Any Questions?

 A kid and a Jehovah Witness came to my door last week. Before they started in with their religious invitations, I engaged the youngster in learning to juggle. He was a kid of around ten years old. Because I'd given him something of value in learning juggling, the kid wanted to give me a booklet that was a digest of their bible. I took it and read some of it.

In this condensed Bible there was an admonition where followers were urged to burn the books of "evil" false prophets such as Tarot card readers, psychics, astrologers, etc. It got me thinking how threatening it is to religions to have competition to their cornering the market on interpreting answers to spiritual questions. Probably nowadays, anyone who dispenses advice and wisdom based on their personal experience is going to be threatening to a church. Made me wonder what definition of "evil" this threat would actually include. Pretty much whenever you decide certain people are "evil," it's only a matter of time before many more people end up in that same category.

I thought of all the people in social networking who are urged to "brand themselves" and be the number one special version of the dispenser of value gained by their followers. In a flash of inspiration, I saw every social networker on Twitter as having their own religion...and respective followers...  How would threatened religions and churches burn e-books...?

In the time of Christ there must have been quite a few people out preaching "Truth." Probably there were lots of swindlers who were looking for followers who would pay them money to support their efforts, just as there seem to be now. In that era to perform the miracle of raising the dead, all you had to do is have the skill of recognizing someone in a coma who is might wake up eventually.

That Bible held up as the "word of God" was written by "psychics" who probably did not have much means to advertise - but they could write. Just getting materials to write something down must have been challenging. Probably being someone who knew how to read and write was something you had to keep secret, because people in that era were threatened by it. Creativity was probably low on the list of those cultures deliberately designed to control huge classes of people. Urban myths about anyone, translated numerous times and painstakingly hand-written and copied by those who could READ - it must have been such a privileged, rare gift to be literate in that era. Maybe all those stories in the Bible were about many people, and they all got lumped together into being about one person. (Bait and switch was a common historical tactic of religions.)


Now anyone can have their blog printed on demand. Anyone can dispense "wisdom" and write their own Bible. No wonder religions are being threatened.

Some people believe words have a firm, factual reality in themselves. They think words "mean what they mean." But this is not true. Words shift and flicker depending on context and expression, just as symbols do. This is what makes poetry and the symbols of religion and belief interesting.

Many people have an ability to think, but their ability to express their thinking may not reach the listener or reader for many mutual reasons. The topic or context may be incomplete or indistinct. Or the communicator's natural style of thinking may be so different from our own that it is difficult to figure out the communicator's intent. What is their associative pathway from point to point and how can I follow? It may be tricky to follow thinking paths - especially if thinking is original thinking.

In this way creative thinking is similar to religion - in that really original ideas must be carefully interpreted for the listener.

So often religious bureaucracy seems to want to control how people think because they invest in being the interpreter for the public of their respective "holy scripture." Religious leaders want to be the ONLY interpreter for the believers, claiming "all others are wrong or evil."

Each time they read or listen, each person is reconstructing meaning from reading what someone else has written or said. Someone who has written is pointing at...something about what they intend to say. Their skill and familiarity with their language use is a factor, in addition to their ability to think - but also their ability to articulate and guess at the assumptions of their listener. They try to answer the virtual question: "What would the listener want to know?"

It is up the person listening or reading to fill in the blanks, follow the traces or indicators while the listener reconstructs the thinking pathways of the communicator. In this way, listening is almost a spiritual practice. It is a spiritual question when a person seeks a way to express that which cannot be directly expressed. Spiritual, intuitive, or virtual questions often beg for symbols and indirect ways to express their messages and intent.

Of course, the way you frame a question structures and points to the answer. Have any questions now? Hope so.

Surpassing Expectations

"What is it about your environment, history and values that encourages you to surpass limiting social expectations?" It's a very interesting question to ask in polite conversation of any grownup.  Asking it in a non-specific way leaves the answer open.

