is already formed inside of them’.

The first thing the artist does is only similar in certain ways to what they have in mind.

As in a conversation between two people, they see the similarity and difference, and from this perception something further emerges in the next action.

Thus, something new is continually created that is common to the artist and the material on which they are working.

The same goes for the scientist who has a dialogue with nature. An idea is tested by observation.

When it is found that what is observed is only similar to what they had in mind and not identical, then from a consideration of the similarities and differences, they get a new idea which is in turn tested.

And so it goes, with the continual emergence of something new that is common to the thought of the scientist and what is observed in nature.

David Bohm on Communication/ From the post Dialogue as Creating something New Together / Music from Lady Fantasy by Camel / Image Source / More Videos / More David Bohm Posts

Art and the Context of Society

Annemieke — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 20:05:34 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Living in a certain place and time, we tend to think within a certain set of values and act upon them as if they are universal. And we use our critical skills to judge ‘everything’.

It is a set of values that is a sum of the whole society, and living by its rules is more or less part of the game. The game of a society that keeps a certain balance between individual desire and the common good.

But that does not mean those values are universal. That they apply everywhere. And in all times.

That just means they are good in a certain context. The context of that specific society. In that specific time in history.

Art is also criticized in the spirit of that age. But one of the characteristics of art is, that it is a search for new patterns that fit in a greater whole, which go beyond the context of that specific society in that specific time.

From the post Creativity beyond Praise and Criticism / Music from Sahara by Camel / Image Source / More Videos

What is Art?

Annemieke — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 11:37:47 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

If the definition of art

has developed over time,

and if it is defined as

‘a product or process

of deliberately arranging symbolic elements

in a way that influences and affects

the senses, emotions and intellect’

and also says that the word art

was traditionally used for skill or mastery,

but later as an intention

to stimulate thoughts and emotions,

and if according to David Bohm,

the original definition was ‘to fit’,

that the word art has come to mean

‘to fit, in an aesthetic and emotional sense’,

but can also mean

‘fitting in a functional sense’,

then taking those definitions together,

you get the following ingredients for art:

1. a product or a process

2. skill or mastery

3. fit together in a certain context

4. affect senses, emotions, intellect in others

So far this is a definition of art

that describes a person to person thing.

One person has the skill to produce something

(a product or process that fits together in a certain context)

that affects another person.

But there is also an element of ‘fitting’

or ‘not fitting’ in the whole of society.

And art is about changing contexts,

going beyond what is known.

About seeing a ‘new fit’.

Searching for new patterns

‘that are fitting in every sense’.

So apart from the previous 4 ingredients

in the definition of art,

there is a 5th:

5. a search for new patterns that fit in a greater whole

Something that goes beyond the individual.

A search for a new order

in the whole of society or beyond.

From the post The Developing Definition of Art / Music from Stationary Traveller by Camel / Painting from Emptytuxedo / More videos / More David Bohm Blogposts

More Power Needs More Coherence

Annemieke — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:55:29 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

David Bohm on Power and Incoherence:

We cannot grasp the totality but we can have a feeling for the whole. We can have the attitude of not restricting ourselves to parts, but to allowing our consciousness to be based on the whole of whatever we can experience. Turn to the whole of reality as far as we can and go from there to the parts. The parts are seen within the whole rather than begin with the parts and put them together like a machine.

We have to be sensitive to incoherence. Delusion arises when we are not sensitive to incoherence. When we overlook it. If anybody claims to have evidence it is always limited and you can’t trust it either. So there is no guarantee at all. We can’t trust anybody to tell us about these things.

We have a tremendous resistence to acknowledge incoherence. People are constantly saying that ‘everything is alright’, ‘there is nothing to worry about’, ‘this is all very coherent’. So the keypoint is, to attent to incoherence, first acknowledge it and then to do something about it.

Incoherence has become more dangerous because of the scale of our society and because of technology. We have all sorts of dangers which are brought about by our power. The greater power we have, the greater we need coherence.

David Bohm in Art, Science and Spirituality / Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata / More Videos / More David Bohm Posts

Thought Thinks the Problem is Out There

Annemieke — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:33:33 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

David Bohm on Thought:

Thought has developed traditionally in a way that claims not to be affecting anything but just telling you the way things are. Therefore people can not see that they are creating a problem and then apparently trying to solve it.

The ecology has not in itself a problem, it works perfectly well by itself. It’s due to us. That’s a problem because we are thinking in a certain way, by breaking everything up and each person is doing his own thing. Therefore the ecological problem is due to thought.

Thought thinks it is a problem out there and I must solve it. Now that doesn’t make sense because simultaneously thought is doing all the activities which make the problem and then does another set of activities to try to overcome it.

David Bohm on thought in Art, Science and Spritituality / Music from Wagner’s Parsifal / More Videos / More David Bohm Blogposts

A Coherent Approach to Reality

Annemieke — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:09:44 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

David Bohm on Coherence and Consciousness:

If we can have a coherent approach to reality, then reality will respond coherently to us.

But nature has been tremendously affected by our way of thinking. There is very little left on earth, that isn’t affected by how we were thinking.

The major source of unhappiness is that we are incoherent and therefore produce results that we don’t really want. And then, trying to overcome them, we keep on producing them.

We need a period of emptiness and quiet where we can go into this.

Wholeness will arise between us all, in participation rather than separation. We are internally, not externally, related to everything by consciousness. Consciousness is an internal relationship to the whole.

David Bohm about coherence from Art, Science and Spirituality / Music from Schubert’s 8th Symphony (Unvollendete) / Image Source / More videos / More David Bohm Blogposts

Creativity to Prevent External Pressure and Internal Decay

Annemieke — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:24:19 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

David Bohm on Creativity:

Creativity is essential, not only for science but for the whole of life.

If you get stuck in a mechanical, repetitious order, then it will degenerate.

One of the problems is, that every civilization got stuck in a certain repetition.

The creative energy gradually died away and that is why the civilization dies.

Many civilizations vanish, not only because of external pressure, but because they internally decay.

David Bohm on Creativity from Art, Science and Spirituality / Music from Beethoven’s 7th symphony / Image Source / More Videos / More David Bohm Posts

Creating Something New Together

Annemieke — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:47:51 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

David Bohm on Dialogue:

If the meaning of communication is to convey information or knowledge from one person to another, then the essence of communication is ‘to make something common’.

Dialogue as a special kind of communication, is ‘to make something IN common’. Or creating something new together.

But in most cases there is a HUGE problem in the exchange of meaning between people. Meanings are similar but not identical. Which can be a real problem if people get to focus on just their own meaning.

But if done right, it can also lead to something new.

Observing the differences you might see something new that is relevant to both views. Go back and forth with the continual emergence of new content that is common to both participants.

Which needs an open mind. Each has to be interested primarily in truth and coherence, and be ready to drop old ideas and intentions.

From the post Dialogue as Creating something New Together / David Bohm on Communication and Dialogue / Music by Camel from Lawrence / Photo by Tristan Savatier Loupiote.com used by permission / More videos from blogposts / More David Bohm Posts

Time and the Meaning of Life

Annemieke — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:14:32 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

The first part of the meaning of life, is to build a personality with strong values. Values that are worth defending.

Use them to choose a direction, stick with it and make it a succes. Challenge the cultural background and make decisions on personal experience. Keep what works and improve it. Defend your decisions if they are attacked.

So the first part is to become a personality, improve yourself over time and defend yourself if necessary.

But there is a second part.

Where you have to realise that your values are not universal. They always depend on the context. And as important as they are to become a strong and independent individual, some day you have to realise that it is all relative.

This is where time comes in.

If the realisation is there too soon, it might harm the building process of your self. And make you paralysed, unfocused and directionless.

So a strong belief in your own values is important. Even more, the stronger it is, the more powerful the realisation of a world beyond can be, when the moment is there.

From the post The Meaning of Values / Music from Sahara by Camel / Image source / More videos from blogposts

Creativity Grows on Insight and Understanding

Annemieke — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:09:11 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Creativity has an inherent order that grows on insight and understanding.

It has to develop according to that.

It might need rules and boundaries to keep growing in a certain direction. It might need ideas from others to grow even further … but … only after a certain amount of independent growth.

Without interference from others. Without criticism. Without imposed rules. Even, and maybe most of all, without praise and rewards. Which might get addicting and more important than creative growth.

If the fuel comes from outside instead of the inside, it holds the risk that, one day, the fuel gets cut off.

From the post The Danger of Praise and Reward as Fuel for Creativity / Based on the thoughts of David Bohm / Music by Camel from The Snow Goose / More videos from blogposts

Integrity needs Honesty

Annemieke — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 09:44:31 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

There can be honesty without integrity, but no integrity without honesty.

Although integrity needs honesty, it does not mean you always have to be absolutely honest to others.

It just means you have to be absolutely honest to your self.

Being honest to others is many times just giving a personal opinion. And that opinion might just as well have nothing to do with facts.

So integrity needs honesty, but honesty as an inner process. Looking at your own values and act upon them with respect for others.

From the post The Difference between Integrity and Honesty / Music by Camel from The Final Encore / More videos from blogposts

Mechanism vs Meaning

Annemieke — Tue, 17 May 2011 18:59:46 +0000

Recently I listened to an interview with the very intriguing title: Is Consciousness Energy?

The title made me really curious, as I have been wondering about that for a long time now.

It is an interview of Dean Radin with Christian de Quincey, whose final conclusion is that consciousness is not the same as energy. But it is really very subtle because although they are not the same, they are on the other hand inseparable.

My overall feeling was that the conclusions are more or less the same as those of David Bohm. What he meant when he talked about the mind like quality of an electron, and the responds of energy to information.

I transcribed the whole interview, but here in this post, I want to distill some parts that I think are an extension of what David Bohm was talking about. De Quincey goes into great detail about the subtle differences and similarities between consciousness and energy.

Here he starts by what in the world around us has some kind of consciousness and what does not. And where exactly lies the difference. He uses the word consciousness on many levels, from very basic, as he says molecular, to very high, what he calls, Buddha consciousness.

Cellular and molecular consciousness

He answers the question of a guest, who asks if he thinks that plants and rocks have consciousness.

Yes, I would say that a plant has consciousness and certainly the cells of the plant have cellular consciousness. I would say that the rock as a rock does not have rock consciousness, but that the particles, the molecules within the rock do have their own molecular consciousness. So there is some consciousness at work within the rock, but the rock as a whole is not a unity, is not an individual in the way an organism like an animal or a plant is an individual. And the rock is .. it is an aggregate of parts that don’t have the internal relatedness that I talked about earlier. So there is no unified consciousness that we call rock consciousness. And I would say that the same applies to computers and thermostats and .. and at this state .. probably the internet as well .. they don’t have that degree of internal relatedness.

