Dammed Creativity

Posted on March 14, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

Benjamin Franklin had little free time in his old age.  He complained of this cram-packed-with-politics schedule to close friends.  The very new United States– still fighting to survive needed his diplomacy, wit, wisdom and time.  And nobody else could fill his shoes. His science experiments lay unfinished collecting dust in his backyard laboratory.  Like some homeowners in my neighborhood are house poor–  great salaries funneled straight to paying the mortgage and fixing up the house,  Benjamin Franklin was energy poor. State-building sucked every last bit of Franklin’s remarkable energy–  and he felt his soul shrink.

A few days ago, my eight-year-old son asked us all at breakfast, What is the worse possible thing you can imagine happening? I immediately thought of losing my child to scurvy or a car accident.  But my six-year-old daughter said,  Oh.  I think living your entire life and never having done what you were meant to do–  without doing what you love. That would be terrible.

My daughter is right on.  I’m so glad she can say this out loud without a second thought.

But how could you die without ever reaching your potential?  For Franklin a new nation claimed his time, thus suppressing his exuberant creative pursuit.  But energy-claimers are most often historic only in your wildest dreams– masses of urgent incoming e-mails, houses to build, fortunes to lay out for the future. You could die without ever cracking your creative potential by failing to ever decide to start.  You could give up attending to your dreams when the phone starts ringing or when your wife complains about the yard.  If you must choose between keeping bargains you never made or owning your energy and creative potential– well, I think you can guess what I’d say.

Having a choice at all, is a privilege.  If you have no food, many sick children, a husband who beats you, no shelter and no work in sight,  your choices are much, much smaller.  But my guess is,  if you have time enough to read these words– you have at least some (education, time, money, space) options for creation.  The French philosopher Ernest Renan said,

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

Ignored creativity–  no matter how plentiful or unruly at the start or how honorable the competition, dries up. And once you decide you’ve got to create come hail or high water, what you do with the truths you know–  that is what makes you Creative or not.

 

 

 

 

How about you?  Is your creativity still dammed up inside you?

Filed under: Choices, Creativity Killer, Making Time, Mistakes, Philosophers, The Child, The Scientist, Truth | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Born After 1088?

Posted on February 20, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

Next to buying a new bookshelf, tackling a messy topic with white gloves is the joy of  historians. Medieval prostitution in France? Been there. Hitler’s willing executioners?  Done that.  No.  Not been or done.  Read.  Still, some characters of long ago haunt my dreams at night.

I once sat in on John Taylor Gatto’s talk, Is College Necessary? The gist:  Nope.  You don’t need college to be rich (ask Bill Gates), famous (ask Jullian Assange), creative (ask James Cameron) or funny (ask Ellen Degeneres). John Taylor Gatto is engaging and I throughly enjoyed myself, detached and free to weigh his ideas objectively, like an historian.  And up until just last month, if you asked me if college is necessary for creativity or anything else, I may have said, Not really.  But I wouldn’t say the same today. Instead, I’d tell you, Heck yeah!  Go to college. Well, at least that’s what I want to tell my young friend who’s just dropped out to start a business.

Why not come clean with my friend and discuss things objectively, like an historian?   I can’t.  I’m too subjectively invested in this kid. He’s bright, creative, even philosophical and would totally thrive in the right college.  True, Plato never went to college.  Nor did Copernicus, Jesus Christ or Vitruvious.  But they couldn’t because no university existed until 1088.

Granted, not all universities are equal.  Some are universities only in name.  But the best, regardless of name or fame, give students the tool of past wisdom to push to new light and opportunities to dwell on the adjacent possible–  new ideas, new inventions, new scientific findings, better theories of, well, everything.  And like High Creativity on the scale of Copernicus or Toni Morrison, a rockin’ university education is philosophically based.  The only good reason to willingly by-pass this chance to push yourself mentally is timing.  If Bill Gates had stayed at Harvard to pass his physics finals instead of dropping out to work 20 hours a day tinkering and programming, history would have played out differently ( worse?) for us all.

Maybe I’ll ask my friend the following question:

Is your entrepreneurial passion so timely it can’t wait-out a rockin’ university education?

If he says, Yes! I’ll have to say, All right then,  quit college and get to work in your garage, baby. But, if he can’t answer yes,  then I’ll take my white gloves off and beg him to return ASAP because there are many, many more Highly Creative people who have been to college (at least ever since 1088) than have not.


Filed under: advice and expectations, Choices, Expectations, Philosophers | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Rousseau and Me, We Don’t Agree– A Post in Two Parts and a Coda

Posted on February 17, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

For five days I’m writing about the most interesting methods people have used throughout history to raise brilliant children of all types. Yesterday I wrote A Mad Poet and a Sane Mathematician.