Curious answers occur. When you ask the question of a woman, you must take the replies with a grain of salt. Women tend to "tell troubles" to bond with other women. To understand much more of how all this happens and more about what the issues are concerning women and those who do not match the current social trends in their conversational style, I recommend the very conversational but content-rich books written by linguistics professor Deborah Tannen, PhD - especially her book "Talking 9 to 5."

It took me a great deal of thought about this question to find the answers for myself. There were three pivotal experiences for me.

What made the biggest difference motivating me to think for myself first happened when I was only five years old. My idol, which was my elder brother of eight years, gave me a snake for a pet - sanctioned by my parents. It was 1959, and in that era, snakes suffered from many social misconceptions about their nature. At a crucial stage when I was going to transfer my family's authority toward the authority of school & a greater social world...Here were these serious mis-matches about snakes that I knew was completely urban legend. People I did not know or trust mistakenly thought snakes were dangerous, contradicting what I knew to be true according to my family and the San Diego Zoo. This experience encouraged me to think for myself and put out effort to learn the true nature of things before I accepted societal norms. It inoculated me against cigarettes as well as sent me to college, because I decided at five that you could be free of fear if you knew more of the facts.

Of course, the most obvious solution to change the minds of young people would be world travel. Becoming an exchange student during middle or high school is the most socially acceptable way, but spending at least six months in another culture works just as well. Once you have been a young person in a radically different environment, you return and realize how self-absorbed your peers are. Not to mention how regional fashion codes really are.

The other pivotal issue was attractiveness and the social authority that went along with it. It upset me that, according to society, women were expected to be helplessly manipulative to get things done. The social fact that an attractive female asking for a "favor" gets it from a male who has temporarily lost his reasoning - this bothered me.

For me as a young girl, there seemed no way to "opt out" of that game gracefully. I did not want the power men handed me; they wanted me to deny or accept their attention. Because of the accident of birth making me coincidentally attractive, I had to deal with this issue early on. Only later I realized that this was a social reality for almost every girl. (If you're a straight guy reading this, imagine if you had to deal daily with attention from people you did not want - from other guys, for instance. This is the environment young women find themselves.)

What eventually remedied this issue for me was learning about body language. After this education, it was indisputable that how I behaved was evident for anyone to see. What sort of a person I was, my values, showed beyond my physical features. A person's character is expressed in their walk, how they move, where their attention goes & the quality of attention used. After learning about body language, I had to accept there were, in me, obvious additional desirable qualities of character. That they were there in addition to matching social definitions of beauty - well, I could accept the attention I was getting now. The attention was my fault, instead of purely an accident of nature.

So I would recommend to teach body language as part of a relationship communication class as a solution for the common desire for membership and bonding - in high school or earlier. (For me, studying Alexander Technique in a classroom situation worked.)

There are many reasons why there is a sudden drop in confidence when girls (and boys) reach middle school age. They realize how they do not match the social norms, and there is the tendency to envy what they are not. This is when girls first must grapple with social questions about how they are going to deal with sexual attention. A desire to for membership and to belong becomes important, as well as trying on what roles might suffice to deal with this big question.

The last pivotal experience for me was when I discovered creative thinking skills. Not just the result of thinking creatively by making things artistic, or modeling creative people I admired. I'm talking about the actual nuts and bolts of how to do problem solving in a situation of decision-making.

Creative thinking skills taught me HOW to think for myself. Wanting to think for yourself in spite of societal norms and actually doing this thinking constructively are two very different things. Edward de Bono has a series of proven simple but effective creative and strategic thinking skills designed for middle school aged students and older. Again - not What to think - but How. Young people have refreshing bull-pucky detectors. These natural talents can be fostered into effective and constructive rebellion. In fact, the more rebellious, the better this education works to help you go your own way more intentionally...against the crowd.

Probably nobody is going to take my word for it. But if creative thinking skills and relationship classes were taught in high school (instead of so much of what is ridiculous mind-reading for "correct" information that is taught now,) society would experience a big jump in social responsibility from all young people.

Stereotyping and trying to be "right" affects everyone.

Content or Presentation is King?

How can people not get seduced by content or what everyone else does? How can people focus instead on strengthening the constructive means - the How of thinking skills? What motivates people to remember to think?