So the internal relatedness of the particles is important. Are they static (rock) or selforganizing (plant).

Sharing meaning is not the same as exchanging energy

Here the question was if he thinks that the internet can be seen as conscious.

I am open to that possibility but I am inclined that a part of me that thinks that will not happen because there is something to do with the relationship between the components that involves what philosophers call internal relatedness. That they are not just related to physical inactions but there is a sharing of meaning involved, there is an internal relatedness. And that is one of, to me, fundamental differences between the experiencing living organism and a machine is that the parts that make up our internally related, that they are sharing meaning between each other. Not just exchanging energy. Which kind of brings us back to the initial topic of our talk, is consciousness .. to make a distinction between those two. I would say that machines operate through mechanisms, conscious beings operate by sharing of meaning. Sharing of meaning is not the same as exchanging energy.

So there is a mechanical sharing and a sharing of meaning. This also touches on what David Bohm talked about with creativity, dialogue and active information.

Different language for energy and for consciousness

The following is very important, but at the same time very difficult to grasp. In order to understand it, it has to be separated, but that is at the same time the problem because it is so interconnected.

Dean Radin: Could you elaborate on that, because the idea of, especially the idea of exchanging energy, there are ways from physics we can think of exchanging energy through forces, but there is also a related way which is simply the transmission of information. A transmission of information occurs through patterning of energy, a modulation of energy so that even information devolves in a sense down energy as well. So what is the, the question of our seminar, is consciousness energy.

Christian de Quincey: No, I would say that consciousness is not energy. However consciousness and energy always get together. And energy is like a technical way of talking about embodiment. Bodies are made of energy. And in my view consciousness and embodiment, consciousness and energy always go together. You never have one without the other. So they .. unity. But they are not identical. Their unity does not equal identity. So consciousness is non located, it is non physical, energy is located and it is physical. Those are fundamental distinctions between consciousness and energy.

Energy is something that moves through space, consciousness doesn’t exist in space. There is a very different kind of existence .. energy that exists in space. That’s really the fundamental distinction that .. and .. to use the language of energy of vibrations and frequencies and waves and fields to talk about consciousness, I am proposing is using inappropriate language .. energy talk to something that is not energy which is consciousness.

So we need to, I am proposing that we need to catch ourselves .. what I call the physics .. using energy talk when we want to discuss consciousness .. using terms like fields and vibrations or mechanisms, waves, that we use the already very rich language which we have by discussing mind and consciousness, words such as tension, attention, purpose, meaning, desire, experience, feeling, awareness and on and on. We already have a very, very rich vocabulary for discussing consciousness. And non of those terms can be reduced to our .. energy talk, like waves or fields or vibrations.

So basically requesting or proposing that we catch ourselves when we use energy talk, when talking about consciousness, and instead we use our very rich language we already have, talking about consciousness. I think I might have drifted off a little bit from the question about the consciousness .. energy but those are .. considerations that I have .. consciousness is not a form of energy, energy that .. exists in space and consciousness is something that doesn’t .. the bottom line.

So consciousness is non-local, non-physical and does not travel through space. As he says somewhere else in the interview, it can only be grasped by another conscious being.

Non-dual dualism

Here he uses the concept non-dual dualism, which I think explains well what he means to say.

Dean Radin: Did I hear you right .. saying that they are related?

Christian de Quincey: Yes.

Dean Radin: So if they are related and they are so different from each other, it sounds like dualism.

Christian de Quincey: It does sound like dualism, except dualism .. basically is the idea that two different and separable kinds of reality exist, but what I am proposing is that .. an non dual dualism .. dual aspects .. in philosophy that there is definitely a distinction .. fundamental distinction to be made between consciousness and energy. However, having that distinction is not saying they are separate. So consciousness and energy .. always go together, they form a unity. But they are not the same.

This is also what I understood from David Bohm, who talks about the mind-like quality of the electron in part 3 of this interview.

How we Expect Answers from Limited Theories

Annemieke — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:47:02 +0000

Going through some online tapes of David Bohm, I found a recording where he says something very interesting.

Well, actually I find almost everything he ever said very interesting.

But the recording made me realise something else. Last week I found an article online that said that his ‘complete lack of ego completely disguised the enormity of his intellect’, and this tape made that very clear.

Most of what he says is very subtle, and it is easily missed if you do not decide to really focus on what he says. He talks very fast and very gentle. And it is really hard to hear at times.

I uploaded the whole recording and transcribed as much as I could hear on the page David Bohm Audio Interview about Understanding in Science.

In this post I want to focus on a certain part of that recording.

The whole interview is about his view on science as a way of exploring the world. He gives a certain overview on how that exploring in science has developed over time.

He says that in that development, we now came to a point where experiments are essential. Which he thought was a very powerful method. And as I came to realise, he saw it at the same time as a very important way of testing any theory. He had an extremely scientific attitude.

But at the same time he felt that this attitude had its limits. It could only answer certain questions. And he always asked further. He always asked deeper questions. ‘A tremendous courage in looking at things honestly, whatever the consequences.’

And in the following part of the recording, he talks about what he sees as the main problem. A problem in science that is at the same time the main problem in thought, in language and as a result in the whole of our human existence.

‘Once you invested in this machine then you better use it’

Now then experiments were elaborated and this is a very powerful method, but at the same time dangerous because the experiments are developed on the basis of the theory and they are set up to answer the sort of questions that the theory asks, a certain theory asks. And then that people, theorists, once experimental equipment was very cheap and simple, it didn’t really matter because an other theory could be considered and you could try another experiment.

But now it takes years to produce a big machine and requires the cooperative work of many people and millions of dollars. So that people feel, once you invested in this machine then you’d better use it. So then theorists feel compelled to develop theories that will raise questions that can be answered by this particular equipment, which in turn will set up to answer questions through the previous theory. So the whole result now tends to, the experimental method now as it has developed, may tend to a conservative factor into physics whereas in the beginning it was very radical and revolutionary.

‘Your thought will only answer the questions which you ask’

Yes, I should say language, first of all you can’t discuss language apart from thought. That is language is only noises unless it is expressing thought. And I don’t think anybody could presume to say that he knows the structure of thought because he would get at least, not only it is unknown but he would get into a terrible tangle if he would try to assert that he knows the structure of thought, because then we would have to say that the very thought he was thinking that structure does he know that. You see, isn’t there a danger that he is projecting some idea which he has and calling it the objective structure of thought.

That is the same problem as with the machine. You see, the machines have been built up in such a way that they lead us to ask only certain questions. If you have a theory of the structure of thought, you will project it into your thought, say that’s what my thought is and than you will only ask the questions about thought that are in your theory. And your thought will only answer the questions which you ask.

Conservative Answers to Radical Questions

So these experiments, as important as they are, are mainly useful as the end of a development of understanding. An understanding that starts with insight, a mental image of the whole idea. As Bohm says, not only a visual image but also a feeling for it.

Followed by reasoning and calculation. And finally the experimental test. But tests that have to be based on those previous stages. Evolving along the way.

And not the tests from previous insights. Asking questions because the existing theory can answer it. Then you get, what Bohm said, a conservative answer to a radical question.

And the same goes for our own thought process. Without understanding of the whole process of thought, the answers will aways be limited.

Dialogue as Creating Something New Together

Annemieke — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:51:34 +0000

Finally I started reading the book On Dialogue by David Bohm.

I was not sure at first that I wanted to buy the book, as there is so much to find online. Like this Proposal for Dialogue.

But although I am fine with reading bits and pieces online, or borrow a book at the library, in this case I just want to own as much of Bohm’s books as possible.

I am reading and re-reading his books all the time at the moment. That, as well as books and articles about him.

So I started with the very first chapter in the book On Dialogue. That chapter is called On Communication (found it also online) an essay he already wrote in the 70s.

And reading that chapter made me realise his huge, huge insight in things.

The chapter is very short, but contains really so much valuable and brilliant insight already. First he talks about communication in general, what it means and how it is used.

Then about a special kind of communication that is dialogue and how it differs from ordinary communication. And how the artist and scientist also have a dialogue. The artist with his material and the scientist with nature.

And finally he talks about the importance of free communication and the blocks to dialogue. And the importance of the sensitivity to similarity and differences.

The Meaning of Communication

First he gives his understanding of the meaning of communication, which he says is ‘to convey information or knowledge from one person to another as accurate as possible’.

Which is of great importance in the work field. One person giving a set of directions to another person.

So the essence of communication is ‘to make something common’.

The Meaning of Dialogue

Dialogue is a special kind of communication. In his later work, and so I think further on in the book, Bohm explains his view on dialogue very extensive. But here in this early essay, he compares it with communication.

If communication is ‘to make something common’, dialogue is ‘making something IN common’. Or as he says ‘creating something new together’.

That is, if the dialogue is held as he thinks it should. Because in most cases there is a HUGE problem in the exchange in meaning between people.

He says meanings are similar but not identical.

When one person says something, the other person does not in general respond with exactly the same meaning as that seen by the first person. Rather, the meanings are only similar and not identical. Thus, when the second person replies, the first person sees a difference between what she meant to say and what the other person understood.

Which can be a real problem if people get to focus on just their own meaning.

But if done right, it can also lead to something new.

On considering this difference, she may then be able to see something new, which is relevant both to her own views and to those of the other person. And so it can go back and forth, with the continual emergence of a new content that is common to both participants.

Which needs an open mind.

Each has to be interested primarily in truth and coherence, so that he is ready to drop his old ideas and intentions.

The Artist and Dialogue

Then he goes on with how we communicate with ‘things’, as he says that is what we do with everything in the world, not just with people.

An artist is not just ‘expressing himself’, not just ‘pushing outward what is already formed inside of him’.

Rather, what usually happens is that the first thing the artist does is only similar in certain ways to what he may have in mind. As in a conversation between two people, he sees the similarity and the difference, and from this perception something further emerges in his next action. Thus, something new is continually created that is common to the artist and the material on which he is working.

The Scientist and Dialogue

The same goes for the scientist who has a dialogue with nature. An idea is tested by observation.

When it is found that what is observed is only similar to what she had in mind and not identical, then from a consideration of the similarities and the differences she gets a new idea which is in turn tested. And so it goes, with the continual emergence of something new that is common to the thought of scientists and what is observed in nature.

Free Communication and Blocks to Dialogue

It is important to communicate freely, but that is really very difficult. We think we are listening to the other, but that the other is not really listening to us. We see that the other is blocked to certain questions, we see that they are avoiding the confrontation of contradictions in certain ideas.

But we are not aware of that same block with ourself.

