A Flash of The Future (2 of 2)

Let me explain you with a story:

A man was found sitting in the middle of the desert in a contraption made of rocks, bits of lumber, and old, blown tires, which he was busily “steering” as if it were actually a vehicle in motion, a real car.
When asked what he was doing, the man said,
“Driving home.”
“You’re never going to get there in this,” he was told.
He said, “If not in this, then in what?” 

We’re like this man, busily trying to steer into the future in an assembled trash called 'programs'. Even after we’ve acknowledged that programs don’t work and never have worked, however, it still somehow seems natural to ask, “If not programs, then what?”
The answer would be simple. It's ridiculously simple, you may laugh at it: vision.
When things work, the forces that make them work are invisible. The universe at large is a notorious example of this. We tend only to see the result of something, not the process before it, nor the vision before the process. Newton’s genius was precisely the genius of seeing that which is so evident as to be unseeable. Every advance in science makes manifest a working that is cloaked by its very success. Before Newton, people didn’t wonder why unsupported objects are compelled to fall to the ground. They just figured, what else could they do? They have to fall to the ground, and that’s that.
Vision, imagination and curiousity are scarce in our world, the ability and will to look beyond what's been programmed is even more rare. To questioned everything and not just taking it for granted. People are amazed by the success of Neil Armstrong's landing on the moon, yet when being asked why did it succeed, the most possible answer we could hear is, 'it's simply succeed.' We never investigate, we never--ever--investigate and be curious.
What is it the cause of global warming? The best possible answer I've ever heard was simply because our earth was too old, and human lifestyle made the condition even worse.

Now, back to the saving the world thingy, the question I asked earlier was: who will save the world? And I said, it's not us--not the old minds with new programs, but instead, new minds with no programs at all that'll save this world. Why not new minds with new programs? Because where you find people working on programs, you don’t find new minds, you find old ones. Programs and old minds go together like bread and jam. We don't need programs, we need vision. This is of course a difficult concept to be swallowed, it required you to flip your whole worldview, you need to be brainwashed to understand it fully. And don't ever perceived it in old minds way, don't ever asked, 'how do we solve these problems', but instead, asked 'how do we make happen what we want to happen?'. Work on the solution, don't dwell in the problems. And by 'solution' I don't mean the opposite of problems. Poverty would still exists and are never going to be fixed with 'richness', they are of course the opposite, but that doesn't mean it can be an effective solution. If we ever treat the homeless, the hungry with more money, more food and more shelter that means we’re going to be doing this way forever. Fixing them forever. Because our minds can never think the other way, we're so bounded, caged and fenced on thinking always about 'stopping the negative'.

And now it's time for me to end this writing. What? Ending? There's no ending in this writing! why? Because it's all--one hundred percent--a beginning. The end is unwritten here, it's for us all to make one. Beyond these words, beyond my writings, the ending is out there in the real world. The ending is for you all to write.

A Flash of The Future (1 of 2)

I believe in change. That's not the words I stole from Harvey Dent or Obama campaign: I believe it myself. And in my perspective, the world hasn't change much today. Despite every stem cell implantation that worked, every cloning attempts that succeed, every new equation in mathematics and physics world, every new location named in brain by neuroscientists, every new words added to dictionary, actually we haven't moved much from the past era.
Something stopped us. Something made us stagnate here. And that 'something' was the old thinking.

The old thinking. Yes, those Olde-Worlde filth that stay within us to this very day. Old thinking believed in saving the world, saving the earth--and they took it literally. For the old minds, saving the world meant to save it biologically. Save the globe, save the forest, stop global warming, stop animal hunting, stop eating meat and so on. You're all welcome to attack me right now, but I believe: global warming isn't that devastating. Mass media blown it up, made it to something so frightening and unavoidable. Take a look at our past: even at our worst and most destructive, we would never be able to render this planet lifeless. Not even with our superior nuclear program, not even with our unhealthy lifestyle we can ever stop the life on earth. It goes on, you know. Don't ever stop it. It's the old thinking way, to stop something from happening, awww, that was so hundred years ago!

Saving the world can’t mean preserving the world as it is right now. Saving the world can't mean to stop eating meat, stop pollution, oh fuck that, saving the world can't mean staying in status quo. That may sound like a nice idea, but it’s also out of reach. Even if the entire human race vanished tomorrow, the world wouldn’t stay the way it is today. We will never, under any circumstances, be able to stop the change that happened on this planet. So how is it to save the world? Well, that's a wrong question. Let me correct it: who is it that's going to save the world? It can't be us, not the people of today. Why? Because our minds are the old minds, and the old minds--like I said before--believe in 'stopping'. Here’s how old minds think of stopping us. They think of stopping us the way they stopped poverty, the way they stopped drug abuse, the way they stopped crime. With programs. Programs that have been implanted in our minds for too long, for centuries or maybe millenniums. When the rainforest numbers are declining, governments made a programs to stop it, when poverty exposed in some area of the world, we made programs to feed the poor, when child abuse happened, we launch a program to prevent it. Programs, programs and more programs. Programs never stop the things they’re launched to stop. No program has ever stopped poverty, drug abuse, or crime, and no program ever will stop them. And no program will ever stop us from devastating the world.

Programs make it possible to look busy and purposeful while failing. If programs actually did the things people expect them to do, then human society would be heaven: our governments would work, our schools would work, our law enforcement systems would work, our justice systems would work, our penal systems would work, and so on. When programs fail (as they invariably do), this is blamed on things like poor design, lack of funds and staff, bad management, and inadequate training. When programs fail, look for them to be replaced by new ones with improved design, increased funding and staff, superior management, and better training. When these new programs fail (as they invariably do), this is blamed on poor design, lack of funds and staff, bad management, and inadequate training. This is why we spend more and more on our failures every year. Most people accept this willingly enough, because they know they’re getting more every year: bigger budgets, more laws, more police, more prisons—more of everything that didn’t work last year or the year before that or the year before that. Old minds think that if we're failing this year, we gotta do MORE on the next year. If we're failing a class this year, we gotta learn MORE the same subject next year. If the stop AIDS campaign is failing this year, put MORE budgets and MORE publications next year. Bullshit. Why didn't try this: if it didn’t work last year, let’s do something ELSE this year.

