“ ‘I have noticed,’ said Mr. K., ‘that we put many people off our teaching because we have an answer to everything. Could we not, in the interests of propaganda, draw up a list of questions that appear to us completely unsolved?’ ” -Bertolt Brecht, Stories of Mr. Keuner

Unsolved questions are often at the core of good story-telling. A scene or sentence that raises a specific question is what often keeps us enthralled in even the worst of TV shows and novels. Looking back at my education, I recall a similar atmosphere described in the Brecht quotation above- questions were all expected to have answers. In fact, it seemed an embarrassment to many professors and teachers to receive a question they could not answer. Students themselves are too self-conscious to ask questions, even though it is likely their classmates share the inquiry. Students entering the college or even the world are often completely unused to even being expected to ask.

A storyteller needs the audience to be asking questions. The audience and storyteller alike rejoice in mystery and unsolved questions (as long as they are specifically formed and not just “what is going on?”). Imagine if education was like that!! If your professor rewarded students who asked tough questions, and made clear the limits of their own  knowledge.

Fictional worlds are great, but the real world is important, too. We need to get the sense of wonder back into daily life. For instance, I was floored the other day by a video on TED. I link to the video below, I think it really puts into perspective just how much mystery is still in the world. I mean, crabs that live in 200 degrees centigrade, ninja cephalopods…

How did I go through 20 years of schooling thinking we’ve thoroughly explored the oceans? There is something fantastic about having so much uncharted territory to spark our curiosity. I am far more excited about the vast array of questions left in the ocean rather than the tiny amount of answers- especially when the ocean appears to be full of life.

It always seems far more interesting to ask a professor or professional “What are the questions you have yet to answer?”

-Tom

I just finished reading a book called Story by Robert McKee. It was quite an insightful book (though I have many criticisms of it which I will go into later). In the following passage, McKee describes the creation of an original character:

Like Dr. Frankenstien, we build characters out of parts found. A writer takes the analytical mind of his sister and peices it together with the comic wit of his friend, adds to that the cunning cruelty of a cat and the blind persistence of King Lear. We borrow bits and peices of humanity, raw chunks of imagination and observation wherever they’re found, assemble them into dimensions of contrafiction, then round them into creatures we call characters. (McKee, 386)

The way I described originality as integration of existing ideas (in an earlier post) is analogous to how McKee describes character creation as the integration of ideas in existing characters.

The implication of integrative thinking is twofold. It means that we can research and observe to create “original” products. However, it also means that our products are only as strong as the wealth of ideas at our disposal. We cannot hope to be “original” (in the integrative sense) if we do not explore, study and read a wide breadth of material. And I don’t just mean other forms of art, I mean all sorts of disciplines.

But how do we find time to study all sorts of disciplines? I read another book recently that was a collection of essays from the philosopher Lord Isaiah Berlin called The Power of Ideas. In an essay on general education, Berlin writes about studying in a way to maximize breadth without completely sacrificing depth and specialization. He writes that instead of simply trying to absorb material from other disciplines (like making a chemist memorize poetry, or making an artist list out famous physicists) we should focus on the methodologies of different disciplines.

Simply put, we should at the least know how various disciplines go about answering questions- and what questions they are most interested in answering. Economics, for example, is largely a question of allocation- they assume that resources are scarce and try to figure out the best way to distribute them fairly. Capitalism is born from the pursuit of this question. Capitalism also assumes that people generally make rational decision, and that more choice and more consumption is good. Psychologists and sociologists often have completely different assumption about human beings- that we are governed by irrational emotions, and that we are molded by society. Many political scientists assume humans are corrupted by power, hence a major question in political science is how to best distribute power.

My point is, that there is a vast reservoir of ideas out there, and our creativity will be severely limited if we live only within the assumptions and methodologies of our own particular specialization.

-Tom

Recently, a friend of mine came across the blog of animator Chris Harding. After a few minutes of reading the blog out-loud (in a less-than subtle way of catching my attention) my friend aroused my interests and I began to read the blog, too (sometimes out-loud as well).

Chris Harding is quite an inspirational animator. His approach to animation as the vehicle of an idea yields work with thought and direction- rather than being some aggregation of punchlines and plot twists. Here is one of his films:

View Harding’s animated short: Learn Self Defense

I’d also like to share some passages of his that I found particularly insightful:

The only way for me to motivate myself is with ideas. If I’m in love with an idea enough, and I can’t communicate that idea by any other method I feel the strong need to animate it. -Cold Hard Flash Interview

What are animated shorts good for in the world? Maybe they make someone laugh for a couple seconds, but so does an ill-timed fart. I hope in the long run there’s a little bit more value to this work than a puff of gas and noise. If not, we should all go be paramedics and put ourselves to better use. - Present Magazine

If you know me you’ve probably heard me quote this from Bertolt Brecht:

Organization

Mr. K. once said: ‘The thinking man does not use one light too many, one piece of bread too many, one idea too many.’

And here is Chris Harding’s take:

The whole goal with short films is to distill an idea down to its essence without being simplistic. So you keep honing until you’re left with all the necessary information, and not one speck more.

So as you see, I was right all along… ;) Well, at least another person out there sees things similarly. I’m thankful that Chris maintains a blog and I hope to see more work from him in the future.

If you want an inspired laugh, read Chris Harding’s About page. It is quite fun (and delightfully satirical).