The very nature of such a block is, however, that it is a kind of insensitivity or anesthesia about one’s own contradictions. Evidently then, what is crucial is to be aware of the nature of one’s own blocks. If one is alert and attentive, one can see for example that whenever certain questions arise, there are fleeting sensations of fear, which push the person away from consideration of these questions, and of pleasure, which attract his thoughts.

This subtle fear and pleasure are very important things to notice. They prevent us from listening to the whole of what is said. So we have to give full attention to these blocks.

Sensitivity to Similarity and Difference

Also the sensitivity to similarity and difference seems to be very important. Something as an opening to other views or other systems. Not the importance to impose one view upon another but to listen to the response. The real importance is in the building. The gradual building of what emerges during the exchange.

And that is only the first chapter of the book. Not more than five pages. I already know I love the next chapter about dialogue, because I read a lot about it lately and think it is brilliant.

But also the other chapters (like about collective thought, paradox, proprioception, observer and observed) seem very interesting.

Our Incoherent View of the Whole

Annemieke — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 09:22:24 +0000

Coherence is a word that David Bohm used a lot. I noticed it in the video that I wrote about in my previous post.

It is a word with a meaning that is rather general. A word that you read without really noticing.

But the more I became aware of the word, the more I got the feeling it was very important, even essential in the way Bohm looked at the world.

In the interview he used it when he talked about the thought process. And in the same interview it also became clear that coherence was essential in learning.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realised he used it also in his view on creativity. And in his view on art. And on dialogue. And on society. Maybe also on his writings on science, but because those writings are often way over my head, I can not be sure.

So I wanted to write a post about coherence. What it actually means and why it is so important, even seems to be at the core of his work.

To do that, I went back to his book On Creativity, to focus on where and how he exactly used the word coherence and in relation to what.

But while re-reading parts of the book, I noticed several things that I did not notice before. Things that I could not notice before, because at that time I did not have the information and knowledge that I have now.

Between reading the book for the first time and now, I read a lot from and about David Bohm. And I heard and watched him on tape and video.

Another part of that information came from another source. The book The Master and his Emissary, about the difference between the left and right hemisphere of our brain.

So when I read again in the book On Creativity, I noticed many things that I did not notice before because they are very subtle. Subtle but important at the same time.

One example is the following. It is the last chapter of the book, which is an interview with Bohm. He talks about thought and how our unconscious makes us do the opposite of what we want.

The interviewer asks how we can spread this new awareness among people, how we can make it understood and put into practice.

And Bohm gives the following, very puzzling, answer:

It would be a mistake to try to put it into practice. That is already a contradiction. As I said before, we have begun by doing one thing, we keep on doing it, and we try by means of a practice to overcome what we are already doing in the opposite direction. That is like somebody who is hitting himself with his right hand trying to stop it with his left hand. The basic difficulty is that our practice is unaware of the fact that it is producing all these problems.

I think this answer is very interesting for several reasons. The first is that it points to the difference between our right and left brain as talked about in the book The Master and his Emissary.

It is also about what Bohm calls self sustaining confusion, how we struggle to handle information that seems contradicting.

And most of all, it is his way of saying there is no coherence. There is no coherence because we can not see the bigger picture. We act upon our limited view of reality.

We have to look at the whole. But not just at the whole, it has to be a coherent whole.

People may have incoherent views of the whole, which could be very destructive. It is not enough to have holism, although that too is important. We must do justice to each of the parts, as well as understanding their relative independence, in order that there be freedom.

We can never have a coherent view of the whole, without understanding other views.

The Difference between Thinking and Thought

Annemieke — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 11:21:30 +0000

Recently I found a real treasure!

At least that is what I considered the video that I found of David Bohm.

It is a video where he talked about his life, recorded about two years before his death.

There is a part of this video on Youtube that is called David Bohm on perception which I found very interesting. Below the video I saw a comment from the interviewer that there was this whole interview available.

I clicked through and did not only find the video (a preview online, the whole can be downloaded) but also a transcription of that video.

Which I really love, because I have to read again and again what Bohm actually said at some points. During the interview he said many interesting things, but most are very subtle.

That is why I want to write some blogposts about what I found most interesting. This one will be about his differentiation between thinking and thought.

For me it was an interesting follow up after the posts I did some time ago about the Rheomode, the experiment that Bohm did with language.

Beginning of the interview

In the interview, before he gets to the part about thinking and thought, he already said some very interesting things. About his childhood and how he got to see everything as a flow instead of a fragmented reality. He talked about his interest in politics and how he got into physics.

Also about how our minds work regarding what we see as necessary and about perception as a dynamic process.

I will certainly go into that more detailed in other posts, but in this one I want to focus on his differentiation between thinking and thought.

First he talks about theories which can never give true knowledge, but give a way of looking at the real world.

Thinking is an active verb

Then, in an attempt to make himself more clear, Bohm makes a distinction between thinking and thought.

First he describes thinking.

Thinking is an active verb, think-ing. It means you are doing something. One thing you are doing is criticizing your thoughts, seeing whether they cohere. And if they don’t, you begin to change them and experiment with others. You get new intuitions, new insights.

Which is very different from thought.

Thought is a conditioning

Thought is not that active and Bohm calls it conditioning. In order to explain what he means he takes the example of Pavlov and his dogs.

The dogs would salivate when they saw food. He rang a bell and the dogs associated it with the food, so later, they began to salivate just by the sound of the bell. So, there is an elementary thought here, which was, whenever a bell rings. The first reflex was whenever food is there, salivation occurs. That may have been built in instinctively. The second reaction, which is conditioned, is, whenever the bell rings, salivation must occur.

So these are two steps in a process. The first step is called reflex. Something that is build in, a natural characteristic of humans as well as animals.

The second step is conditioning. Something that might not be build in itself, but because of a certain development (learning) it is still a very basic quality of, again, humans as well as (many) animals.

And, according to Bohm, thought is nothing more than a form of reflex and conditioning.

So, if you say, whenever this happens, I need to do this, whenever X happens, I need to do Y. Now with that, you don’t have to think. Immediately when X happens, you are already doing Y, right? It is a reflex. Now, that is the nature of thought. And one reflex leads to another.

You say, whenever I think this, I must conclude that. Whenever I conclude that, I must go to the next step, you see, it may be established by association, or by other ways, like reasoning, where you try to organize it logically, or by similarities – association in time is the simplest, association by similarity, or a connection by logic. But, once it is done, it is all the same, it is a reflex, you see, logic is a reflex.

He even calls logic a reflex. Logic in itself is not proof of reality. But according to Bohm, something else is.

Coherence

He says that our thoughts have to be criticized, by watching for its coherence. Even if an argument seems logical, it does not always mean it is. We have to become sensitive to coherence and incoherence which is a perceptive process.

At this point I am trying to better understand what Bohm means with coherence. I do have a certain idea of what he means (a gradual building of perception and thinking) but am not sure yet if my understanding is indeed what he means.

Maybe that becomes more clear when I write some more posts about my favorite (by now) interview with David Bohm.

Collective Sharing of Individual Knowledge

Annemieke — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:19:56 +0000

Last week I found some really interesting sites.

The first one was Quora.

I found a blogpost that highlighted some good reasons to get involved there.

I clicked through and was indeed immediately hooked.

It is a question and answer site, where anyone can ask and answer all kinds of questions. But apart from that, you can follow people as well as topics and specific questions.

I thought it was a very good idea to get to know my way around there, because I really love searching for answers to questions I have.

But even more, I love it to hear different opinions and see discussions about certain subjects.

Knowledge Inside

I read somewhere that much of the knowledge is still not in a useable format on the web.

And when you think about it you would say that probably 90% of the information that people have is still in their heads, not on the internet. So we’re trying to get that information out of people’s heads, so it’s not on sources that are hard to access on the internet, and get it into a really useful format to make a valuable database.

So I signed up and learned a lot already. Not yet participating much, but I think I certainly might later on.

Bookmark and Highlight

On there, I also found another interesting site called Diigo. Nothing very special, but for me a great tool. It is a site to bookmark webpages, while at the same time you can highlight that what struck you most in that article.

Which is really great. I did not use it much yet, but it is something I did myself often with copy and paste the most interesting parts of an article.

But not in a very organised way, with the result I could never find anything back. And if I did find it back, I could not find the original source again.

With this site (which has a great browser extension) it is really very easy to bookmark an article and at the same time highlight the essence of why I found it interesting.

Fiction and Non-fiction

And finally, the third site that I found this week, was Goodreads. I think I found it earlier, but never took the time to look around the site. But now I did and signed up.

After that you could start by adding books to a shelf. Books you read already, books you are reading at the moment and books you want to read later.

So I started adding those books and found out some interesting facts while doing that. I am still going through the really huge collection on the site, thinking back about the books I once read and how I would rate them.

One of those facts is that I read only a few fictions. Most of the books I read are non-fiction. But most of those non-fiction books I did not read from start to finish. I just read what I found interesting, what caught my attention at that moment.

But I remembered that there was a period in my life that I did read non-fiction. I read all the books of Agatha Christie when I was young. Some of them even more than once. And I really loved them at that time.

Open but Critical Mind

But after that, there where very little fiction books (with a few exceptions). Most of what I was interested in, where books that had to answer the many questions I had. Which is why I only read them partly. Once I had the answer, I already had another question that lead me to another book.

And suddenly I realised that was the reason why I got so interested in Quora, as soon as I saw it. For me it has the potential of more than just ‘one has the question and one has the answer’.

I definitely see the potential of some sort of collective dialogue. Or debate. Or as I said in my post Debate or Dialogue, at best a combination of both.

The open mind and respect of a dialogue combined with the critical and opposing nature of a debate.

How we Re-Cognise what we Experience

Annemieke — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 10:08:36 +0000

Differentiating between the functions of the left and the right hemisphere of our brain.

What does each brainside actually do?

Chapter two of The Master and his Emissary gives a very extensive description of the differences between the two.

One of the first subchapters is about different forms of attention. Which form of attention belongs to which hemisphere?

There are five types of attention:

vigilance
sustained attention
alertness
focused attention
divided attention

There is an intensity axis which contains the first three: vigilance, sustained attention, alertness.

And there is a selectivity axis which contains the last two: focused attention and divided attention.

Focused attention on the left

The right hemisphere is responsible for almost every type of attention. Except one. Focused attention does not belong to the right hemisphere.

Focused attention belongs to the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere that is responsible for local, narrowly focused attention.

From detail to whole or from whole to detail

Research shows that if the right hemisphere is not working well, (so the left hemisphere is dominant) there is a tendency to start with pieces and put those pieces together to get an overall picture.