Then, the next question you may raised is this: If not programs, then what?

(The answer is on the next post)

2009 Blockbusters Quick Review!!

Okay, we've been through the first semester of 2009, actually, I've seen many movies during this period, but I choose six of recently released blockbusters to be reviewed, here they go!

(THE GOOD)

Watchmen: Zack Snyder lived up the dystopian future of Alan Moore's story. The movie adaptation of Watchmen is well-balanced and well-measured, it was fresh enough for casual moviegoers, yet deep and insightful enough for anyone who had literacy in the original graphic novel. Nothing seems out of the bound, even the significant change in the ending is a great addition to the rich and brooding world of Watchmen.

Star Trek: I might be fed up with Lost and slightly disappointed with Mission Impossible 3, but J.J Abrams and his mystery box philosophy keep me guessing. In this reboot of Star Trek, J.J is boldly going where no man has gone before, and outdid himself. From perfect casting for Spock and Kirk (I'm no boy-lover, but I think Chris Pine and ZQ are fit for the role), to the shocking story involved quantum physics and time-travel thing, the new Star Trek could be listed as new classic sci-fi masterpiece.

Drag Me To Hell: Many of my friends complaining about this movie. They said it was horrible and tasteless, but hey, this is Sam Raimi back to the origin! Raimi--a connoisseur in cheap horror--actually revived the genre with his Evil Dead franchise, started back in 1981. With over the top gore, disgusting properties, and shocking scenes, Drag Me To Hell could be counted as something like Raimi taking back his throne over the genre. (Heck, even his trademark and style could even be seen in Spider-man trilogy!!) And now, Raimi back on his track once again, following his bliss and produce a slapstick, humorous, highly-entertained horror movie. Well, I can't blame any of my friend who hated the movie, they might not know about Sam Raimi's historical stuff at all, that's why the didn't 'get' the movie, but for those who do understand a thing about Sam Raimi, the movie was total fun.

 

(THE BAD)

Transformers Revenge of The Fallen: Michael Bay's fucking epic sequel of 2007's Transformers is--sadly--are just the same old story. I'm not going into contradiction here, I knew about director's trademark: Raimi's cheesy horror, Tarantino's ultraviolence, Guy Ritchie's quick-cut-editing, and Michael Bay's big explosions. And here's the flaw, director's trademark should be adaptable and not fucking immoveable. Raimi went from Evil Dead to Spider-man, Tarantino switched from Reservoir Dogs to Kill Bill, William Friedkin tried everything from The Exorcist to The French Connection, Kubrick went sci-fi in 2001, then horror in The Shining, every named directors are known for their capability of switching genres and high adaptability over the script's and story demand. And that's what missing from Michael Bay: visual effect abuse, bullet-shooting and big explosions are all that he can do. Nothing more.

Terminator Salvation: The war depicted in previous installments of Terminator franchise finally told. And is it good? No! Terminator--in its own terms meant 'a machine sent back through time to prevent something happening.' The three predecessors of Salvation got those time travelled machines (or cyborgs), while Salvation really got nothing to be told except war, war and war all the time. The story was just a micro detail in Salvation, and it got no interesting development. Pathetic.

X-Men Origins - Wolverine: One golden rule in franchise movie-making: don't left out the audience who were having literacy and deep knowledge about the story. Don't treat anyone the same, as if they do not know anything at all. That's why Batman Begins succeed, it gave a refreshment of Batman mythology without stripping the original idea. It redefine, not deconstruct. It embraced new audiences as well as the old fans. But Wolverine? It mocked our intelligence. It's dumb as hell

 

(AND I’M STILL WAITING FOR PIXAR’S UP!!)

God And Religions

“He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.”
~Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I knew I haven't been to church in a very long time, I haven't even say a prayer these days, but that doesn't mean I didn't believe in any God. That doesn't mean I'm into this godlessness situation. I do have a God, though I can't say what's my God looks like. My encounter with God didn't exist in any level of humanity and physical situation (say, like witnessing a miracle, or praying to a statue). No. my God exist in a very reasonable way—for I'm myself, a logical person—not a devout believer. Unlike many religious practitioner, I won't fall into any childlike myth and water-turn-to-wine bullshit. My God needs to be logical, coherent, and make sense. And how do I find God in my empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, scientific personal world? I found my God as an idea and imagination. Let me enlightened you on how I always found God in every small details of my logical life. God needs not to be big, God needs not to be omnipotent and almighty. He isn't the ruler of the world, He's our servant. I'm going into this Wittgenstein-like investigations, now.

* I'm a self-taught in visual arts, I learnt many things from pencil drawing to digital imaging--I knew the theory of color spectrum. I knew what you'll have when you mixed every color available in world, you got the color of white. It's objective and empirically tested, white is the sum of all colors in the whole universe. Now, is that including the color of black? No. There's no such thing in this universe known as 'black' it didn't objectively exist. Black is an illusion. It's a condition when there are no colors. The absence of color. And did everyone believes in it? Yes. Everyone believes that there are such thing as 'black' even though it didn't exist.

** Have you ever feel the cold? The condition when the temperature dropped too low, makes your body shiver and freeze? But, what is exactly 'cold'? Again, just like 'black', there's no such thing in this world as 'cold'. It's only a label we gave for the absence of heat. We knew and we can measure lots of heat, even 'more heat', 'superheat', 'mega heat',or no heat… But we don’t have anything called Cold. We can hit 458 Degrees below Zero which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. No cold following after that. There is no such thing as Cold. Cold is only a label we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, just the absence of it. But, again, we do believe in something as 'cold', don't we?

*** Many concepts in my major, psychology involved non-objective things. Terms like, 'memories', 'dreams', 'mind', 'imagination' are never exist in the objective world such as ours. Yet, we do believe the image flashes back from our childhood as something actual and relevant. We can tell exactly our vivid imagination to our friend when we abstracting something in our head. We can tell it. Objectively. Even though you can't touch memories, you can't hold up imagination. We only experienced it, but we can't touch it with our five senses--and still, we believe it.

