Archive for the ‘creativity’ Tag
My daughter sent me this link. I hope it works for you to tap into it. I managed to talk a little bit about it in my upcoming How Did These Lovely People Let it Happen: A Psychologist’s intimate Journal, but this is so amazingly complete Im actually excited having read it. I strongly recommend it, with an eye to our current childrearing issues and adult challenges. Good luck in connecting to it, and please stay with it to the end, and even beyond. Besides, it’s fun to read. https://youtu.be/K56rxHctlcE?si=-iuMAOIztYugyNYc
If The link doesn’t work, type it into your search engine. It’s worth it
I’ve been engaging lately in what I once thought was the right way to do things – reading and researching to understand what those words “liberal” and “conservative” mean. I confess I’m running into trouble. I just can’t understand “conservative.” All I know is it’s not my father’s conservative, even mine up to and including Eisenhower. I do know, though, what I mean by “liberal.” This is a partial list
- Violence breeds hatred.
- Hatred breeds destruction for the hater as well as the hated.
- Vengeance is violence in any form, physical or other, even ridiculing, insulting, or demeaning.
- Peaceful problem problem-solving leads to fulness of growth for everyone.
- Every individual is of value, deserving of care, appreciation, and encouragement.
- People come in many genders, abilities, and color.
- Freedom makes creativity possible by allowing every individual to grow and prosper.
- Peace makes freedom possible, and vice versa.
- Appreciation, gratitude, and forgiveness clear the path to peace.
- Earth is a gift to be cared for with appreciation.
- Children are a gift deserving birth into a loving, caring society.
- Agape love signifies mental health.
- Good mental health depends on all the bullets above.
- History ignored opens the way to history re-enacted.
This is it for starters. Now I ask for two things,
- Add to my list
- Provide me with a similar list of the current meaning of “conservative.”
Thanks
I just finished reading another long analysis of why the Democrats lost the election. It’s a good thing I never laid claim to being a Political Scientist because I am just plain totally confused. There are conservatives who nonetheless agree with some liberal priorities, and liberals who feel strongly about conservative ideas. So which is which? And just what is it the conservatives want to conserve? Based on current events it’s certainly not our established government organization, or our free news media, or our traditional international relations, or respect for our legal system. And why do we cling to the dichotomy of the two-party system anyway?
It does seem that we are clinging to old fashioned and ill-fitting dichotomous thinking. Democrats vs. Republicans, Liberals vs. conservatives, right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, males vs. females. All imposed like square pegs being inserted into the round holes of the truth of who we really are. Of course the game is confusing, with all sides playing a huge monopoly game with principles that once worked. Sometimes the requests I receive for money to help in the political game feel like leaning against the closed door after the horses have left the barn. I feel like we old fogies are in denial about the real interactive complexities of our world. And maybe there’s no limit on how young a fogey can be.
It seems to me we need some really creative thinking to tear apart the ways that once worked and to create new adjustments to the real complexities. Come to think of it, that’s the first general step in creativity – to unravel the old patterns and put them together in new ways. Hmm. Maybe that’s what we’re living through right now. Trashing the old designs to make way for the new. Maybe being confused is just where we need to be.
But there’s nothing that says the process won’t hurt. And I certainly don’t want it to go on without trying to reduce the pain as the axe falls. And I sure hope we don’t get stuck too long in the hopeless, cruel, and violent effort to reimpose the way things never were, and probably never should have been, in the first place.
Two nights ago I rejoiced that I had finished my part in copyediting half of “Mrs Job” in preparation for her reappearance under a new name and with a new cover. Now, I thought, I can get back to the photos from my recent four weeks in Europe until I get the second half from the editor and, after I finish it quickly, Mrs. Job will be on the way to her attractive new identity.
You would have been seeing a blog entry today with photos and travel descriptions.
But then the publisher e-mailed the sad news to me. They had run into a financial problem that made it impossible to go on, so Mrs. Job would not be published by them after all. My initial reaction was – rather healthily, I think – to feel sad for me. Then I thought about what it meant for them and e-mailed a sympathy note recognizing how devastating it must be to lose their dream.