While on the contrary, when the left hemisphere is not working well, (and the right hemisphere is dominant) there is a preference to start with a global approach and go from the overall picture to the details.

Our representation of the world

The sort of attention to the world outside, determines what we ‘see’. How we ‘know’ things.

In other words we might need to know what is of use to us – but this might be very different from understanding a broader sense, and certainly might inquire filtering out some aspects of experience. Without experiences whatever it is, we would have nothing on which to ground our knowledge, so we have to experience it at some stage; but in order to know it, we have to ‘process’ experience.

We have to be able to recognise (re-cognise) what we experience: to say this is a ‘such-and-such’, that is, it has certain qualities that enable me to place it in a category of things that I have experienced before and about which I have certain beliefs and feelings. This processing eventually becomes so automatic that we do not so much experience the world as experience our representation of the world. The world is no longer ‘present’ to us, but ‘re-presented’, a virtual world, a copy that exists in conceptual form in the mind.

So how we see the world, depends on how we use the selective, focused attention of our left hemisphere.

While at the same time, the right hemisphere is open to everything. Without preconception. Not just focused on what is already known. More flexible. And more broad. Looking beyond the known.

Focus vs Context and Language vs Psyche

Annemieke — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:44:07 +0000

A few weeks ago I came across a blogpost about a book called The Master and his Emissary.

The writer of that post thought the book was very important, maybe even the book of the century.

In that same blogpost was a video with the writer of the book, Iain McGilchrist. I watched that video and thought it was really very interesting. He talked about the left and right hemisphere of our brain.

About how there where many attempts, over time, to mark their difference. And how many researchers gave up on it, because each time certain conclusions got disproved by more evidence.

It was not a difference between language and images, not a difference between reason and emotion, not a difference between logic and intuition. Both hemispheres of the brain have all the functions, they only differ in how they use them.

Context and Focus

If I understand it correct, the main difference was between context and focus. Context being the right and focus being the left. And as the title of the book says, one is the master (right) and the other the emissary (left).

I was fascinated by that description, because it very much gave words to my own thoughts and feelings about the mind. The thoughts I had when I read about a philosopher called Jean Carteret.

Language and Psyche

Carteret talked about the psyche and language. (For the moment I want to stay as close as possible to the words he used, although McGilchrist wants to stay away from language as a concept of one hemisphere.)

Carteret calls the psyche a ‘condition of infinity’ and language a ‘limitation in action’. So he came up with a model together with matter and energy, where energy is ‘infinity in action’ and matter a ‘condition of limitation’.

The psyche and energy are both ‘infinite’ as opposed to matter and language which are both ‘limited’. Energy and language are both ‘active’ as opposed to matter and the psyche which are both a ‘condition’.

I have been fascinated by that model from the moment I read about it. But never really found anything else to support the model until I listened to that video. And I just knew I had to read the book.

So I got it this weekend and started reading. I only got as far as the introduction, and although it is not an easy read, I really think it is going to be very interesting.

If I understand it enough, I want to write some blogposts along the way, because that way it makes it easier for me to digest and give my own turn to what I read. My main goal is to see if indeed what Iain McGilchrist says is in essence the same as what Jean Carteret said.

Interview and Video

I found an interview with McGilchrist where he said the following:

The left hemisphere is self consistent in a simplified way. So it can delude itself that it knows everything, whereas I see the right hemisphere as seeing things that lie beyond what we ourselves can see.

And below is the video with the talk about his book.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Near the end he talks about the left hemisphere.

It is convincing, cuts off what does not fit. It is self consisting and therefore compelling, it controls the media and is vocal on its own behalf. It is like a wall of mirrors, the more we get trapped, we get reflected more of what we know.

And he ends with a quote of Einstein:

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

So far this post was a general overview of the whole book. An overview from the writer of the book in his video talk. An overview with answering questions in the interview he did. And also an overview of my understanding so far of the book.

My next step is to read the book from start to finish, writing blogposts along the way.

The Physical, Aesthetical and Moral Stage of Development

Annemieke — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 09:31:32 +0000

In letter XXIV of his aesthetic letters, Schiller mentions three stages of development.

He says there is a development that each individual, as well as the whole of humanity, has to go through.

It is also a development that has to happen in a certain order. Each stage can be longer or shorter with each individual, (depending on external or internal causes) but can not be overstepped. And their order can also not be inverted, not by nature and not by will.

In one sentence, he says what happens in the life of each human being.

Man, in his physical condition, suffers only the power of nature; he gets rid of this power in the aesthetical condition, and he rules them in the moral state.

So according to Schiller, the first stage is physical, the second stage is aesthetical, and the third stage is moral.

Different names for the stages

Throughout the letters he has given those stages different names. But in most of his letters, he talked about two opposing forces (or concepts or qualities) and something in between.

Between Instinctive and Moral Behavior

Free Will between Inclination and Duty

The Instinct of Play – between the – Sensuous and Formal Instinct

The Medium Between Law and Necessity

What is it, that is developing?

But what is it all about? What are those stages about? What is actually developing?

In the aforementioned sentence, Schiller talks about the power of nature.

In the first stage, we ‘suffer’ the power of nature. In the second stage, we ‘get rid’ of the power of nature. And in the third stage, we ‘rule’ the power of nature.

Three stages of development

So in all of his letters, Schiller seems to write about the same thing. Two forces and something inbetween, being the three stages of development.

Below I put together the words that Schiller used throughout his letters to name those three stages.

Stage 1: Suffer the power of nature

Instinctive behavior
Inclination
Sensuous instinct
Necessity

Stage 2: Get rid of the power of nature

Creativity
Play instinct
Beauty
Aesthetics
Art

Stage 3: Rule the power of nature

Moral behavior
Duty
Formal instinct
Law

Maybe he used more words, but at this point, these are the ones I remember. When seeing the list, I have many thoughts about what Schiller means, about how this compares to the ideas of others (like David Bohm) and how it compares with other models I have used on this blog.

But most of all, I think there is a tendency to go from stage 1 to stage 3 without integration of stage 2.

In that line I wonder if Schiller was right that nothing can be overstepped. My feeling is that we either feel powerless or try to rule the power, but largely overstep stage 2.

At this point I do not understand exactly what Schiller meant by ‘getting rid of the power’ in stage 2, but somehow I have the feeling that the essence of human development is to be found there.

Polarisation and That what is Inbetween

Annemieke — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:04:59 +0000

I was planning to write a post about ‘the medium between law and necessity’, another phrase in the aesthetic letters.

But looking at the subject, I realised it was something I have been writing about again and again on this blog.

Not using the same words, but the essence of those posts was mainly the same. Two opposing forces (or concepts or qualities) and a third one in between. Many posts are about polarisation, but recently mainly about creativity, beauty and aesthetics.

According to David Bohm and Friedrich Schiller those have to do with what is in between the polarisations.

The polarisations of mind vs matter. Of individual vs collective. Of inside vs outside. Of monism vs dualism. Of instinctive vs moral. Of inclination vs duty. Of form vs meaning. Of sensuous vs formal.

And that what is in between. In between what can be given many names. Which are not the same but are very strong related. And all need the free space between the two opposing forces.

Creativity
Art
Beauty
Free Will
Play
Aesthetics

Next are some of the posts that have this opposition. An opposition that can only find a solution with space inbetween. Enough space for the above qualities to develop.

Energy vs Information

In the post Is our world dualistic after all I was trying to find out what the difference is between monism and dualism. I wanted to understand it, because I did not know if David Bohm thought of our world as dualistic or monistic. But it seems that his view was slightly different. He did not think it was monistic in the way that only the physical was real, or only the mind was real. But he also did not think it was dualistic in a way that dualism is mainly seen. However he did see two basic elements that can never be reduced to one. He called them energy and information.

Inside vs Outside

With the post Inner Drive or Navigation from Outside I wanted to dig deeper into what blocks creativity. After the post about how creativity is blocked by the need for approval, where I wrote about the view of David Bohm about those blocks, I wanted to go on a bit about two very different and opposing human characters. One that is independent by nature and acts mainly from an inner drive. And the other that has a strong desire for approval and praise and as a result is fueled by the outside world.

Avoiding vs Attention

The post When the Mind is Trying to Escape the Awareness of Conflict was the first of three posts about how the mind reacts on conflict. When there seems to be a huge gap between emotions and intellect, between conscious and unconscious, between body and mind. According to David Bohm, we humans are inclined to, what he calls, self-sustaining confusion. When the mind is trying to escape the awareness of conflict. But instead of escaping from that conflict we have to give patient, sustained attention to the confusion.

Instinctive vs Moral

In the post Between Instinctive and Moral Behavior I started blogging about the letters on aesthetics by Friedrich Schiller. I had been reading, blogging and thinking a lot about aesthetics when I found those letters. His style of writing is not easy to read, but what I did understand (together with what I found that others wrote about those letters) I had the feeling it all came down to one essential concept. He sees beauty as an essential step between our instinctive nature and our moral behavior.

Inclination vs Duty

The post Free Will Between Inclination and Duty was about how art has to leave reality, how it has to raise itself above necessity and neediness. The will of man is perfectly free between inclination and duty. This freedom of will, that is between inclination and duty, is what it is all about. It is our individual essence that has to decide what to do, to know how to act. It has to be consciously kept free, because else it falls victim to the circumstances.

Form vs Meaning

With the post Form becomes Independent of Meaning I wanted to emphasis the fragmentation. How the individual is sacrificed for the society. Where the individual is forced to specialistic focus. That way development goes very far beyond the limits of nature. But it looses contact with the whole. The isolated forces have made humans extraordinary. But only some sort of equilibrium between those extreme opposite forces can give happiness. Which is at the same time the place from where creativity, and as a result the actual change, can start.

Sensuous vs formal

With the post Sensuous and Formal Instinct I wrote about how Schiller talks about two false roads that he our sensuous and formal instinct. Holding those two instincts together is important. But the sensuous instinct requires change, has to happen in time, while the other, the formal instinct requires universality, something that goes beyond time, wants no change. Here, Schiller makes a start with the solution. The solution that somehow has to do with aesthetics, beauty, creativity and art. And at this point he starts with the introduction of a third instinct. The instinct of play.

Inbetween

In the post The Instinct of Play I wrote about the introduction of this third instinct. This instinct of play, as Schiller calls it, lets the two opposing instincts (the sensuous and the formal instinct) act together. Even though they are each others total opposite, it is possible to play with them, let them be there at the same time.

As long as they are playing together, there has to be no conclusion on what is true and what is false. During the play, the mind can be physical and moral at the same time. The play takes the dynamics out of feeling and passion. And it takes the moral out of reason.

So the instinct of play makes a communion possible between two opposing instincts. They exist together without a final conclusion.