Those are just some little illustrations on how I can always find God in my daily life. A God that is entirely coherent and relevant, a God that is logical and explainable, even though it wasn't there at all. My God perhaps just like 'black', or 'cold', my God perhaps like 'mind' or 'memories', I can never explain it, but I do believe in its existence (or lack thereof).
Just because I'm not seeing something, doesn't mean it isn't there. I inhale oxygen everytime I breathe, I know that I breathe air even though I'm not seeing the exact matter. My God isn't a measurable things, not a discrete variables, not a black-white duality, not heaven-hell or good-bad. My God can't be named, depicted or touched. I can't even pray for him, for he has no ear. He won't help me, for he has no feelings. My God perhaps like a continuous variable: it's hard to distinguish Him from everything else, like a water pressure or humidity. My God didn't belong to any religion, I can't find him in Christianity, I can't find him in Islam, Jew, Buddhism, or else, my God belongs to art and science. He's up there for something unexplainable, something that haven't yet discovered, something void yet exist. My God is an artist, he can paint in black. My God is a scientist, he made up cold out of heat. My God is just an idea. An imagination. A belief. A deep faith. My God need not to be prayed for, sung for, hailed for, or sacrificed for. He needs only to be believed. That's all my God asks, and I do it. I don't need to be tied to any religion, for I already have art and science. And that's where my God belongs: I believe in God.

The Autodidact's Creed

My friend and I were having this conversation some days ago regarding the topics of formal education and school life. He challenged the way I always criticized academic life and standardized achievement, he asked,

"Why you had to be so violent, so hostile against the whole academic standardization? After all, formal education--the one you hate about--had been there for thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands years ago. It's a proof that the society needed it. There are always demand, so the supply kept continue."

I admit, my friend got a point there. Education reform, as I always blabbering about, may or may not be happened, all depended on the paradigm shift that will occur in society. But in the meantime, there'll always people like me, who aren't fit in the strict environment such as school or university, because simply: we have taught ourselves so well without any aid from external teachers or mentors. There'll be  always autodidactic people--the highly independent individual, the free-spirited soul--who will shake the calm situation, and turn it into chaos. 

It's time to get arrogant and narcissistic, but I told you one fact: schoolwork always came easy to me. It required only imitations of highly structured subjects and material given by the formal institution. It required no effort, exploration or imagination at all, everything is clear and rigid, with given examples, know-how, and systematic step. Thus I'm proudly claiming: schoolwork is effortless, so effortless in fact, it became ridiculous for me. (Now you know why I'm always skipping class, abandon the homework, and all). Not only it kills creativity, but it's also shrouded you from your passion, it teaches you nothing so significant. Most people can't agree with my opinion, because--hell--they do not know what's on the other side, but those who've tasted the long and winding road known as self-learning, may get the idea.

I'm an autodidactic person for my entire life. Hell, even since I was a child, I've been exploring the neighborhood and got lost there--three times a week. I let my passion became my greatest coach, my teacher. The first time I held up the Tintin comic book (when I was 3 or 4), I have this intuitive feeling to be able to draw like Herge, so I get down from my bed, took my pencil, and doodling the wall. And heck, it wasn't even a good draw like I did now, it was just incoherent lines, disconnected one from another. But since no one told me it was bad, since no one told me it was awful, I can't even know the limit. The only thing that separate me from failure was my own mind and body, my limited knowledge and understanding. So I made another doodle, and another, and another. I kept going, even though no one there to teach me, no one there to observe me, assess and make a grade out of my doodle. I am my own teacher, and I am my own pupil. Driven by natural curiousity, I kept going on this blind road, no one knows where the finish line will be. Years it took before I can finally master the instrument, with sweat, tears, bodily pain and all, I finally came into mastery. Ever since that, tools are no longer a problem for me, I could easily switched between pencil and oil paints, or Adobe Photoshop or Coreldraw. I'm not saying it was a gift, a gift is something given, and in my case, it was something gained. Just like Michael Corleone in The Godfather movie said, "Power must not be given, it must be taken.", so do I, lived up those statement: I taught myself to be empowered, to have a passion I'm dying to strive for.

This is a totally different environment than any formal school can give. In school, there's always teacher to guide your hand, there's always people told you what's to do, and what's not. Someone will say, "stop!" when you bleed your hand for trying to make a good fractal splash (believe it or not, I've done that ^_^), someone will tell you to, “relax.” when seeing you frustrated there in the corner of your room, sad for not being able to made a mobius strip. And hell, I know those feeling of true failure and discouragement, the one they're not teaching even at any best school. Because, honestly, unlike any education that offered external instructors, teachers or mentors, autodidactic learning is really required an effort. A full body and mind effort. And I know exactly how it feels, because I've been there, in those moment of failure, and not only because of those stupid assignments given by school, not only because of the bad grades you just received: I was there in the lowest point of my life, when I couldn't even beat the one person I want to defeat, that is myself. I knew the lonely feelings when my best friend was only my pencil and paper, only my camera, or my stack of books. This is what you'll get beyond the standardized structures and rigid environment. A real challenge, a true mental riddle caused not by the demand of your school or workplace, but by you, yourself, who were trying to taste real live. You're trying to be alive and not just merely exist in this world. 

And from my experience of autodidacting, I can't help but to grew up differently from my friends: countless times I've been called 'rebel' and 'stupid'. Yeah, I'm stupid and rebellious according to known standard. This much helped me to shape a different mental and mindset: I learned to be independent and productive, I learned to be self-fulfilling, not depending myself to other people. I learned the hard way, I knew the destruction before construction, the chaos before order. I know all these concepts and ideas of 10,000 hours of learning. I know it by my very heart. And that's what been missing out from school: a respect for your own capabilities.
I know I am a logical person and an individual who value knowledge over everything, but to think that school, teacher, and textbooks are the only source of knowledge, it would be stupid. Knowledge aren't that easy to be passed and transferred, otherwise it would only be 'information'. And information is not knowledge. Knowledge specifically attached to your cognitive and practical skill, it won't go away easily. It follow you your whole life. If you ever came to the conclusion, "I forget about Gaussian distribution formula." or, "I can't hardly remember Schopenhauer idealism." That's because you only informed about it. Informed, and not understood. And school is all about information. It's about how good you could remembered those formulas and specific, micro details about a subject, projecting it in paper and pencil tests, and after that, you could forget it. 