Part I:

Around this time– a year ago, I longed to walk outside with my toddler or stand by the pond with my five-year-old checking out brand-new tadpoles. I wanted to bake bread or travel to Ethiopia or  just drive an hour to visit my sister. But I couldn’t. I could wiggle my toes a bit and shift my weight from left to right, but no more than that– doctor’s orders.  If I moved more than that, contractions began immediately. But the tiny person growing inside me needed to swim around in amniotic fluid another 15 weeks.

The slightly-open window behind my chair let in crisp air in waves.  I heard swallows swishing around high in the sky and chirping. Birds so happy to have arrived safe from Argentina and ready to build spring nests under the eaves of my house.  My toddler wanted to share my chair,  but we couldn’t both fit.  She cried and begged me to pick her up.  Later, she dragged her wicker rocker and set it next to me.  I read her books.  My 7-year-old and 5-year-old brought me little snacks of oranges or cinnamon toast.  My 10-year-old made pasta for lunch.

Several weeks later, resting still, this time in a hospital bed, I couldn’t focus to read.  I couldn’t think in complete sentences either. I just lay there, with my uncomfortably quiet mind.  Living requires action–  and without it you seem barely human,  let alone a competent parent of little children.  I stared at their photographs taped to the wall in front of me. All those smiling faces kept me company. But I couldn’t touch them or kiss them.  They couldn’t tell me the stuff they thought or what kept them awake at night. So still, I drifted in and out of mind for hours.  One night, in a moment of both subtle desperation and fierce maternal agency a thought came to me.   My mind’s eye followed the thought as it entered and spread across my consciousness.  It is time to study my children in the way that thinkers do, with closed senses but open mind.  The timing could not be better.

This thought– It is time to study my children in the way that thinkers do, with closed senses but open mind, expanded until it took up so much mental space it squished the limbic helplessness out of my soul.

I’ve wanted to study the lives of sixteenth century Spanish monks or figure out how the Universe really began.  But figuring out Creativity from its simplest reduction to viral idea-spreading– that I could study until I die.  And here I had time!

Instantly I felt the luckiest woman in the world– with a laptop, speedy internet access and several bright children with budding creative powers to think about and later observe. That night I started Creating-Brains, this blog.  I also e-mailed my friends with the link so they’d read my first post and make it all official before I chickened out.

Part II:

Months earlier, I had read the most interesting book on human development theory–  Jean Jacques Rousseau’s classic Emile. Here Rousseau writes the life story of his young aristocratic charge– Emile and chronicles his growth to astonishing mental independence. When Rousseau ends his tutorship (20 yrs. long)  he introduces Emile,  a virgin thinker, to the world.

So how did Rousseau raise Emile?  Here are some highlights:

Emile…

  • Never wore binding clothes.
  • Ran around barefoot,  even in Winter.
  • Took frigid showers outdoors, even in Winter.
  • Lived in a bare cottage, alone with his tutor, in the countryside.
  • Ate plain food.
  • Cultivated one habit– Have no habits (no bed time,  no wake time,  no set daily schedule whatsoever).
  • Knew no books, was not read to and did not know how to read until age 16.
  • Had no friends.
  • Learned through experience only ( i.e., poking a real skunk to learn it stinks, and not reading about it).
  • Led his own life with little human interference.
  • Had a tutor who followed him from afar outdoors, but sat with him to discuss humanity’s grandest questions to close a day.
  • Could ask his tutor anything and get a question for an answer.
  • Ran free.
  • Lived happy.
  • Thought for himself.

Rousseau’s Emile was an imaginary character (Rousseau was a philosopher, after all).  But the methods used to educate Emile influenced Western thinking about childhood development and education for two centuries.  The Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts, the Idler in the UK and the International Unschooling movement are examples of today’s Rousseau-groupies.

But what does Rousseau’s Emile have to do with me hanging out in the hospital,  far from my charges?  Plenty (stay with me here). First, disclosure–  a host of loving , sometimes fun,  but always responsible people cared for the kids when I could not. Also, Super-man (a.k.a.my husband) cut his work days dangerously short to come home.  He also spent too many nights awake nursing sick kids (yes, they all got the flu) or warming midnight bottles for our toddler. But back to Rousseau and me: in gist– my children lived a lot like Emile. Rousseau theorized and Emile turned out super human. But real children, I learned by being away, do not thrive cultivating the habit of no habits. Also, real children grow confused, rather than fonder, for lack of gentle touch. But worse of all,  the independent life reeks of danger for little ones and free-thinking is small without limits.

I resolved, then,  as I began to study my children to also study their broken mama and by sheer mindfulness and consideration, we’d learn to live right.  Together we’d learn to live the Creative life,  which, as I’ve written often since my first post,  is not without habits or discipline.

Coda:

Several years ago,  I would have disagreed with every iota of Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother– the book I’ve mentioned several times in this series.  I would have suggested Emile’s lifestyle as the enlightened (and opposite) alternative.  Not today– Chua’s not totally wrong.  Discipline does breed brilliance. But Chua is fundamentally wrong,  because disciplined skills without philosophy make for hollow output.