Somehow this communion has to do with what Schiller calls beauty. Beauty that can not exist without one of the opposing instincts. It needs both. And as a result it needs the third instinct of play to let them exist together.

Difference and Similarity

This was a first summary of the posts on oppositions. At this point I can not see yet how much the oppositions from one post are the same as the oppositions from another post. If they are very different. Or if they are just named different and have in essence the same meaning.

I just wanted to know if ´the medium between law and necessity´ is the same as ´creativity between inclination and duty´, or ´beauty between form and meaning´ and so on. So far I am not yet sure, but this post might make it easier to see the differences and similarities between the words that are used.

The Instinct of Play

Annemieke — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:27:05 +0000

The previous post was about two different instincts, the sensuous and the formal instinct.

Two instincts that are opposed and that make us struggle to integrate in our human nature.

This is again a post about The Letters on Aesthetic Education of Man from Friedrich Schiller, like a few of my previous posts.

I am trying to understand what he says, by using his words as much as possible, but re-arranging his sentences, because (for me) he is rather difficult to read.

But I think he says some really very interesting and important things about human nature, that I did not find anywhere else yet so extensively explained.

At this point I get to where Schiller comes up with a solution for the problem of those basic, but opposing, human instincts. Schiller saw the solution in a third kind of instinct. An instinct that he calls the instinct of play.

Before I start with that third instinct, first a short overview of the two opposing basic human instincts according to Friedrich Schiller.

Two opposing instincts

The sensuous instinct:

requires that there should be change
requires that time should have contents
wishes to be determined
wishes to receive an object
excludes all autonomy and freedom
controls us physically

The formal instinct:

requires that there should be no change
requires that time should be suppressed
wishes to determine itself
wishes to produce an object
excludes all dependence and passivity
controls us morally

The third instinct lets them play together

So because those two basic instincts are each others total opposite, and because they can not be integrated in the human nature, Schiller noticed something else. A third instinct that he calls the instinct of play.

The instinct of play, in which both act in concert, will render both our formal and our material constitution contingent; accordingly, our perfection and our happiness in like manner. And on the other hand, exactly because it makes both of them contingent, and because the contingent disappears with necessity, it will suppress this contingence in both, and will thus give form to matter and reality to form.

So the third instinct (the instinct of play) lets the two opposing instincts (the sensuous and the formal instinct) act together. Even though they are each others total opposite, it is possible to play with them, let them be there at the same time.

As long as they are playing together, there has to be no conclusion on what is true and what is false. During the play, the mind can be physical and moral at the same time.

Feeling in harmony with reason

The play takes the dynamics out of feeling and passion. And it takes the moral out of reason. So feeling can be in harmony with rational ideas.

There shall be a communion between the formal impulse and the material impulse – that is, there shall be a play instinct – because it is only the unity of reality with the form, of the accidental with the necessary, of the passive state with freedom, that the conception of humanity is completed.

So the instinct of play makes a communion possible between two opposing instincts. They exist together without a final conclusion.

Image: Source

Sensuous and Formal Instinct

Annemieke — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:37:27 +0000

At the end of part two of the Letters on Aesthetics, Schiller talks about two opposite roads that depart us from our destination.

He calls it false roads and says that only the beautiful can bring us back from this twofold departure.

In the beginning of part three (letter 12) he talks about those two roads. He calls them our sensuous and formal instinct.

The Sensuous Instinct

The first instinct is the ‘sensuous instinct’. Schiller equals that sensuous instinct (our physical existence) with time. But he separates that physical existence from our Ego, which he says is permanent.

By matter I only understand in this place the change or reality that fills time.

So the sensuous instinct requires change over time, which he calls sensation. And by sensation the physical manifests itself. But as long as sensation (and as a result time) rules a person, the personality is suppressed.

The totality of human nature is mainly connected with the sensuous instinct. But although this sensuous instinct awakens and develops us humans, it is this very instinct that makes perfection impossible.

Free development needs the sphere of the infinite. And thought and a firm free will (which are connected with the other instinct) can reach that sphere. But nature (the sensuous instinct) takes over again every time.

The Formal Instinct

The other instinct is the formal instinct. It is there to bring harmony in the diversity of manifestations. And it is there to maintain the personality of the person.

It makes this personality an absolute and indivisible unity, that can not contradict itself. It is the instinct that wants truth and justice.

It embraces the whole series of times, or what comes to the same thing, it suppresses time and change.

The sensuous instinct produces accidents. But the formal instinct gives laws. Laws of judgment if it is a question of knowledge. Laws of will if it is a question of action.

If we want to recognize value, we have to withdraw from the state of time. It has to be seen for all time. Universal.

Feeling and inclination can only say what is good for your individuality. But what is good today, can be wrong tomorrow.

But our morals and thought can say ‘that ought to be’, and make a law of all possible cases.

If you confess the truth because it is the truth, and if you practice justice because it is justice, you have made of a particular case the law of all possible cases, and treated one moment of your life as eternity.

So the formal instinct has to lead the sensuous instinct. All barriers can disappear that way and we can get a sense of the unity of ideas. Ideas that embrace all phenomena. Intuition or reasoning that takes over any state or process known through the senses.

During this operation we are no longer in time, but time is in us with its infinite succession.

That way we can be seen as humanity instead of individuals.

Feeling and Thinking

So both instincts are equally important. If we would only feel, our absolute personality would remain a mystery for us. But if we would only think, our existence in time would escape us.

If there were cases in which he could have at once this twofold experience in which he would have the consciousness of his freedom and the feeling of his existence together, in which he would simultaneously feel as matter and know himself as spirit, in such cases, and in such only, would he have a complete intuition of his humanity.

Holding those two instincts together is important. But the sensuous instinct requires change, has to happen in time, while the other, the formal instinct requires universality, something that goes beyond time, wants no change.

Here, Schiller makes a start with the solution. The solution that somehow has to do with aesthetics, beauty, creativity and art. And at this point he starts with the introduction of a third instinct. The instinct of play.

Creativity beyond Praise and Criticism

Annemieke — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 20:59:59 +0000

Still reading the letters on aesthetic education, I tried to understand the beginning of part two.

In that part, Schiller paints a picture of how the individual is blinded by the age in which he lives, the society in which he is born.

But also about the struggle of that society itself. That has this high ideal of a perfect humanity, but despite all that, still struggles with evil.

I had to read that part a few times before I got an idea of what Schiller was talking about.

The strange thing is that, although I have difficulty understanding what he says exactly, I get the feeling that Schiller says something important. And I also have the feeling that what he wrote 200 years ago, still applies very much in our time.

Creativity and criticism

Especially the following was very interesting.

Nothing is more common than to see science and art bend before the spirit of the age, and creative taste receive its law from critical taste.

What Schiller means, I guess, is that the people, living in a certain place and time, tend to think within a certain set of values and act upon them as if they are universal. And they use their critical skills to judge ‘everything’.

Which is not wrong in itself. It is a set of values that is a sum of the whole society, and living by its rules is more or less part of the game. The game of a society that keeps a certain balance between individual desire and the common good.

But that does not mean those values are universal. That they apply everywhere. And in all times. That just means they are good in a certain context. The context of that specific society. In that specific time in history.

Art, as Schiller says, is also criticized in the spirit of that age. But one of the characteristics of art is, that it is a search for new patterns that fit in a greater whole, which goes beyond the context of that specific society in that specific time.

Creativity and praise

The following quote is something I saw mentioned several times when reading about Schiller. The first few times I did not quite get it, I kind of read over it because it is very subtle.

Live with your age, but be not its creation; labour for your contemporaries, but do for them what they need, and not what they praise.

Be not the creation of your age!

I think this is essential. We have to use the information from outside, but our actions must be based upon that information combined with the information that comes from within. Not disturbed by the praise of others.

It is in the same line as what David Bohm says about creativity. That praise prevents creativity, because of the danger that praise might become more important for the individual than being creative.

Once we are addicted to the opinion and influence of the outside world and get rewarded by it, it becomes more and more difficult to listen to our inner voice, or as Schiller calls it, use the spirit of free inquiry.

But at the same time it is also important to ´live with our age´. To use the result of that free inquiry to serve that same society. To do what needs to be done, using our own unique qualities.

Form becomes Independent of Meaning

Annemieke — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 21:56:42 +0000

Being distracted by the art of language and the definition of art in my previous posts, I now continued reading Schiller’s Letters.

At the end of part one, Schiller goes a long way to describe the influence of the culture on the individual.

The individual who looses the contact with the whole. The inner union of the human nature that was broken, because it is forced to specialize in one area to serve that culture.

Then there was a rupture between the state and the church, between laws and customs; enjoyment was separated from labour, the means from the end, the effort from the reward. Man himself eternally chained down to a little fragment of the whole, only forms a kind of fragment; having nothing in his ears but the monotonous sound of the perpetually revolving wheel, he never develops the harmony of his being; and instead of imprinting the seal of humanity on his being, he ends by being nothing more than the living impress of the craft to which he devotes himself, of the science that he cultivates.

The result is fragmentation and the free intelligence of humans is suppressed. Form becomes independent of meaning.

The dead letter takes the place of a living meaning, and a practised memory becomes a safer guide than genius and feeling.

Humans are valued by the function they have in that society. Their specific, mechanical skill is important. The skill and function that provide profit. But other parts of the mind are neglected.

Such is the necessary result of an organisation that is indifferent about character, only looking to acquirements, whilst in other cases it tolerates the thickest darkness, to favour a spirit of law and order; it must result if it wishes that individuals in the exercise of special aptitudes should gain in depth what they are permitted to lose in extension. We are aware, no doubt, that a powerful genius does not shut up its activity within the limits of its functions; but mediocre talents consume in the craft fallen to their lot the whole of their feeble energy; and if some of their energy is reserved for matters of preference, without prejudice to its functions, such a state of things at once bespeaks a spirit soaring above the vulgar.

So we need all our energy for our function in society. And little is left for doing what we want.

But Schiller goes on that it was necessary, in the whole of human development, to make this polarisation as far as possible.

He calls it a great instrument of culture. But while that polarisation lasts, it is only the road to that culture.

It is only because these special forces are isolated in man, and because they take on themselves to impose an exclusive legislation, that they enter into strife with the truth of things, and oblige common sense, which generally adheres imperturbably to external phaenomena, to dive into the essence of things. While pure understanding usurps authority in the world of sense, and empiricism attempts to subject this intellect to the conditions of experience, these two rival directions arrive at the highest possible development, and exhaust the whole extent of their sphere.

In this development, the individual is sacrificed for the whole. If the individual is forced to specialistic focus, development goes very far beyond the limits of nature. But it looses contact with the whole.