And me, being shaped by my years of autodidact method in many subjects, knew the difference between real proud and shame. I know something about genuine and artificial, and I know the danger of 'going with the mainstream' without so much knowing what's going on the other stream. The high feeling when someone say, "your drawings are cool", "that's a good photo, Lang", or "A nice piece of writing." is a true genuine feelings, because it's all mine. My work, my learning, not anyone else's. And I don't get those high feelings when my teachers said, "you got a B+ in your exam, higher than anyone in class." I'm not feeling proud for that, because simply, gaining a B+ feel effortless for me. A joke. And for that, I'm sorry, I can't help but to be hostile to the whole educational system, because I knew exactly what's outside of those school environment. Beyond the high walls of school, I've learned harder road, walked blindly without any obvious finish line. And believe me, if you have any autodidact experience (especially if it took more than 10 years, like me...) it'll shape your mindset and mental thinking in different way than anyone. Failing classes or bad grades in school isn't felt like a failure, because you already feel more greater failure. A true failure, perhaps. That is when you first began to dive in the subject you have passion for. When you accelerate yourself 100% in the subject that you loved and have passion for, you will--in one or another way--had this urgency to doing it, with or without any external guidance or teacher, because it's almost instinctual feelings. Like falling in love with your lover, you'll get yourself into the action and striving for it.

Apart from the many pros behind it, actually autodidacticism and self-learning required an effort so hard, a price you had to pay. Usually it's in the matter of time and mind-body-tiredness, but sometimes it tax you something more bigger. The risk could be so fatal, for you're on yourself in this one, no one there to protect you from falling apart or get depressed. Scary? Perhaps, but once you're at it, you can't help but to embrace those risks, because after all, it is your responsibility. Yourself, and not anyone else's. But don't forget also about the advantages...apart from being so fucking independent, autodidact means that you can stand out clearly from the rest of your mates--they learned the 'tame' way, while you embracing the 'wild' road. You get tougher, you become a hard-ass resistant who is invulnerable to small failure. You have great dedication and integrity, heck you can even be famous--remember, Einstein, Nietzsche, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, Dickens and T.A Edison are dedicated autodidacts. They were either dropped out of formal school or educated themselves through reading and real-life experimentation. Autodidacts advantages you not only practically and cognitively, it also gave you self-discipline, out-of-the-box imagination, courage to explore, high-rated resiliency and mental thinking of the brave, not the chicken. You'll learn to lived up your full potential and surprise everyone around. A lecturer of mine said something about 'plunge in to your passion' and 'dive in the experience', and I know precisely what is he trying to say. I've read Jerome Bruner's Acts of Meaning and understood totally what he meant about 'learning through real-acts'. I knew it. There's a big difference between letting yourself be taught by teachers, instructors or mentors with stand there on yourself. And by 'big difference' I'm not saying about the outcome of the process, I'm not contrasting the paintings made by an artschool student with mine (the one without any formal education in art), I'm saying about self-development, the human outcome. They'll come out differently. Graduate students may knew something about boundaries and systematic structures, the step by step approach to a problem, but the autodidactic knew something beyond that: they knew about imaginations, about explorations and will likely to be crossing the line without hesitation. The graduates may put 'efficiency' above everything, while the autodidactic will be likely to dive into chaotic process, perhaps something more than the graduate students can do, because the self-learner do not know anything about boundaries and limitations. 

In the end, the self-learner, the autodidactic person knew and value something about process. They've been to hell and back. This is an autodidact's creed, and yes, I've learnt the hard way.

"The teacher without reverence, or the bureaucrat without reverence, easily despises the child to inferiorities. He thinks it is his duty to ‘mould’ the child: in imagination he is the potter with the clay. And so he gives to the child some unnatural shape, which hardens with age, producing strains and spiritual dissatisfactions, out of which grow cruelty and envy, and the belief that others must be compelled to undergo the same distortions."

— Bertrand Russell

In Years To Come

*part of series of writing (end)

This will be the last part of my series of writing. Let's continue the topics upon literacy, and how can we get literated in the relevancy of our society, of the zeitgeist and mainstream? How can it be done? All in all, it was the means of every education in this world. Schools and teachers alike, tried their best to transferring their knowledge so that the students can pass it beyond than just some paperwork for the thesis or exam sheets in standardized test. So that the student may get the proper literacy to face the real world. Yet, nothing in the classroom had prepared us to face what's outside the school wall, not while the students knew school only for the homework and lab experiment, without ever facing the actual battlefield.

An art student who master in traditional paintings, graduated as the brightest pupil in his year. He may be appreciated best in his field, but now that he went out of his school wall and seeing the real world with his own two eyes, he saw people no longer interested in traditional painting. No art gallery hung up classic canvas in beautiful frame on their walls anymore, everything went digital. Oil colors replaced by Photoshop palette, while charcoal pencil replaced by vector tool. The art student, who master only traditional ways, now became confused. The times they are a changing. He drowned and sink deep in this digital sea.

In years to come, everything will be shift. Directions had been set from years ago. Our entire life had been mapped from the beginning, and it's time to draw some lines upon the paper so that the dots will be connected and the larger image appeared. The topography map had been laid out in front of our eyes, yet still we always failed to read it. And usually, the reason was because many people failed to see beyond the maps. What they knew was that the topography map was fixed, while in reality it was fluid and constantly changing according to the architect's hands who drawn it. Graduate education doesn't guarantee anything except 'learning about', and when they proceeds to the real world, that's when the 'learning to be' took place. But that doesn't mean we can't accelerate the pace, we can. My friend the pianist had 'learning to be' a musician ever since she was a child, and so do I. When talking about dedication and passion, it's not about apprentice and master, or newbie and expert, it's about curiousity. The will to explore and dig in further.

