A Million to One

Imagine you represent a million people and are one of six thousand who must decide how to create a global village on thirty-six thousand acres and one millionth share of the earth’s resources. Once you establish an economic, social, and political plan, you will be randomly assigned a role and status in the villiage.

Beginning Principles

The Master replied: "...What you do not want done to yourself,
do not do unto others.
-----Confucius

Do naught to others which, if done to thee, would cause thee pain:
this is the sum of duty.
-----Hinduism

You gotta get it done.
-----baseball coach

Every fool can make a rule and every fool will mind it.
-----Henry David Thoreau

Those who build fences always fence out more than they fence in.
-----a father

If you desire to help thy friend,
do so in a way that will not bring
thy friend’s burdens upon thyself.
-----George Clason

What a tangled web we weave
when first we practice to deceive.
-----Walter Scott

Education is the art of creating character.
-----Us

...In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
-----Benjamin Franklin

He has no right to be a father if he cannot fulfill a father’s duties.
Poverty, pressure of business, mistaken social prejudices,
none of these can excuse a man from his duty,
which is to support and educate his own children.
-----Rousseau

A thing is worth whatever a buyer will pay for it.
-----Publilius Syrus, First Century B.C.

Simplicity is the last step of art, and the beginning of nature.
Bruce Lee

Whether or not a choice is made according to self interest,
it is an individual who makes the choice.
-----Alchian and Allen

If you won’t compete with me,
I will dominate you.
-----Michael Jordan on basketball

At present we know that the imagination, like certain wild animals,
will not breed in captivity.
-----George Orwell

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt
until they are too strong to be broken.
-----Samuel Johnson

Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you...
explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean
of one’s being alone.
-----Henry Thoreau

Each person is an island unto himself, in a very real sense;
and he can only build bridges to other islands
if he is first of all willing to be himself,
and permitted to be himself.
-----Carl R. Rogers

You have to look at yourself in the mirror
and then visualize what you can be.
Every year I make a plan. I do it. It will be done.
-----Arnold S.

Purpose is but a slave to memory,
of violent birth, but poor validity,
Which new, the fruit unripe, sticks in the tree
but fall unshaken when they mellow be.
-----William Shakespeare

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful
about what we pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut

Language and Learning

Now where do we get the notion that "right" and "wrong" are absolutes?
It seems to me that this arises in the early grades,
when children who know very little are taught
by teachers who know very little more.
-----Issac Azimov

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
-----George Orwell from 1984

Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless,
and add what is specifically your own.
-----Bruce Lee

Never overlook the opportunity to keep your mouth shut.
-----anon

Behavior is determined by its consequences.
-----B.F. Skinner

I had taught myself
that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter
as for rewards and punishments that were fair.
-----Kurt Vonnegut from Mother Night

Learning this, discerning that,
if one cannot express the difference between the quick and the dead,
one should not paint.
-----Katsushilea Hokusai

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past. I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
----Frank Herbert

When we are out in the rain getting wet,
every one else is taking the day off.
-----Dan Spencer

Almost all living things act to free themselves from harmful contacts.
-----B.F. Skinner

Just because something is always done one way
is no reason to keep doing it that way.
-----Frederic Chopin

Be like water making its way through cracks.
Do not be assertive, but adjust ourselves to the object.
We shall find the way around or through it.
The softer the substance is, the narrower the crack
through which it can pass.
-----Bruce Lee

 ommunication

Saying what we think gives a wider range of conversation
than saying what we know.
-----Cullen Hightower

...for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things
which he can afford to let alone [silence is golden].

-----Thoreau

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
-----George Orwell

It is better to light a candle
than to curse the darkness.
-----Eleanor Roosevelt

Society

The proletariat worker experiences a powerlessness in society
due to the process and alienation of work.
-----Karl Marx

Money is the only commodity that is good for nothing
but to be gotten rid of.
It will not feed you, clothe you, shelter you, or amuse you
unless you spend it or invest it.
It imparts value only in parting.
-----Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself,
than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
-----Thoreau

Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
-----Rousseau

When those who are governed do too little,
those who govern can--and often will--do too much.
-----Ronald Reagan

Like its politicians and its wars,
society has the teenagers it deserves.
J.B. Priestley

Death and Dying

The more complete one’s life is,
the more one’s creative capacities are fulfilled, the less one fears death.
People are not afraid of death per se,
but of the incompleteness of their lives.
-----Lisa Marburg Goodman

The only thing in this life you really regret
are the risks you didn’t take.
And God knows if you see a chance to be happy,
grab for it with both hands and the hell with the consequences.
-----Jack Lemon in "Grumpy Old Men"

For thou shalt sleep, and never wake again,
and, quitting life, shalt quit thy living pain.
But we, thy friends, shall all those sorrows find,
which in forgetful death thou leav’st behind;
no time shall dry our tears,
nor drive thee from our mind.
The worst that can befall thee, measured right,
Is a sound slumber, and a long good-night.
-----Lucretius

Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal;
a man awaits his end, dreading and hoping all.
-----William Butler Yeats

So when our mortal frame shall be disjoin’d,
the lifeless lump uncoupled from the mind,
from sense of grief and pain we shall be free;
we shall not feel, because we shall not be.
-----Lucretius

The Problem of Good and Evil

Where is the evil?
It’s that large part of man that wants to hate without limit,
that wants to hate with God on its side.
It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.
It’s that part of an imbecile
that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.
-----Kurt Vonnegut

Vocabulary and phrases from Amabile and Tighe on Creative Thinking
(Define Them)

Romantic

Heisenberg uncertainty principle

experimental psychologist

cognitive scientist

history of inquiry

heuristic

algorithmic

observable products and responses

souffle'

collage

inherent

ingenuous/ ingenious

consensual assessment

operational definition

assumption

completely random product of nature

novelty of response, appropriateness of response, open-endedness of task

aesthetic objects to admire

bizarre

creativity is a discontinuous quality

corollary assumption

parsimony suggests a continuity in creative thought and work

eminence

Creativity can and should be studied at all its levels in any domain.

garden variety and ground breaking

metaphor

horse on a treadmill

domain relevant skills

creativity relevant skills

intrinsic/extrinsic motivation

primarily for its own sake

hypothesized

People will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself.

The revlevant skills of creativity are: flexibility in problem definition, reconceptualizing existing problems in new ways, information processing heuristics; intellectual independance, wide or global categorization of information, risk taking; tolerance of ambiguity, perseverance, openness to change, risk taking, and individuality.

validating criteria

analogous

extrinsic constriant

intrinsic interest

satisficing

salient

extrinsic

incentives

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