So at a certain point, there has to be a return to wholeness again. That contact has to be restored.

The isolated forces have made humans extraordinary, but only some sort of equilibrium between those extreme opposite forces can give happiness. Which is at the same time the place from where creativity, and as a result the actual change, can start.

The Developing Definition of Art

Annemieke — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:16:38 +0000

Art is a difficult word to define.

Wikipedia defines it as ‘a product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses, emotions and intellect’.

It also says that the word art was traditionally used for skill or mastery, but later as an intention to stimulate thoughts and emotions.

According to David Bohm, as I quoted in my previous post, the original definition was ‘to fit’. He said that the word art has come to mean ‘to fit, in an aesthetic and emotional sense’, but, as Bohm showed, art can also mean ‘fitting in a functional sense’.

When I read that, it indeed made very much sense to me. But ‘fitting’ was not exactly a word that I found when I searched for several definitions of art. So I searched specific for that and found some old definitions that said ‘fit together, join’ and ‘skill in joining or fitting’.

Taking all the definitions together, I get the following ingredients that have to be present in order to call something art:

a product or a process
skill or mastery
fit together in a certain context
affect senses, emotions, intellect in others

So far this is a definition of art that describes a person to person thing. One person has the skill to produce something (a product or process that fits together in a certain context) that affects another person.

Searching for New Patterns

But there is also an element of ‘fitting’ in the whole of society. Or actually of not fitting, not going together harmonious in society, that is the ground for art to rise. Even how we nowadays are more likely to define art. Many things show the skills of a person and affect another person, but are not seen as art.

Now, in general, art is more about changing contexts, going beyond what is known. But it is still about seeing a new ‘fit’. Going beyond the well known, but still making it appealing. Searching for new patterns ‘that are fitting in every sense’, as Bohm defines beauty.

So apart from the previous four ingredients in the definition of art, there is a fifth:

a search for new patterns that fit in a greater whole

Something that goes beyond the individual. Which is about the individual in the whole of society. Or the society in the whole of the world. Or history. Or even of the world in the whole of the universe.

Searching for a new order, that can only arise if the individual gets a sense of a new pattern. Patterns that are underneath and go beyond the visible and already known.

The Art of Language

Annemieke — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 19:29:34 +0000

I love it when suddenly things start to make sense, when thoughts come together.

I was again reading the book On Creativity, because I was searching for the definition of some concepts.

Those of creativity, aesthetics and art.

All my previous posts about aesthetics point to the importance of those concepts as an essential step between instinctive and moral human behavior.

But before I could understand it better, I wanted to have some sort of definition. A definition as general as possible. And who would be better to talk about general definitions that take in account the whole, than David Bohm.

In the chapter ‘The art of perceiving movement’ Bohm talks about the split in our language between our emotional and aesthetic perception on the one hand, and our rational and functional perception on the other.

A very good case in point is provided by considering the word art. The original meaning of this word is ‘to fit’. This meaning survives in articulate, article, artisan, artifact and so on. Of course, in modern times the word art has come to mean mainly ‘to fit, in an aesthetic and emotional sense’. However, the other words listed above show that art can also call attention to fitting in a functional sense.

The fact that we are hardly aware of the syllable art in words such as articulate or artifact is an indication of an implicit but very deeply penetrating fragmentation in our thought between the aesthetic, emotional aspects of life and its practical functioning aspects. This fragmentation tends to operate also in the meaning of the word beauty, which is ‘to fit in every sense’. Nevertheless, this word also tends mainly to emphasize aesthetic and emotional fitting.

It can be seen that, in a very profound sense, all these activities are concerned with fitting, i.e. with art. All that man does is a kind of art, and this implies skill in doing things, as well as perception of how things fit or do not fit. This is indeed self-evident for the visual or musical artist as well as for the artisan. It is true also for the scientist and the mathematician, but less evident.

It is clear, then, that reasoning is to be regarded as an art. And thus, in a deep sense, the artist, the scientist, and the mathematician, are concerned with art in its most general significance, that is, with fitting.

With that in mind I found a post about language with a video of Stephen Fry, about the ‘correct’ use of language. And the following caught my attention:

But that is an issue of fitness, of suitability. It has nothing to do with correctness. There is no right language or wrong language any more than there are wrong clothes. Context, convention and circumstance are all.

The video is mainly about the critical approach to language. How being too critical and too focused on a correct use, can prevent us from being creative with it.

But at the same time it brings to attention the importance of context. How the right use of language depends on the circumstances.

It has to fit, we have to find the right balance. A balancing act that requires skills to recognize the resonance.

Free Will Between Inclination and Duty

Annemieke — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 14:40:06 +0000

So I started reading Schillers letters on aesthetic education. But it is not what I would call an easy read.

If I was not determined to understand what he has to say, I would have already quit.

But before I started reading from the beginning, I had a quick overview. And in that overview I got the impression that what he wrote in those letters is very important, something I just have to know more about.

After that, I searched for some reviews to see what others had to say about it. And those reviews also gave the impression that he had something essential to say.

So I now really want to read all the letters myself, to get a better understanding of his views. Which, as I wrote in my previous post, seems that creativity and beauty are an essential step between our instinctive nature and our moral behavior.

In this post, I want to quote some, in my opinion, important parts of his first few letters. And I want to start with a quote that made me think of a very powerful piece of music.

Man is not better treated by nature in his first start than her other works are; so long as he is unable to act for himself as an independent intelligence, she acts for him.

It made me think of the music of Carl Orff, O Foruna. Which gives an expression of the inevitable. The victims of our circumstances.

Fate that rules our lives…

Click here to view the embedded video.

O Fortune
like the moon
constantly changing
ever waxing
or waning
hateful life
now oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.

Fate-monstrous
and empty
you whirling wheel
you are malevolent
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.

Fate in health
and virtue
is against me
driven on
and weighted down
always enslaved.
So at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating strings
since fate
strikes down the strong man
everyone weep with me.

Another important quote is about art.

For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness.

It is so easy to let life take over. Just act upon your neediness and just do what is necessary. Which takes so much of our time and effort that nothing else is left.

But the will of man is perfectly free between inclination and duty.

This freedom of will, that is between inclination and duty, is what it is all about. This is our individual essence that has to decide what to do, to know how to act. It has to be consciously kept free, because else it falls victim to the circumstances.

These circumstances that can be seen as fate. As having no choice, things just happen with no control. We follow the rules, we do our best, and even that does not seem good enough. Bad things happen to good people.

But that spark of freedom between inclination and duty, the art between necessity and neediness, the beauty in the patterns between the patterns of the ordinary, seems to be our way out.

Between Instinctive and Moral Behavior

Annemieke — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:09:13 +0000

Lately I am fascinated by the concept of aesthetics. What exactly does it mean? Is it subjective or objective? How important is it?

I already wrote about the view of Kant, Adorno and Bohm in the posts Beauty is Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder and The Worldview of Aesthetics. And that of Ken Robinson in the post From Aesthetics to An-Aesthetics.

While writing those posts, I could not help but think that aesthetics is so much more important in our lives than we might think. And it is so much more than just a passive view on what is beautiful.

The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that it is even essential in our lives. But it is something that has to develop. It is something that has to be consciously recognized. It is a process in each individual.

The more I read about it, the more I saw that reflected in the writings of others. I even found something that goes so much further in the writings of Schiller.

He sees beauty as an essential step between our instinctive nature and our moral behavior.

I found his Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education of Man and was fascinated by what he had to say. It will take some time to fully (if ever) understand what he means, but I know I will certainly try to get a better understanding.

My overall feeling is that he really touched on something essential in our human nature. Something that is so important but not fully understood and valued in our culture.

In want to go through those 27 or so letters that he wrote on that subject and see if I can understand it enough to write some blogposts about it.

So far my understanding is that this essential step has to do with freedom and creativity…

From Aesthetics to An-Aesthetics

Annemieke — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:43:54 +0000

Last week I saw another video of Ken Robinson.

He had a TED-talk some years ago about how schools kill creativity, which I watched several times because I thought it was great.

Well, he had another talk (Changing Paradigms) of which RSA made an animation. Which I also love, I really like to see a presentation that way, because, for me, the different aspects of the whole talk stay better with me. It draws a better picture, literally.

In this case, it drew for me the picture of aesthetics as opposed to anaesthetics that stayed with me the most.

In the talk, Robinson uses the prescription of drugs for ADHD, as an example how children become anaesthetized. Drugs are given to get the children focused and to calm them down.

Which might be necessary in our education model. But the question is if maybe there is nothing wrong with the childeren, but instead there is something wrong with our education system. That system of mechanical testing and rewarding, that does not leave much room for the individual expression of the child.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And Robinson especially mentions the arts that have no room in that system. (5.50)

The arts are victims of this mentality. The arts especially adress the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak. When you are present in the current moment. When you are resonating with the excitement of this thing that you are experiencing, when you are fully alive.

But as important as that aesthetic experience is, it is not seen as essential. And it does not have an important place within that education model.

Actually it is even much worse. Because the children have to focus on what the society as a whole thinks is important, they are given medication to be able to focus and concentrate better on those subjects.

Shut off their senses, so that they are not distracted.

An anaesthetic is when you shut your senses off, and deaden yourself to what is happening. And a lot of these drugs are that. We are getting our children through education by anaesthetizing them. And I think we should be doing the exact opposite, we should not be putting them to sleep. We should be waking them up, to what they have inside of themselves.

I think that is indeed what we should do, waking them up to what they have inside themselves. And we are back again to creativity. How it is blocked, how it has to develop and just how important it is to be creative.

So I found this video especially interesting in the use of the word ‘anaesthetics’. Shutting off the senses of our children. Preventing them from aesthetic experiences, preventing them from feeling fully alive. Preventing them from being aware to react and adjust to different and ever changing circumstances. Preventing them from using their natural creative potential.

The Concept of Water

Annemieke — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:30:57 +0000

Seeing the theme for this years Blogactionday made me think of a story in the book I was reading.

The book, On Creativity, is about the importance of creativity.

How we all have this inner desire to discover and create something new that is whole, harmonious and beautiful. It is not something rare, it does not require special talent.

But it does require originality. And total devotion.

To illustrate what such a mindset can accomplish, it gives the example of a woman who had to teach a young child that was blind and deaf. There was no way of approaching her in any way, let alone teaching her anything.

So she knew she had to give this child total attention and ‘feel’ her mind. She had to constant observe and adapt. She had to approach her in a total original way, because any preconception was useless here.

The key step was to teach the child to form a concept. The concept of water.

