We have become a civilization based on work—not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself. We have come to believe that men and women who do not work harder than they wish at jobs they do not particularly enjoy are bad people unworthy of love, care, or assistance from their communities. It is as if we have collectively acquiesced to our own enslavement.
—DAVID GRAEBER, BULLSHIT JOBS: A THEORY
Bill “Superfoot” Wallace demonstrates how using constraints such as those imposed by a major knee injury can lead to learning and even mastery.
“Play with it, change it, modify it so that it becomes you.”
-Bill “Superfoot” Wallace
“It was absolutely impossible to play it at the age of twelve… because I didn’t know what to do with this half-page.”
-Valentina Igoshina
“The goal of education, to shift over to Bertrand Russell, ‘is to give a sense of value to things other than domination,’ which means we regard ‘a child as a gardener regards a young tree, as something with a certain intrinsic nature, which will develop into an admirable form, given the proper soil, air, and light.’”
-Noam Chomsky, Chomsky on Mis-Education
Noam Chomsky gives a fascinating and important talk entitled “Education For Whom and For What” about two major possibilities for education. For a funny and illuminating personal anecdote, go to minute 29-31.
Charles Eisenstein‘s seminal work, Sacred Economics, played a pivotal role in inspiring my latest book, The Mass Psychology of Fittism. In the following video by Ian McKenzie, Charles talks about the role that a debt-based money economy has played in fundamentally promoting political oppression, poverty, inequality, war, environmental destruction, anomie, and the severing of deep social ties.
Changing perspectives through an imaginative use of constraints is what leads to learning and breakthroughs–whether in the world of dance, martial arts, sports, mathematics, philosophy, cabinet making, or indeed any field you can imagine. Architect and professor, Hajime Narukawa has created the world’s most remarkable map–one which allows you to change perspective and thereby alter your concept of up, down, right, left, center, East, West, North, and South. This is exactly the map–or perhaps more accurately stated, these are precisely the mapping possibilities, that I have been searching for for almost 20 years.
“I could say that when I was a young man, an adolescent, and I hungered for a voice, I studied the English poets, and I knew their work well and I copied their styles, but I could not find a voice. It was only when I read—even in translation—the works of Lorca, that I understood that there was a voice. It is not that I copied his voice—I would not dare—but he gave me permission to find a voice, to locate a voice, that is, to locate a self—a self that is not fixed, a self that struggles for its own existence. And as I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.”
-Leonard Cohen
The great Bill Evans on learning, improvisation, pedagogy, the importance of fundamentals… and so much more.
“This boy said to me, ‘See that bird standing on the stump there? What’s the name of it?’ I said, ‘I haven’t got the slightest idea.’ He said, ‘It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn’t teach you much about science.’” -Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman elucidates the difference between learning and mindless parroting in this short and concise article.
An enthralling talk by Master Feldenkrais Trainer, Frank Wildman on Nikolai Bernstein and degrees of freedom (one of the major themes of Mass Fittism):
“Learning Taijiquan means to educate oneself. It is like slowly advancing from primary school to university. As time passes, more and more knowledge is gained. Without the foundations of primary school and secondary school, one will not be able to follow the seminars at university. Studying Taijiquan requires starting from the very bottom, working one’s way systematically and step by step towards the more advanced levels. Someone who does not accept this, thinking that he may take a short cut, will not be successful”
-Master Chen Xiao Wang
Click here for a humorous personal account of what it means to learn with a master (in this case, Master Chen Xiao Wang).
“So many witnesses observed the utter freedom of his flights of thought, yet when Feynman talked about his own methods he emphasized not freedom but constraints.”
-James Gleick (in reference to Richard Feynman’s use of constraints in physics)
Watch this video to see a highly imaginative use of constraints applied to the game of basketball (Apparently the Belgians are not only innovators in the world of soccer!)
“Perhaps what really differentiates Bruyninckx from other coaches is that he is not only interested in creating better football players, but also wants to create better human beings…” (from the article)
Click here for a fascinating look into the highly imaginative and humanistic approach of Belgian football coach, Michel Bruyninckx. Bruyninckx’s innovative use of constraints along with measures for cognitively overloading players provide an excellent model for learning and integrating a myriad of complex patterns while removing the unnecessary self-judgment. I call it the Feldenkrais-Erickson-Inner Game (Moshe Feldenkrais, Milton Erickson, W. Timothy Gallwey) approach.
“…But at the end of the process, what really creates the sounds that comes out of the instruments is the movement that they make.”
-Uri Vardi (from the video)
Watch this video by Steve Cutts for tragic and hilarious insight into our culture–one of rampant consumerism and degraded sense-abilities.