Nowadays, information are easily accessible. Social media had extensively grown and keep grown each day, it provides not only a large amount of learning places, it also means the expansion of access. Yes, access so that we can meet a variety of people, communities and society who had distinct understanding of knowledge. And what good does meeting with those people would do? It good to expanding our already established knowledge, add it up with new information, filtering out the unnecessary ones. Frankly, school curriculum had also tried these attempts, by committing students to learning many subject at a time: remember the day when we taught of chemistry, physics, sociology and art in one day? That was the day when the information crammed up inside us, attempts should not be given repeatedly without any good quality times to reflect back upon them. Repeated attempts tend to fall into routines, which iron out the improvisation and exploration.

From the visual media examines to the philosophy of life, I hope you can extract something out of these writings. I'm. Just. Hoping.

 

 

AFTERWORDS

But that was merely the tip of the iceberg, many can be pointed out as flaws in our education, cultural and social environment--but we won't go further into the subject of school and means of education, let's stay on the track--I'm deeply sorry if my writings here tend to overlook human as 'information sponges' who have the absorptive capacity, I may overgeneralized, at least from my point of view as a quick learner (I easily understand many things). Thanks for reading.

Million Little Gods

*part of series of writing

Notice how far we've come from the first idea of visual media to the shaping of identity, but somehow if you managed the thin red line among these writings, you'll get it (after all, it was all about 'information' and 'knowledge', let's see if you can extract something out of it. Haha) Now, let's continue the latest topic about identity, now we shift a bit to the means of information transfer, and how can we conduct it to be knowledge. 
I'll talk about the 'tacit knowledge' that came after a mastering--an intuitive insight that came without any external physical stuff.

An example, I know a named photographer who were able to distinguish a 'fake' photograph from 'natural' one. That means, he knew exactly, if the scene freezed in the photo was naturally taken (that is by perfect timing, almost accidentally), or whether it was staged and arranged before (i.e the scene was prepared before), though from different perspective, I should said from 'common' eyes, there was no discernible difference. How did he got those ability? Magic? Sixth-sense metaphysics ability? No. Big no. He learnt it from practices. Hours of practices. Years of practices. It was something (apart from that it was logically correct) that was taken as being non-sense for most people, particularly in the rigid environment such as school or university. (Again, I talked about it. Hahaha) People usually rejects the intuitive reasoning, for they can't see where it comes from. Yeah, honestly , it come from a very, very logical event named PROCESS. The fact that people didn't see the process (of how my friend the pianist in the last chapter learning about music theory, or me examining Batman's detail) made them became unbeliever.  All and all, the intuitive reasoning I talked about can be called as literacy—albeit in the particular photographer, it was a miraculous one—but I guess everyone had their own literacy, at least in their own field.

Literacy is one thing that commonly forgotten in the society, for instance, despite of how many you knew about Shakespeare, and years you spent on learning his poems, how could you talked about Shakespeare among the people who were trained to determine standard error in statistics? No matter how hard you pushed them to swallow the info about Shakespeare, they won't understand it deeply, they won't be as good as you--the one who had great literacy in Shakespearean stuff. A photographer won't fit in the room full of business officer, for even though they can communicate each other, there'll be no meanings transferred, if both party didn't have literacy in each dimensions of understanding.

And speaking of literacy, it associated deeply with identity. Like in the second part of this writing, knowledge is usually attributed to a particular person. A practitioner. I could talk hours and hours with my friend a moviegoer, for both of us had literacy in it. For years we've read about movie books, we watch tons of movie, we knew the differences between an IMAX camera and the usual 35mm, for we--albeit so little--have plunged ourselves to the literal world of movies and films. The fact that we only 'know about' movie, sometimes could bloom into 'know how', maybe sometimes any of me or my friend would make our own movie, who knows what'll happen when you have those commitment and passion?
Yet the fact that literacy--sprung from love and passion of particular subject(s)--can gave us identity can't be denied. I can easily point my finger to my friend the pianist whenever someone asked me, "Who's around here that knowing something about music?" or I can easily introduce my friend the moviegoer when someone asked anything about movie.

Does literacy means we had to be such an asshole who knew everything? To some extent, yes. At least know everything in your field. If you're a pianist, go get to know everything about piano and music. If you're an illustrator, eat and drink every information you know about illustration and drawings. The danger of possessing half-information could be dangerous, you might get wrong interpretation of it. As Abraham Maslow put it precisely, all of our entire life was endless learning. A lifelong education where everybody is forever teacher and forever pupil. You're going nowhere if you insist to play it by the book and according to the rule. Play both sides, inside and outside the book, so you might reflect back what've you done these whole times, so you might see the coordinates you mapped yourself and plan some new continuum along the straight lines of your Cartesian diagram of life. 

--TO BE CONTINUED--

They Who'll Give Us Name

*Part of series of writings

Bruner's distinction was highly relevant with today's world cultural climate and environment. The particular knowledge I'm talking about in the last part was referring to 'literacy' or 'prior knowledge' that was somehow tacit and intangible. Now, in this part we'll examine our first idea about visual media, and how these days we can't escape the visual regime, thus forced us to be informed and taught by them. To my generation, our entire life was shaped by them, it was the visual regime who determine the extent to which something will make meanings, and the extent to which those meanings will be taken seriously in society.

But where does information acquired from social media could took us? It depends on how we treat the incoming information, how we transfer them to ourselves and what can we make out of it. It's too true that our social surrounding promises, above all, the experience of meaningfulness. Any information gathered from our experience in social engagements, shaped us into who we are, but that doesn't mean they can give you any identity. Yes, identity, as without it, we'll be flushed away in this world of demands and harsh fact. And identity was shaped through the means of information gathering, processing (or make it into knowledge), or to be short: learning.
(Remember, by learning here, I don't assume something like 'education'--I wouldn't need to forced out this point so heavily of how that unenlightened teaching and training often pulls in the opposite direction, you can always read my rant in my other posts, hehe...) Learning and meanings, learning and identity, this sort of things were what will we discussed in this and next posts. Learning (that ended up in mastering), more than often--if it's not automatically--gave the practitioner an identity.