This was done by causing her to come in contact with water in a variety of different forms and contexts, each time scratching the word ‘water’ on the palm of her hand. For a long time, the child did not grasp what it was all about. But suddenly she realized that all these different experiences referred to one substance in its many aspects, which was symbolized by the word ‘water’ scratched on her palm. This initiated a fantastic revolution in the whole of her mind, the depth and scope of which we find hard to appreciate without having experienced directly what it means to live without conceptual abstractions.

I think this was a great example of a creative mind. But is also was a great way for us to see the difference with how we teach our children.

Which is the total opposite.

We bring our children up with just conceptual abstractions. As many as possible that they have to memorize. They have to learn concepts without realizing the underlying reality. Learn concepts without understanding the meaning. Learn what others think is important.

And slowly along the way, they lose the ability to think creative, to be original.

It is like a box that is filled with bottles of water, thinking it is full, without realizing that pouring the water out would leave plenty of room for more. And that way it can mix.

How to Confront Inner Conflict Instead of Ignoring it

Annemieke — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 22:55:07 +0000

Sometimes David Bohm says so much with one sentence, that I feel the need to take it a bit apart.

It is a line in the first chapter of the book On Creativity.

He describes how the mind tries to avoid contradictions. It is often too confusing or painful to stay with a certain problem, so the mind looks for a way out.

Either it continues to dart from one thing to another, or it reacts with violent excitement that limits all attention to some triviality, or it becomes dead, dull, or anesthetized, or it projects fantasies that cover up all the contradictions, or it does something else that makes one momentarily unaware of the painful state of conflict in which the mind is.

In this one sentence, Bohm gives 4 examples of how we are inclined to deal with this inner conflict. So if we want to avoid conflict we might do one of the following.

1. Go from one thing to another.
We avoid problems. As soon as a problem arises, we go do (or think about) something else.

2. Limit all attention to some triviality.
We get excited about some minor thing. Or someone did us wrong, so we just keep repeating that and blow it to huge proportions.

3. Get dull or anesthetized.
We try not to feel. We use medication, drugs or alcohol to suppress our feelings and pain.

4. Cover up all contradictions.
We watch tv, read fairytales, go to parties and play cheerful music. We only surround ourselves with happy people.

Or search for something else that takes our mind away from that painful state of conflict. That way we will end up with this ‘self-sustaining confusion’. This confusion slowly takes over and eventually the whole mind degenerates.

A better solution

So avoidance is not the real solution. But if that is not the solution, what is? Well, if avoidance is not the answer, it must be confrontation.

And it is. But it is very subtle.

We need to give patient, sustained attention to the activity of confusion, rather than attempting to promote creativity directly. Giving simple attention – a finer, faster process than confusion – is itself the primary creative act.

According to Bohm, it is the only way to get out of the problems we are in as a human race. The only way to get out, is for the individual to go inside and confront their own contradictions.

To make room for creativity. Because we need that creativity to respond to the ever changing challenges around us.

Will Confusion Really be our Epitaph

Annemieke — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:52:02 +0000

Today I started reading the first chapter of the book On Creativity by David Bohm.

I already wrote some posts about what struck me most in the preface of the book.

And this first chapter made it even more fascinating. Many times, while reading, I wanted to go and write a post about it.

But I also wanted to keep on reading, because it was just so very exciting. When I almost finished that chapter, an image came into my head. And music.

I had to think of an immensely overwhelming piece of music, Epitaph of King Crimson, which I saw as the essence of that chapter.

Confusion that is blocking our creative nature.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams.
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams.
When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams,
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
When silence drowns the screams.

Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back
And laugh.
But I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying,
Yes I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying.

Between the iron gates of fate,
The seeds of time were sown,
And watered by the deeds of those
Who know and who are known;
Knowledge is a deadly friend
If no one sets the rules.
The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools.

Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back
And laugh.
But I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying,
Yes I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying.

I really think the whole text (written by Peter Sinfield) is brilliant. It is from 1969 or so, and it has this shocking visionary character.

But in this context, I especially was stunned by ‘confusion will be my epitaph’, while reading the book that said:

Falling into a state of self-sustaining confusion, in which it is no longer aware of its contradictory thoughts and the painfull conflicts that result from them. In doing this, it lacks clear perception in almost any area that may be at all subtle. Thus, it can no longer see what is creative and what is mechanical. Indeed, the mind than starts to suppress real originality and creation, because these seem to threaten the apparently creative, but actually mechanical, centre that appears to be at the heart of one’s very self. It is just this action that constitutes the process of ‘falling asleep’.

So we only have to realize how important it is to change this state of confusion, to give it attention and find our creative nature. Nothing more….

When the Mind is Trying to Escape the Awareness of Conflict

Annemieke — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 08:14:18 +0000

This post is about another block to creativity, a block that prevents us from expressing the creativity that is present in each of us.

Self-sustaining confusion of the mind.

This not the usual confusion, the confusion we experience if we just don’t understand something from outside. Bohm, in On Creativity, says that this self-sustaining confusion is something different.

Self-sustaining confusion occurs when the mind is trying to escape the awareness of conflict. In which one’s deep intention is really to avoid perceiving the fact, rather than to sort it out and make it clear.

Wow, this is huge. And I think very true. That what can also be called ignorance. Or avoidance. The time before the demanding need to integrate the shadow. When we can get away with acting like everything is okay.

Bohm points out that this process creates an order on its own: a reflexive state of dullness in which the natural agility of the mind is replaced with torpor on the one hand, mechanical and meaningless fantasies on the other.

Very interesting picture here. And one that I think is very common. The picture I get is a huge gap between emotions and intellect. Between conscious and unconscious. Between body and mind. There is no interaction, no healthy feedback mechanism that provides the necessary information to keep the organism (in this case the human individual) healthy.

Unfortunately this has come to be considered a normal state of mind, and is therefore endemic in our culture.

I think indeed most of us will see this all around. The solution that Bohm gives here is also very interesting.

Consequently, we need to give patient, sustained attention to the activity of confusion, rather than attempting to promote creativity directly. Giving simple attention is itself the primary creative act.

Here again gets clear that Bohm sees creativity as a process. A process that is very unique and personal. An integration of inner conflict, of views that are very different and might even be opposed.

From such attention, originality and creativity begin to emerge, not as something that is the result of an effort to achieve a planned and formulated goal, but rather, as the by-product of a mind that is coming to a more nearly normal order of operation.

So there is nothing special about creativity. It is not just for artists. It is something that natural arises in a healthy human being. In every human being that is not paralysed by confusion.

The Worldview of Aesthetics

Annemieke — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:45:03 +0000

With my previous post I compared different views on aesthetics.

It were the views, as I understood them, from Kant, Adorno and Bohm.

But I did not compare their totality.

Now that is too difficult for me to do, as I only have a very general understanding of each of their views. But even if it is way over my head, I have this desire to find the essence of each of their views and compare them.

So in this post I will first define aesthetics and then see if I can find the essential difference between those three views. Or maybe not so much differences, as well different emphases on what they saw as important.

Definition of Aesthetics

- A philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art and taste.
- The creation and appreciation of beauty.
- The judgments of sentiment and taste.
- Critical reflection on art, culture and nature.

Kant

The emphasis of Kant is in a way rather static. Taste is subjective and you feel what you feel and your opinion is just that. But you can learn new things, which might alter your taste.

On the other hand he says there is beauty that is universal. And there is no such thing as an opinion about that.

Adorno

With Adorno the emphasis is on the interaction between subject and object. Between artobject and observer. Their exchange is essential. An artobject is art because it is recognized and understood.

Bohm

Bohm also talks about an interaction between object and subject. But he goes further. He talks about changing the patterns. Looking beyond the aesthetics and recognize differences and similarities.

Development in Worldviews

So the interaction of Adorno is a further developed view than the view of Kant. And the view of Bohm goes beyond the interaction of Adorno. It is not just an interaction, it is one influencing the other. It is not about consuming. It is about creating.

So …

there is a development from ‘a world out there that can be viewed’ (beauty) with your own reaction to that world (taste) where your taste can be altered

to …

an interaction between the world (artobject) and the individual (observer) where the world is altered by artists

to …

an interaction between the world beyond the aesthetics (maybe potentials on a quantum level) that can be altered by the individual.

In short

Kant: view can change, world can not change.

Adorno: view can change, world is changed by artists.

Bohm: view changes the world directly.

Very simplistic view on my part, but if I would not put it so brief, I get lost in words with their different meanings. I will try to write a better post later, that does more justice to each of the views, but for now this is my best understanding.

Beauty is Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder

Annemieke — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 14:44:29 +0000

Creativity has to do with recognizing differences and similarities.

Recognize patterns that have a certain appeal to us, patterns in which we see beauty.

Now it is often said that beauty is subjective. That beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But according to David Bohm in On Creativity, beauty is not purely subjective. He says there is a more objective part about it.

Beauty is not simply a matter of personal opinion, dependent primarily upon the eye of the beholder. It is the result of dynamic, evolving processes that consist in order, structure, and harmonious totalities. Consequently, Bohm suggests the need for a new language in which these processes are conceived in objective terms, asserting that their coherent interplay results in an aesthetic perception of wholeness that is not strictly subjective.

So it is about recognizing a certain harmonious totality. Maybe a certain structure that makes sense to the person. At best a person who can see beyond the concepts. Seeing beyond the static, already known concepts and see that what lays beneath them.

Seeing that, means there can be formed other patterns or concepts from that underlying wholeness. Seeing new relationships between things.

Such sensitivity to similarity and differences enables one to perceive new orders of structure, both in the objective world of nature and in the mind.

Adorno about Aesthetics

I thought that David Bohm’s views on that are very interesting. Some time ago I read something from the philosopher Adorno, that seemed to say something similar about art.

The art object and the aesthetic experience of the art object contain a truth-content. Truth-content is a cognitive content which is not exhausted either by the subjective intentions of its producers or by the subjective responses of its consumers, and that may be revealed through analysis. Whereas Kant conceives of beauty as a subjective experience, Adorno suggests that beauty mediates between subject and object.

It seems that Adorno’s opinion about art is different from the philosopher Kant, who says that it is subjective. Kant says that it is in the eye of the beholder, while Adorno says that the artobject and the observer together are the truth.

That truth part is not just the artobject. And it is also not just the observer. Maybe it is not art at all, until the artwork is understood.

UPDATE: I have to stay with this a little longer, as it seems that Kant differentiates between taste and beauty.

Aesthetics is the philosophical notion of beauty. Taste is a result of education and awareness of elite cultural values; therefore taste can be learned. Taste varies according to class, cultural background, and education. According to Kant, beauty is objective and universal; thus certain things are beautiful to everyone. The contemporary view of beauty is not based on innate qualities, but rather on cultural specifics and individual interpretations.