-Tom

There is one particular story in Stories of Mr. Keuner that I want to put up here. I wrote about Bertolt Brecht’s book of short stories in an earlier post, but I forgot to mention one of my favorites:

Mr. Keuner and his niece’s drawing

Mr. Keuner looked at the drawing his little niece had made. It depicted a hen flying over a farmyard. “Tell me, why does your hen have three legs?” asked Mr. Keuner. “Hens can’t fly, of course,” said the little artist, “and so I needed a third leg to give it a lift.”

“I’m glad I asked,” said Mr. Keuner.

There is something quite breathtaking about the way children think. I often find that when I am speaking to a child, my brain has moments of complete upheaval- a very healthy exercise I believe. The last toddler I spoke with told me she was a horse. I asked her what kind of animal I was- she told me she didn’t know. I offered a suggestion: how about a raccoon? She told me that I could not be a raccoon, because horses are allergic to raccoons and, obviously, she wasn’t having allergic reactions.

After that she proceeded to bludgeon me with a pillow.

-Tom

I’d like to devote one post to J. Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith was Havard professor in econ. During his lifetime he was a tremendously influential economist and wrote a multitude of books. He was famous for poking and prying at the classical economics thought. From his quotes he appears to have been ruthlessly satirical (or just plain ruthless) about various things he found absurd:

Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.

I came across a similar idea last year when reading “The European Dream” by Jeremy Rifkin. Rifkin discussed the application of the GNP and how it was not necessarily a measure of the “good” of a society. Rifkin made his point by claiming that the GNP goes up due to any economic activity; Activity that might otherwise reflect poorly on a society- such as building thousands of prisons.

Essentially we are looking at the assumption that more money/consumption = happiness/goodness

Galbraith challenged econ assumptions, and probably ran into problems that generated the following quotes:

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof

I react to what is necessary. I would like to eschew any formula. There are some things where the government is absolutely inevitable, which we cannot get along without comprehensive state action. But there are many things — producing consumer goods, producing a wide range of entertainment, producing a wide level of cultural activity — where the market system, which independent activity is also important, so I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I’m for that. Where the government is necessary, I’m for that. I’m deeply suspicious of somebody who says, “I’m in favor of privatization,” or, “I’m deeply in favor of public ownership.” I’m in favor of whatever works in the particular case

There’s a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.

Kenneth Galbraith, however, insisted that uncomfortable questions be asked despite the difficulty with which people change their mind- despite the dichotomies of people’s thought or the particular disposition of the majority:

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.

People are the common denominator of progress. So… no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development. … But we are coming to realize … that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

Galbraith also had a very scathing ironic humor to many of his sayings, this next quote (in a humorous twist on a familiar Socratic quote) appears to refer to the certitude with which economists flaunt their knowledge:

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

And finally, I’d like to end with a quote that I found sums up the whole theme of the current “market system” :

By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.

Last year I came across quite a gem of a little book in one of my classes. The book is called Stories of Mr. Keuner and is written by the German author Bertolt Brecht. Over the course of his life (1898-1956), Brecht wrote numerous plays- many of which are very well known (Joan of Arc, Don Juan). If you haven’t read any of his plays you may want want to take a peek, but it is Stories of Mr. Keuner that has particularly caught my attention for this post.

Stories of Mr. Keuner is not a play like the majority of Brecht’s work, but a collection of short stories. I am a particularly fond of short stories myself because of their tendency to communicate some idea in a very quick, direct and creative manner (much like the goal of an animated short film). The result of a good short story, for me, is usually a very memorable and potent vessel of the presented idea. Brecht’s short stories are a very good example of concise and catchy communication in practice. The book takes the form of written accounts about a fictitious man named “Mr. Keuner” (who is referred to as “Mr. K”). Here is one of them:

“Meeting again

A man who had not seen Mr. K. for a long time greeted him with the words: ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’ ‘Oh!’ said Mr. K. and turned pale.”

The idea presented here is, as I interpret it, the necessity to undergo growth and change. Brecht’s stories are quite short, ranging from a sentence to maybe a page or two. Some are clearer than others, but overall I find the stories very pointed and very tidy. And there is something to be said of having a nice short story to illustrate an idea you like. Knowing short stories certainly does not replace studying, but it makes for very useful conversational and argumentative bumper stickers.

Here are a few more of my favorite Brecht short stories:

“An aristocratic stance

Mr. Keuner said: ‘I, too, once adopted an aristocratic stance (you know: erect, upright, and proud, head thrown back). I was standing in rising water at the time. I adopted this posture when it rose to my chin.’ “

“The question of whether there is a God

A man asked Mr. K. whether there is a God. Mr. K. said: ‘I advise you to consider whether, depending on the answer, your behavior would change. If it would not change, then we can drop the question. If it would change, then I can at least be of help to the extent that I can say, you have already decided: you need a God.’ “

“The indispensable civil servant

Mr. K. heard a civil servant, who had held his post for quite a long time, praised as being indispensable, since he was such a good civil servant. ‘Why is he indispensable?’ asked Mr. K. in annoyance. ‘The department would grind to a halt without him,’ said his eulogists. ‘How can he be a good civil servant if the department would grind to a halt without him?’ said Mr. K. ‘He’s had time enough to organize his department to make himself dispensable. What is he really engaged in? I’ll tell you: blackmail!’ “

**This next one should be emblazoned upon the desktop of any computer used to make a short film:

“Organization

Mr. K. once said: ‘The thinking man does not use one light too many, one piece of bread too many, one idea too many.’ “

Pick up the book if you like these, there are tons of little stories in it.
-Tom