I have this one friend of mine who was identified as 'musician' among our friends, she was a pianist, and that social recognition given by the society for her amazing 'tacit knowledge' and ability in music, particularly the piano. The second example would be myself (hahaa) who was often identified among my friends as 'illustrator', 'designer' or anything that are related with visual art. One day, both of us (me and my friend the pianist), talked together. And from those talks, I recognized what Bruner's point in 'engage on activities' means. My friend talked heavily about how she shaped herself into an able pianist.

First, as an information gathering activities, she dived herself to musical theories, she submit herself to listened to many named composer and pianist, such as Rachmaninoff or Debussy, Bubi Chen or Herbie Hancock. These were taken as meaningful experiences for her, how she gather the information about music and musician, just the same as how I first interested in Herge's Tintin, Batman comics, or Disney's animation. I took them as information, I examined particular detail in Batman's shadowing, the dynamic movement in Tintin's comic panel, and/or coloring in Disney's animation. Our exploration, ended up in understanding, for we're not taking the information as something that was taken for granted. We consciously process them, not only remembering them.

The second part was meaning making, engage in the particular activity we loved to do. My friend, she then started to summon an instrument for herself: a piano. Learn to play it, compose a music out of it, practice it. The same as how I grab a pencil, make a doodle in my bedroom wall (and forced my father to repaint again and again the wall, haha, sorry dad!), before I start to moved on to paper. And what does the previous information gained for both of us? What good did music theories for my friend, and what good did shadowing and coloring did for me? It's good for expanding. Soon as my friend start to playing guitar and bass guitar, so do I can expand myself to oil paint and charcoal stick. For us, it's easy to move on from one instrument to another, for we're not taking it as our object of affection. We're not limiting ourselves to the instrument only, we learn the subject, and that's why the mediated tool never a problem for us--well, maybe there'll be a bit 'adaptation problem' at first, but as the proverb says, "these too will pass." Now that my friend can record himself in digital sound, transferred in PC speaker, so I can managed to handle Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand. Instruments are not the great emphasize, like my first idea how physical product doesn't guarantee instant literacy, it only 'help' us, it doesn't ‘make’ us.

The third was mastering and social recognition. It required us not to became indulgent practitioner, we need to contribute in society. My friend, she commit herself to the church choir, a band and any zeitgeist that supports them, while I bring my illustration in printed shirt for an organization, publication posters or promotional video. This is where we got those recognition. We make some implications to society, give them something out of us. We can meet up the society demand, for we--with our extensive learning--are prepared with the supply. We can transformed the information we gather to something 'real'. It took us beyond theory and concepts (no matter how I loved them), and encourage us, knowing that we were able, to contribute in society.

 

--TO BE CONTINUED--

Those Who Speak, Dwell In Darkness. Those Who Stay in Silence, Enlightened.

*Part of series of writings

The gap I'm talking about in the previous part of these writings was the distinction between 'know about' and 'know how'. Many people today misinterpret something about knowledge and information. They thought it was the very same thing, yet to be honest: it was totally different. Knowledge is something like 'tacit information', it became some sort of 'intangible' in our minds, while information it is merely a remembered facts or concepts acquired by our five senses. A physical products may guarantee you informational value, but not knowledge and deeper meanings. In simple, having a book, doesn't guarantee you understand what's in it, right? Okay, we began this part by asking what's something that knowledge catches but that information does not?

The distinction may not seems so obvious between knowledge and information, but one thing that act as a constituent for knowledge is this: process. Remember, not physical products, not the instrument that mediating them, it was the activities, the process that shaped it in. There are three distinctions that strike us as particularly interesting between knowledge and information.

1. Knowledge entails a knower, that is where people treat information as independent and more-or-less self sufficient, they seem more inclined to associate knowledge with someone, for example you may find information scattered around waiting to be picked up ("where can I find reliable sources on temperament theory?", "can I googled something about the new-released Seth Godin's book?"), but in knowledge, you may asked this particular question, "Who knows about that?"

 

2. Knowledge appears harder to detach than information, because people treat information as a self-contained substance. Information is something that people usually pick up, possess, pass around, put in database, lose, find, write down, accumulate, count, compare and so forth. Knowledge, in opposite, doesn't take as kindly to any ideas of shipping, receiving and quantification. Knowledge is hard to pick up and hard to transfer. You might expect, for example, someone to send you or point you to the information they have, but not to knowledge they have.
Take example: a painter might told something to their pupils or disciples how to correctly draw a geometrical shape like square or rectangle, but that was just information. Even when the painter held one of his pupil hand and guide him along the paper to make a circle shape, it is also an informational transfer, not knowledge. The knowledge, belongs only to the teacher, and was unlikely to be transferred to the pupil, for it was a very hard one.

 

3. Knowledge may be so hard to give and receive is that knowledge seems to require more and more by way of assimilation. Knowledge is something we digest than merely hold. Knowledge is something we eat and drink, not merely remember. Thus for a person to bear knowledge, it requires understanding and some degree of commitment. Says a researcher gather an experiment to measure out the relation between music and personality, he may publish the final result of his research as information for public uses, but the knowledge remains to him only, as the researcher, the one who conduct the experiment and commit himself to it. The public, who received information, and then commit to gather more sources about it, to some extent may digest this as knowledge too, but not in the same degree as the researcher does.

 

Jerome Bruner, a professor of Psychology in New York University, points out some clearer distinction between 'learning about' and 'learning to be'. Certainly, most of anyone's knowledge might best be described as knowledge "about." -- we may brag our rich collection of English Premiere League statistics, quantum physics, Darwinian evolution, indie rock music scene, and all, yet we are not soccer player like Rio Ferdinand, we're not physicist like Richard Feynman, we're not evolutionary palenteologist like Stephen Jay Gould, we're not musician like Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. Something distinguish between us and them, and knowing something about Gibbard's personal life doesn't guarantee we can write music like him. Learning to be requires more than just information. It requires the ability to engage in practice in question.