So in my next post I might better compare the views of Bohm, Adorno and Kant more closely.

Recognizing Patterns from an Underlying Reality

Annemieke — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:19:28 +0000

Maybe I can better change the subtitle of this blog.

Since reading the book Science, Order and Creativity, creativity seems to be the main focus of my blog.

But while thinking about that, I realized it always was the main focus of my blog. Of all the blogging I did so far.

My focus was mainly human development. And the essence of that development as I see it, is the development of the individual. The uniqueness of each individual. The unique way of the individual to deal with the world. Combining personal experience with information from outside and actually do something with it.

Which is just another way of describing creativity.

In a comment on my previous post, I was reminded of another book of David Bohm about creativity. I searched online and found a foreword on Google books. Which was so very interesting that I immediately ordered the book.

In that foreword (which I have to read with more patience soon) was the following which I think is extremely interesting. It is about what lays beneath the aesthetics of creativity:

This theme (that at its inner core, scientific inquiry is richly aesthetic) is a recurrent one throughout On Creativity. But it is the impulse underlying this aesthetic – the impulse to learn – that is the focus of this first chapter. The learning which Bohm alludes to here is not the rote learning of established facts; it is learning about something truly new. Such ‘newness’ is not, for example, acquiring information about a culture one had not previously studied, which would most likely be a simple additive process. The learning implied here is instead that of perceiving new orders of relationship, and hinges on a sensitivity to difference and similarity.

I really think this is essential in understanding the importance of creativity. Why it is so very important to recognise this ability to be creative, to provide free space for it. To be aware of the blocks we build that prevent creativity. And the importance of developing our creativity.

It is about perceiving new orders of relationships. It is about a growing sensitivity to differences and similarities. It is about recognizing patterns. Patterns that emerge from the underlying reality. Patterns that give aesthetic satisfaction if they are recognized.

And doing that is the task of the individual. The individual that has to ‘see’ new patterns and make them manifest.

How Creative Energy becomes Destructive

Annemieke — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:49:56 +0000

From the moment I started reading this chapter in the book Science, Order and Creativity, I knew it would be on my mind for a long time.

Looking at the posts now, I see that I read the book in June. And still, everything I do, read and hear is in the light of that chapter.

Most of the chapters in that book were, although very interesting, way over my head. But somehow I just kept reading. And when I finally came to the chapter about creativity, I was really glad I did.

In several posts, I already looked at the aspects of that chapter that were the most remarkable.

Remarkable in the sense that creativity seems to be a basic need of humans, but because of several reasons, often does not get the change to develop in a healthy way. The main reason was the need for approval that blocks creativity.

But the book is even more shocking. It says that if this basic need of creativity is suppressed, it becomes destructive.

What is even of greater danger to the child, in such an approach, is that it eventually brings about violence of various kinds. For creativity is a prime need of a human being and its denial brings about a pervasive state of dissatisfaction and boredom. This leads to intense frustration that is conductive to a search for exciting ‘outlets’, which can readily involve a degree of force that is destructive. This sort of frustration is indeed a major cause of violence in that the senses, intellect and emotions of the child gradually become deadened and the child loses the capacity for free movement of awareness, attention, and thought. In effect, the destructive energy that has been aroused in the mind has been turned against the whole creative potential itself.

Reading this I get all kind of ideas how that might work with different types of people. For those of us who are more outgoing, it might be easy to see how this destruction gets manifest in the outside world. But for others I can imagine this destructive energy to be going inside.

I think this is really serious. So based on that book, I wonder if the following conclusions would be too extreme.

Everyone is creative.
Everyone also wants to be accepted.
To be accepted, it is better to do what others expect from us.
As a result we never get to develop our creativity.
So this creative energy stays undeveloped, but therefore not less powerful.
It becomes destructive, going outside resulting in violent behavior, or going inside resulting in selfdestruction.

That would mean that creativity (in a broad as possible way) is so much more important than we all tend to think.

Basic Ground for the Meaning of Life

Annemieke — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:28:40 +0000

So creativity is something that can only arise from within. And every outside interference can block it.

At least that is what research seems to suggest.

But what does that mean? And what exactly do we mean by creativity?

I think that, as I already wrote in the post Inner Drive or Navigation from Outside, there are two groups of people.

Those that do what they want, and those that need approval.

Doing what you want, thinking for yourself, trying things for no other reason than the fun of it, is the basic ground for any start of creativity. Creativity which is an essential human need.

But no approval, no praise, no reward, no money, no encouragement from outside can start this creative process. It is an inner process that has to grow on its own reward.

That does not mean rewards from outside do not play a role. It can play an important role, but it is essential to know at which point.

As said in this video, money is an important motivator in a certain way. If people are not paid enough, they will not be motivated.

The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. Pay people enough so that they are not thinking about money, but think about the work.

This is also something that becomes clear with the Maslow pyramid. There are several needs that have to be satisfied before the importance of creativity comes into play.

So money or any other forms of reward, have an important role in providing the free space to trigger creativity. The creativity itself that can not be rewarded from outside, but has to grow on its own reward.

But once this development of creativity has started, and has become strong enough to resist forces from outside, money can come back into play again. To earn a living based on your own creative ideas.

I think this is where the three motivators from the post Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose come from.

Starting with autonomy that is based upon this urge to do things your way, followed by mastery to become the best you can, and finally purpose to use your unique talents for the good of the world.

Creativity and the Need for Free Space

Annemieke — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 07:01:38 +0000

Money prevents creativity.

This was one of the conclusions in the previous post.

Another post was about something else that prevents creativity: the need for approval.

Both conclusions were based on sound research. Of course it is all a bit more complex than that, but still the conclusions were very interesting.

I think this is especially interesting, because at first it seems counter intuitive. Almost everyone would say that encouragement in the form of money or praise, motivates people. But obviously that does not count for being creative.

From the book in this post:

To do something for a reward, the whole order of the activity, and the energy required for it, are determined by arbitrary requirements that are extraneous to the creative activity itself. This activity then turns into something mechanical and repetitious, or else it mechanically seeks change for its own sake. The state of intense passion and vibrant tension that goes with creative perception then dies away. The whole thing becomes boring and uninteresting, so that the kind of energy needed for creative perception and action is lacking. As a result, even greater rewards, or punishments, are needed to keep the activity going.

From the video in this post:

As long as the tasks involved just mechanical skill, bonuses work as they expected, the higher the pay the better the performance. Once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance. For simple, straight forward tasks, the kind of incentives of, if you do this then you get that, they are great. Tasks that are algorithmic, a set of rules that you just follow along and get a right answer, if then, rewards, carrots and sticks, outstanding. But when a task gets more complicated, when it requires some conceptual, creative thinking, those kind of motivaters don’t work.

Does that mean that people should not be motivated to be creative?

I still think that people might need an encouragement to be creative (those who forgot we are already creative by nature) but at the same time, that is exactly where our motivation should stop.

We, not being the other person, can never know HOW they should be creative. We can never know what their interest is. What their talents are. Where their passion lies. What the other is so obsessed about, that he wants to practice it over and over and over again.

So in order to be really creative, the only thing someone needs is free space. The rest has to come from within, not from outside in the form of rewards. Not in the form of rewards like money and not in the form of rewards like approval or praise.

Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose

Annemieke — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:12:17 +0000

This weekend I saw some very interesting videos on Youtube.

One of those videos Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, was so interesting that I wanted to take a closer look.

So I uploaded the video below and took notes of the conclusions. Which were surprising, but at the same time, made very much sense.

What motivates us?

It is a video about our motivations. Why we do things and what makes us good at something.

The general view has always been that money and other forms of reward make us perform better. And in many cases that is indeed the case. Give more money and people perform better.

But this only counts for certain, straight forward, tasks. When a task gets more complicated, when it requires some conceptual, creative thinking, those kind of motivaters don’t work!

So being creative needs something else then rewards from outside.

This was also the conclusion in the book Science, Order and Creativity. In that book it became clear that being creative requires a very different approach to human development. A more individual approach.

So for creativity, money is not the motivator. But according to the video, 3 other things are: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Autonomy

It all starts with autonomy. More or less the same as in the book on creativity, the most important first step is an individual approach. The individual has to think and act purely from their own inner self.

Autonomy is our desire to be self directed. To direct our own lives. Now in may ways traditional notion of management run a foul of this. Management is great if you want compliance. But if you want engagement, what we want in the work force today is to do more complicated and sophisticated things, self direction is better.

If you want people to do something interesting, it is better to get out of their way.

Mastery

The next step is developing skills, becoming a master.

Mastery is the urge to get better at stuff. We like to get better at stuff. This is why people play musical instruments at the weekend. You have all these people that act in ways that are actually seen irrationally economically. They play musical instruments at weekends, why? It is not making them any money, why are they doing it? Because it is fun, because you get better at it and that is satisfying.

The video gives the example of Wikipedia. Why many technically sophisticated, highly skilled people, participate in that. Which is strange economical behavior, because they do not get paid for it. But challenge and mastery are the drive here.

Purpose

The next step brings the individual back into the whole society. Where their creative input is valuable for the greater good.

What you see more and more is the rise of what you might call the purpose motor. More and more organizations want to have some kind of transcendent purpose. Partly because it makes coming to work better, partly because that is the way they get better talent.

The video makes a differentiation between profit and purpose and both are equally important.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The paradox of reward

One of the most interesting things about the video, is the paradox of reward. Give more money, to make people work harder and better. Which works perfect if you want some sort of slaves, that do exactly what you want them to do.

But it does not work, it even works counterproductive, if you value their creative input.

Intuition, Sensing, Thinking and Feeling

Annemieke — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:14:40 +0000

In my previous post I tried to find a model that is abstract enough to provide room for several existing models.

Now in this post I want to see if it will fit Jung’s model of the four psychological types: Intuition, Sensing, Thinking and Feeling.

I will not use the Introvert and Extravert part here (and also not the Judging and Perceiving part of the Myers-Briggs model) because it would make things to complicated at this point.

INTUITION

1. Personal Exterior Intuition = IMPULS
5. Personal Interior Intuition = CREATIVE
9. Collective Interior Intuition = VISION

SENSING

2. Personal Exterior Sensing = SENSATION
6. Personal Interior Sensing = ADJUSTMENT
10. Collective Exterior Sensing = CONSTRUCTION

THINKING

3. Personal Exterior Thinking = LEARNING
7. Collective Interior Thinking = DIALOGUE
11. Collective Exterior Thinking = INVENTION

FEELING

4. Personal Interior Feeling = EMOTION
8. Collective Interior Feeling = FASCINATION
12. Collective Exterior Feeling = EMPATHY

Again I am not sure if these are the right words to describe the concepts so they might change when I find better ones.