So there it is.  I’ve told you another piece of my story and dragged you through contrived concepts.  But, stay with me…there’s more to come!

I’d love to hear from you and learn what you think.  Leave a comment.  I love reading comments!

 

 

 

Filed under: Childhood, Complexity, Constraints, Creative Families, Parents, Philosophers, The Child, The Scientist, What Hasn't Worked for Me | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

No Mother–No Whips

Posted on January 30, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

For five days I’m writing about the most interesting methods people have used throughout history to raise brilliant children of all types. Yesterday I wrote the intro. to this series: Baby, Who Cares If It’s Cold Outside!

Amy Chua, the author of the controversial new book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is the unabashed, if occasionally faux-contrite, heroine of her story.  The message is clear: her musical prodigy daughters could not have attained their brilliant success without their tough-love mom. Chua is more than queen of her home. She’s more of a micro-managing-manic, dictator/empress combo.  Chua’s emotionally abusive tactics aside, today we place tremendous value on a mother’s involvement in her childrens’ lives. But the truth is, loads of brilliant people from the past had little maternal influence as they grew-up. Still, the most striking truth I’d like to tell Amy Chua, is that the extreme tough-love stuff, may not be necessary either.

Read on for one super-interesting example that makes both my above points:

In early sixteenth-century France, the mayor of Bordeux, Pierre Eyquim read much and talked philosophy with whomever would listen– but his ignorance of Latin (the language of books), left him but a well-regarded dabbler. His son would have no such limit. Pierre Eyquim would make sure of that.

Before any Latin lessons, Pierre’s third baby boy–Michel needed to survive past infancy. The best way to do this, thought this father, is to raise him among peasants–and away from the soft life of the Eyquim family chateau.  The elder Eyquim also hoped the boy would acquire, by osmosis, an intuitive knowledge of the commoner’s ways.  This, Pierre seemed to think, would come in handy and even endear Michel to those  same commoners he would surely rule some day.

So to toughen his son up, Pierre had baby Michel’s wet nurse remain in her own home. Michel went to her –instead of the other way around, and she raised him barefoot alongside her own children– plus the goats and chickens, in a thatched-roof peasant’s cottage. Michel did not smell, see or feel the soft touch of his real mother until his third birthday.

Then, the next phase of Pierre Eyquim’s plan began. Historian Sarah Bakewell says,

The second element of [Michel's] experimental education would prove totally incompatible with the first.  Back in his family home [the grand chateau], little peasant Micheau was now to be brought up as a native speaker of Latin.

The little boy leaped–rather abruptly, from the peasants’ rough Perigorian to full Latin immersion, totally bypassing French.

Again, Sarah Bakewell says,

This was an astonishing project for anyone even to think of, let alone put into effect.

No one at home spoke any Latin. Finding a native Latin speaker would be almost impossible.  But Pierre remained undaunted. He  found a German tutor–who spoke flawless Latin but not a word of French, for his son. Everyone else in the household was banned from speaking to or around the little boy–until they could speak in educated Latin.  The tutor became the most important person in Michel’s early childhood.

Whatever happened to this little child so oddly educated?  He grew to become the most influential philosopher of the Renaissance–Michel de Montaigne.

Through the years, Michel de Montaigne recalled with fondness his father’s plans and ways.  Of his early education and skills acquisition, he later wrote,

[I learned] without artificial means, without a book, without grammar or precept, without the whip, and without tears.

He also said,

My father and mother learned enough Latin…to understand it, and acquired sufficient skill to use it when necessary, as did also the servants who were most attached to my service.  Altogether, we Latinized ourselves so much that it overflowed all the way to our villages on every side, where there still remain several Latin names for artisans and tools that have taken root by usage.  As for me, I was over six before I understood any more French or Perigordian than Arabic.

What would compel Michel de Montaigne’s father to follow such a plan? Historian Sarah Bakewell says,

Command of beautiful and grammatically perfect Latin was the highest goal of a humanistic education: it unlocked the door to the ancient world…as well as to much of modern culture, since most scholars still wrote in Latin.

If you spoke well, you must be able to think well. Pierre wanted to give his son the best advantage imaginable:  a link both to the lost paradise of antiquity and to a successful personal future.

Michel de Montaigne maintained a love of learning throughout his entire life and often credited his father for that gift. In turn,  Michel gifted the Western world with some of its greatest ideas.   He influenced Blaise Pascal, Shakespeare and Ralph Waldo Emerson and even helped usher in a new era of religious tolerance throughout Western Europe.

Not bad for someone who’s mother did not hold him or talk to him much!  And also, not bad for someone who never really cried over his lessons.

Filed under: Parents, Philosophers, The Child | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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