 

--TO BE CONTINUED--

What We Possess and What We Don't

*Part of series of writings

Let's looking back our life, what life experience could we collect? For today's standard, life experience came mostly from watching movies, TV, reading books, looking at magazines and advertisement, and browsing the net. Social media is practically everywhere right now. Everything we see, everywhere we look, there are always some neatly designed commercial billboards, beautifully packaged products, head-turning posters, and more. Unconsciously, they shaped our culture. Yes, our culture wasn't anything passed from the earlier generations: ours is shaped by media and their viral publication.

Bombarded with images of 'white is beauty', today's women shaped themselves towards the ideal, screened with advertisement of 'fat is for loser, skinny is sexy', the youth start to dieting themselves for no apparent reason (apart from 'being skinny just for the sake of skinny'). Even the self-proclaimed 'vintage' people knew the vintage culture from magazine, not a historical culture that's passed by their earlier generation.
Everyday tons and tons of visual imagery supplied to our eyes, the things that seems cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and opportunities, the dramatic story of successful person.

First, we dressed up with thick make ups and elegant outfits, then it continue and became a sort of habitual activities, the activities spread along a specific zeitgeist, forming a to-be-culture that's ready to unleashed themselves to greater institution like society. After the society had been successfully penetrated (by means of publications and socialization), the culture are established. Staying there for quite some time, before the media inject us again with another trend, another aesthetic value.

Everywhere we look: there's a new advertisement of the new Gucci products, new Apple releases, the success story of Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, the miraculous-dramatic story of rehabilitated junkie out of Oprah's talkshow. We were told to be like them, we were told to dig some deeper meanings behind those fabricated publication. We are mocked when we dress in some loin cloth when we went public, everyone laughed when we can't say a thing about Twitter. Today's media publication and company marketing shape our culture, minimize the gap between what's real and what's dreamy.

We were told to tucked in our shirt so that we can look like Katie Holmes, we are forced to buy those Zara clothes so that we may look like the people who bought them. Workers work hard to gain money and ended up spending in some Armani shoes and the new BlackBerry Bolt. Children looked up on PS3 advertisement and begged their father to buy one, teenage looked up Katy Perry's dress and hunt them in shopping mall, adults fooled by the new time-saving application in iPhone so that they can access their emails everywhere, and ended up buying them. And what happened when we can't buy those products? What happened when we failed to lived up the ideal images of 'white is beauty' or 'thin is sexy'? What happened when we didn't participate in some global warming prevention campaign? You get alienated, people looked down on you, they reject you.

The gaps are enormous, between what's real and what's not. Yet, today's corporation and media had eliminate every bound possible. Oceans and mountains, miles of roads and ricefields are eliminated, so that we here in Jakarta can looks like the people in New York, so that we can also plug a big headphone to our iPod Nano like everyone in Tokyo did. Visual imagery in every social media, well, to be honest it was a clandestine arrangement to globalize everything, socialize everything, make everything familiar and 'touchable', they even make the intangible could be grasped easily.

Here's when the invisible ideology took us in, forced us to conform with them. Yet, we never realized it, we never--consciously--knew what kind of ideology and belief they were all injected to us. We knew about the physical products, yet can't grasped the concept behind it, a concept of globalization, an idea to gather everyone under one roof. Knew something that physical products don't guarantee instant literacy, we possess a Blackberry yet we can't maximized the functions (says like, email features or voice recognition call), that's when the gap happened.

--TO BE CONTINUED-- 

Facebook, and Evolution.

It's been 3 month since Facebook staff updated their layout to the latest incarnation--the one dubbed 'The Publisher'--the one we all used right now. The funny thing is, every time Mark Zuckerberg & co released new layout upon the site, there were always, ALWAYS, some groups of people voice their sound against it (don't mistake me, I've been in Facebook since 2007, almost 2 years now) I did a little search just some minutes later with the keyword 'new layout', and guess what I found:

 

There are many groups established to rally a support against Facebook's new layout (and I reckon many friends of mine joined in them, too...hehehe). According to my experience since 2007, Facebook had updated their layout, like, 3 times till now. And in each updates, those 'status quo' supporter always popped up again and again to scream their protests. "Bring Back The Old Facebook", "New Layout Sucks", "Against Facebook's New Layout", etc, etc. Of course people always had the right to indulge in their comfort zone and staying with the old. But what exactly is the pain of accepting change and new idea? To the close minded, the pain would be much and unbearable. To let go something that's been familiar with us--well, it required an effort, and open-mindedness. It urges us to form a new way of thinking, a new paradigm.

Notice something in those 'status-quo-lover' groups, they named themselves "2,000,000 People to Protest", "Millions to Hate New Facebook Layout" ...well, here's something I gotta tell you: communal protests, street revolutions, mass demonstrations, they ran out of place in this new century. Marxist revolutions won't work anymore. Today's power, it's not in the arms of many, it's in the arms of the minority. The dedicated, visionaries minority are the one who'll shape the world in future. Labor organization with 10,000 people could easily be smashed with one clever provocative person, right? See how Mark Zuckerberg ignore the protest and move on with those new layouts (not just once, but many times.)

 

‘The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.’

— Martin Luther King Jr.

 

From the micro-sized topic of the Facebook layout thingy, let’s broaden our topic, because frankly, all I want to discuss here was about change. The only thing that's constant in our world. Except time and change, nothing lasts forever in this world. Remember Darwinian evolution that encouraged us not to stay with the status quo, not to accept the things as they were before and as they are right now, rather we have to accept things as they will become. The strongest is not the one who'll survive, nor the most intelligent, it's the most adaptable who'll seize the day. 2,000,000 people with their strong will and loud voice might make a change, but imagine how long does it take to convince and find another 1,999,999 people who shared the same idea with you? Quantity can be beaten by quality, David can beat Goliath. The least minority--the ones who react correctly to situation--they are the masters of war. They’re the one who can turn the tide on the battle, because they had what others don’t: correct tools and instrument. See how Mark Zuckerberg stay deaf eared to the protestor, because in the end, Mark is the one who possess the tool, the instrument to change the whole Facebook layout and Terms of Service. He’s just one guy with a small army of programmer backed him up, but he can  spread influence to 200 million Facebook users around the world. He successfully turn the tide of the battle, he won in the war of one against many.