So I gave myself the evening to mope, and scheduled today to think about Mrs. Job’s future now that she has basically been evicted from two homes. Well, not quite evicted. In January, 2012, I terminated her agreement with iUniverse to sign the contract with TM Publishing. The process has been slow, but their intention to follow through was genuine. And I can’t say she’s been evicted. More accurately, she never did get to close on her new home.
At any rate, I’m now starting the search anew. Any help you can offer with names of potential agents or publishers, or even just plain good ideas, will be gratefully considered.
In the meantime, while I was enjoying my mope last evening, I remembered Saturday’s rally for immigration reform at the Guardian Angels Church. Over 300 people were there, singing, listening, hoping, and being moved to tears by the stories of people who had suffered under our current system. Especially hard to see were the young people whose parents had been torn away from them.
So, no, Mona! You are so lucky to have the problems you have. Get off the stick and open yourself to creative thinking!
And open to the possibility that someone reading this might have help to offer.
He called me Auntie, I called him Uncle Joe. There was no logical reason for it, given that he was my former husband’s brother-in-law. But Uncle Joe he was.
Being in the process of reading “Atlas Shrugged” was the stimulus for my remembering Joe. You don’t need to have read Ayn Rand’s works, though, for this to make sense. I just want to point out how creative and essential Joe was, and how unlikely it would be that anyone would recognize him, either financially or through reputation, for what he did.
Joe earned his living as a school custodian. I’ll admit, before I understood his job, I thought it was pretty insignificant. Not the heralded creativity of those who obtain patents and money for their inventions of new things or ideas. He would certainly not be recognized by those who think the contributions of the mind outrank physical labor.
No, janitors don’t just wash floors and clean up messes after careless students. Daily Joe was met with the challenge of something not functioning properly. Heating and air conditioning breakdowns, electrical failures, plumbing problems, structural damage, animal invasions – I can’t name all the problems. And that’s just the point. Whatever the event, it was his job to diagnose and repair, to apply his creative skills to arrive at the most efficient solution. He kept the school running.
In the meantime, he served, as so many custodians do, as unofficial counselor to troubled students.
I confess, I have joyfully engaged in an occupation where the mind was paramount. That’s why I so fear falling on my head which contains my most important working parts. But I am unwilling to join those who belittle folks like Uncle Joe. We are all of potential value. We are all served if we appreciate and encourage what others have to offer. That includes the young man of limited ability who greets us as we enter the concert hall. Maybe that’s why, in the 60s, I identified with those who opposed elitism.
So, here’s to the memory of Uncle Joe.
Yesterday I called my sister to wish her a happy birthday. In the conversation I said something like,” I’d like to talk about gerunds.” Her response was immediate and enthusiastic, loosely quoted, “It makes me furious.” There was no need to explain my intention. So when did it become correct to say “”I appreciate you coming with me,” instead of “I appreciate your coming with me?” Obviously it’s now acceptable, but when did it happen? My sister, the former teacher and MFA, can explain in detail the new relationship. As she pointed out, we learned the gerund rule way back in grammar school but we have to accept that language usage changes, even though it causes ear pain. I for one, though, expect to continue saying, “I appreciate your coming.”
But then, what does it really matter when the cover of the “Intelligence Report” from the Southern Poverty Law Center says “The Year in Hate and Extremism: The ‘Patriot’ Movement Explodes” and spells out in the interior contents the details of growing racism, hate, and consequent violence.
In the same reading session, however, I found an article in “Yes” magazine where Frances Moore Lappe says “A new way of seeing that is opening up to us can form a more life-saving mental map. I call it ‘eco-mind’ — looking at the world through the lens of ecology. This worldview recognizes that we, no less than any other organism, live in relation to everything else.” Gong on, she elaborates six inherent traits we can foster, once we learn to navigate the world with the map of eco-mind.
1) Cooperation
2) Empathy
3) Fairness
4) Efficacy
5) Meaning
6) Imagination, Creativity, and attraction to change.
Pages 12-15, Yes” Spring 2012. www.yesmagazine.org
I want to believe those traits will overcome hate. But then, I didn’t say I expect they will.
monagustafsonaffinito 