Some ideation (the new word for "brainstorming") on those questions:

• Make the content boring, funny or not make sense so the "How" becomes focal.
• Need ways to compensate for time of arrival. (Blue hat, yes; but I'll bet there are further perceptual means & actions that might contribute to this.)
• Enhance the meaning of the result - in a sense, make the goal more attractive. (Such as in story-telling and testimonials of how people have benefited.)
• Make a way for people to interject as they are respond to what other people have done -" I could do better than that!!"
• Appeal to people who love to brag or show and tell, they will popularize the activity to others and make it into a "fad." ( Bumper stickers, Badge of identity - "I Think Before Reacting. ...Usually!") ...would be great on a car bumper.
• ;o)

OK, back to the question itself. For me, questions that are framed in "opposites" beg to be restated in the positive. (Thus, my proliferation of restatement.) What is "opposite" is culturally defined. Instead, take away the implication that one concept is at odds with the next concept.


Some of these could be:
How come thinking tools - and frameworks - improve thinking skills the way they do? Can we describe more about how thinking skills and examining the frames of how we are thinking work more effectively than discussion to better, problem solve & create?
Frames...Re-Framing...Why not draw more pictures (mind-mapping style) while linearly discussing to help note our tangents and return to what has been left out? (Mind-mapping in this case would be used during discussion as a variant of recognizing the value of framework.)

So, reversing the directive here: Transform discussion by applying tools of thought. (As opposed to the urge educated people usually have to imagine we can transform thought by applying tools of discussion, ie: taking turns at lecturing.)
Since, seldom is there "only one" answer to everything... once we ask that question some of the answers might be...

• Take out the desire to convince (the debate model) from the discussion activity.
• Go slow - speed of arrival tends to activate habitual routines, as well as get everyone excited & encourage them to compete for things like "most original", "fastest delivery", "limited time."(That's why this medium is so wonderful! I can take as much time as I need here.)
• Ask specifically for a certain person's contribution. (This brings reticent people forward, because talking style doesn't have anything to do with thinking ability and this action might minimize competition.)
• Ask others to figure out other ways to invite contributions.
• Allow 'secret ballot' contributions. - (The idea of a free-play space without the authority of authorship where ideas are separated from who had them.)
• Get A.I. to do the presentation for you?
  

Then the second question: Understanding vs Practical Application

Since I was a person who tended to use words such as "Never" and "Always" I have learned to spot these words as an indicator that some powerful assumptions could be in place that might benefit from examination and revision.
Idea: Identify certain words or perceptual cues as trigger indicators that Thinking Now Would Be A Good Idea

Let's say skillful use doesn't come from habit, it comes from fascination. (That has been the case with me.) How to foster fascination for applying what you "understand"?

Perhaps appeal to the "gamboling chance" of novelty: a significant result or insight often occurs unexpectedly. Hindsight is 20/20, but foresight is...boring and careful. What if thinking skills, i.e: foresight were presented as a way to get ready to be lucky? A way to shine intuition? A person would hone thinking skills because it would sometimes result in a "jackpot" of benefits. Most of these "jackpots" of major scientific discoveries come from noting accidents. Insights come from noting points that were never before combined.

These new accidents don't have a chance to happen if experimentation is not allowed. This photo taken by Marti Holland out his back window looks like a Maxwell Parish painting, but it's just a photo. "I make as many mistakes as it takes." - Kenneth Feldsott

So practicing the tapping of the unknown would extend tolerance for unfamiliarity. What is new feels strange, unclassified, so a tolerance for what feels strange at first needs to be practiced. Otherwise people revert to habitual means, and the ease of creative thinking is regarded as "hard to do."

This could be practiced at a perceptual level. (Provide people with perceptual illusion experiences to butter them up? Make them laugh?) Sustaining a state of unanswered, unknowable questioning enhances the ability to be open to spotting an assumption that had been overlooked, the inception of discovery. Perhaps there is a pre-discovery phase we are passing over without noticing? Make a list of your favorite virtual questions...