The idea is, today’s world is totally different from yesterday. And how stupid it was for us to keep looking back to the past, without so much looking ahead. The past may served us some deep meanings for our next step, but that’s that: we had to move on. Status quo may gave us security, comfort and sense of belongings, but it is merely an illusion, a temporary state, because in the end, it'll change. There's no point in resisting change, there's no use in tackling new ideas. Accept them, and change with them. Be responsive and adaptable, and you may continue to live.

(now, look what happened to those protesting groups in Facebook right now:)

1,497 fewer members, huh? Well, time's a CHANGING, buddy! :-)

‘Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.’

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Re-Education: Part 3

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.”

~ Galileo Galilei

Isn't it funny where an able pianist keep failing their subject just because they can't estimate standard error in statistics? Should a national athletes be scolded for their lack of skill in counting the validity score? What about the painters who were dragged to the headmaster's office just because he can't perfectly write Proclamation of Independence text?
Ours is a ridiculous education system, where subjects are broken into smaller pieces, with an emphasis on the technical and obscure, without any obvious instrumental value. Combined with the idea that neutrality is a condition of academic integrity, it's crystal clear that our educations are useless for public good. Too many of today's students graduate or leave early, unsure of their real talents and not knowing what direction to take next. Too many feel what they are good at isn’t valued by schools. Too many think they’re not good at anything.

 

Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one, doesn't matter where you go (you'd think it would be otherwise but it isn't). At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts.
Everywhere on earth, mathematics and languages are on top, humanities in the middle and arts on the bottom in the academic hierarchy. As children grow, we educate them from the waist up. And then--in higher education like university--just the head. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics. We didn’t let the students be the person they wanted to be, instead we forced them to be the person that was working for a master—in whip and carrot manner.

We should usher a radical rethink of the world's educational system, the one which subjects are interacting each others to allow us to connect education and social transformation. We should create a system where students continuously move outside the classroom to engage the world directly. The cross-disciplinary education is what we needed now, because frankly, our society had evolved much, today's education should be nothing like 10 years ago. We should create the school environment where students are passionate about their goals, an environment which allow the imagination and creativity. We should adjust our moral shift of education from 'traditional' and 'rigid' to 'flexible' and 'relevant', and NOT by breaking the subject into smaller scale for the sake of specialization, but by allowing the students to have their own 'personal space' to give birth to the dancing stars inside them.

"He is to be educated because he is a man, and not because he is to make shoes, nails, and pins."

~William Ellery Channing

END.

(PS: these three writings upon education are influenced by Sir Ken Robinson and Liz Coleman speeches on TED.)

Re-Education: Part 2

"An educated man is one who can entertain a new idea, entertain another person and entertain himself."

~ Sydney Wood

Education should be tied to greater community, it should serve the mass, it should rejuvenate the society and brings transformation to the world. I believe that, just like Jean Piaget said, "the principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done."  We should eliminate the 'tradition' value of education. We should inject a new paradigm of education for the new century, or else, we went astray in the face of globalization and modernity. Grades and scores, titles and degrees, they meant nothing for today's standard, where academic achievement wasn't the only thing that counts. We need more than just A score, we need more than just 4,00 GPA. We need to radically rethink about our view of intelligence, valuing more than just academic intelligence. We need new ideas, we need actions, we need creativity.

 

 

I knew my responsibility as a student, an agent of change. I knew my role as a scholar, that's why I'm complaining about this education issue. We have to transform schools because, as currently structured, the curriculum, the pedagogy, the evaluation and assessment systems are each designed to serve the interest of an outdated industrial model of education. A 'tradition' keeper, I might say. My whole life, I've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. I've been the labor of schools, forced to 'work' for a thing called grades and scores. Laboring under the burden of too much disconnected content, I have little time to reflect them back for a meaningful insights. In this environment, imagination, creativity, and innovation are not required, taught or assessed. No wonder students graduate without these skills and without any understanding of what they are good at or what they have a passion for.

Passion. Creativity. Imagination. They are the things that missing from our education system, where everything were viewed from dichotomic perspective of right and wrong. A set of black and white options. Our education system make us afraid of making mistakes. Education of today, set an utter distinction between 'correct' and 'wrong'. They associate our development with labels like 'above average', 'average' or 'failed'. That's why we'll never come up with anything original because we're frightened of being wrong. We're afraid to make mistakes. We stigmatize mistakes. We're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.
The result is, we are educating people out of their creative capacities. We are producing people who went to school only for living up their parents' 'tradition' or for the expectation of entitlement. We were bounded, handcuffed for too long….

"Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences."

~Sir Ken Robinson

 

<TO BE CONTINUED>

Re-Education: Part 1

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."
~Bertrand Russell

(This series of writing is pretty much my rant against the education system of our country--and to greater extent, the whole world--which is damn too strict it's choking our neck and often leaving us, the student, breathless. The 21st century's education is pretty much the same as it is in the last century--we didn't developed that much, other than the teaching instruments and technical areas.)

Up till now, I am still a student, and one complaints I had to address was that our policies and beliefs in educating children was only something that 'culturally' passed from generations to generations, a 'rites of passage', that was taken for granted. Meaningless and hollow. No deep meanings gained, no insights followed. I am a child who grew up in sufficient family, and to my family, school is a 'must', and by 'must' I meant 'taken for granted'. School, for others similar family like mine, was something automatic--like breathing or having a breakfast. To us, went to school was a ritual activities that had been done by my mother's mother and my father's father and so do I, as their heir, must follow the tradition.

The school environment greatly reinforced those beliefs--even making it worse. Schools often seem to be focusing only in teaching students to be literate in mathematics, English language arts, and science in order to preparing them to do well on the Diknas mandated and designed, standardized final tests. Notice something that's missing here: free space. Our education system didn't provide any room for explorations and innovations to the students. Strict rules and rigid 'positivist' approach--in the name of disciplines teaching--can be found in any school in the world, and reinforced only the 'tradition-like' value of schooling. This particular environment, I should say, endanger the students. It's killing their creativity.

<TO BE CONTINUED>